ANATOMY
OF A CONTENDERAWARDS SEASON
2019THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER 71 OCTOBER 30, 2019
31a theater director. “It was a long
conversation, over a course of
months, that started in a restau-
rant and basically just changed
locations to a film set,” says the
35-year-old actor.
Johansson, 34, also came
aboard very early. When
Baumbach found out at their
first lunch in 2017 — while she
was in the middle of a 10-month
back-to-back shoot on Avengers:
Infinity War and Endgame — that
Johansson was going through
her second divorce (from French
journalist and art curator Romain
Dauriac), he wasn’t so sure she’d
be interested in the job. “I was
like, ‘So you’re either going to love
or hate this,’ ” says Baumbach.
As it turned out, digging into
her own emotional baggage was
exactly what she was in the mood
for after hanging out with Iron
Man and Thor. “There’s a lot of
physical stamina required to
shoot 10 months of that kind of
work,” says Johansson. “One thing
that kept me going was know-
ing that I had something that
was going to be challenging in a
different kind of way, where I felt
like I was able to use a different
kind of muscle. Not just, like,
my biceps.”
Like Baumbach, some of the
actors took deep dives into
preproduction research. Laura
Dern, for instance — yet another
early hire, cast as Nicole’s fiercely
aggressive lawyer — met with
several real divorce attorneys,
including Laura Wasser, whose
clients have included Christina
Aguilera, Johnny Depp and
Ashton Kutcher. “She’s one of the
great powerhouses,” says Dern.
“Despite empathy and heartfelt
intent — and I think Laura is an
example of this — the business of
divorce is the business of win-
ning for your team.” Ray Liotta,
who plays Charlie’s lawyer (after
Charlie fires a sweeter but slightly
bumbling attorney played by Alan
Alda), reached out to an industry
heavyweight — although with
less luck. “I tried to get in touch
with Martin Singer because from
what I’ve read about him, he haswhen Baumbach was in London
doing script revisions for Wes
Anderson on Fantastic Mr. Fox.
“It’s a beautiful piece of writing,”
says Heyman. “What I loved about
it was that it was a love story. No
matter how hard they went at it,
you still never question the love
that they have for one another.”
Heyman and Baumbach pre-
sented the package to a number
of studios, and while there was
interest from several (including,
reportedly, Amazon), Netflix had
an edge. Although Baumbach was
once skeptical of streamers —
he’d long been a vocal supporterbig brass, you know, knuckles,”
Liotta says. Singer was dealing
with a client emergency, how-
ever, and never got around to
meeting with the actor. “By that
time, I didn’t need to talk to the
guy,” Liotta says. “If you read the
New York Post you really see how
F-upped it can get between ex-
husbands and ex-wives.”
Baumbach finished his script in
late 2017 and took it to London to
present to British producer David
Heyman, who made the Harry
Potter films and Gravity. The two
had never worked together before
but had met several years ago,1 From left: Noah Baumbach,
Scarlett Johansson, Laura
Dern and Alan Alda on set
in L.A. “We discovered
moments together, which I
think was brilliant,” Alda says
of Baumbach. “Either that,
or he made me think we
were discovering it together,
which is even more brilliant.”
2 “Every scene had an
emotional weight to it,”
says Adam Driver (right,
with Azhy Robertson).
“Even ones that I thought
were pretty simple on the
page, when you’re having
to say it across from a
7-year-old, they take on a
new meaning.”
3 “I just knew that this was
a story that Noah had spent
a long time thinking about
and stewing with it,” says
Johansson, with Driver.
4 “[Noah] really allows the
audience to experience both
sides of the story like no
movie I’ve ever seen,” says
Dern, left, with Johansson.
2