'The Invite' screenwriters Rashida Jones & Will McCormack
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
This is Fresh Air. I'm Tanya Mosley, and my guests today are writers and performers Rashida Jones and Will McCormick. They dated for a stint in their 20s. It didn't work out, but what they found instead was one of the longest-running creative partnerships in Hollywood. Their first screenplay together, Celeste and Jesse Forever, from 2012, followed two people who couldn't stay married but also couldn't imagine life without each other. It's the kind of complicated relationship stories that they've returned to throughout their careers. Their latest screenplay is The Invite, directed by Olivia Wilde, who also stars alongside Seth Rogen, Penelope Cruz, and Edward Norton. The entire film unfolds in a single San Francisco apartment.
Two couples gather for dinner, and as the evening unfolds, the stories they've been telling about their relationships and themselves fall apart. It was inspired by the 2020 Spanish film Sentimental, The People Upstairs by Cesc Gay. In this scene, the couple who live upstairs, played by Cruz and Norton, have just arrived at their host's apartment, played by Wilde and Rogan.
It took you a while to come to the door, and it sounded like you were arguing.
No filter.
No, I just want to be honest. We were at the door before we rang, and we could hear you were fighting.
Oh, we were talking. We were, um... We were fighting.
We were fighting, yeah. A bit of a contentious environment in here, so I understand if that's repellent to you. No hard feelings, you know what I mean? Completely understand, you know? We love a contentious environment.
We love it.
Oh.
Really, it's fine. You hit the jackpot then, my friend.
As the evening goes on, awkward small talk turns into an unexpected invitation. Rashida Jones is an actor, writer, producer, and director. She won a Grammy for co-directing the documentary Quincy about her father, Quincy Jones, and recently earned an Emmy nomination for her performance in Black Mirror. Will McCormick is an Academy Award-winning writer, director, and actor. He won the Oscar for the animated short If Anything Happens, I Love You. Will McCormick is with me in our Los Angeles studio, and Rashida Jones joins us from London. Welcome both of you to Fresh Air. Thank you. Thank you so much, Tanya. It's so great to be here with you. All right, let's start with this first scene that I just played because there is a rule that we all live by.
And nobody ever says out loud if you hear a couple fighting through a door, you pretend you didn't hear it. And this movie actually opens with that rule being broken. Take us inside of the writer's room when you decided that these four will start with that rule being broken. Well, it's kind of the beauty of this match of these two very different duos where you have a couple that is boiling over by the time their neighbors arrive. And then you have this couple who has decided to kind of take the honesty of life and turn it inwards into their own business. kind of fantasy and excitement. So, you know, it's his theme stated. They're coming in, they're going to perhaps bring a wrecking ball to this already fragile relationship.
Right from the start. Yeah, well. Yeah, I think Hawk sets the tone right from the jump. You know, tonight we're going to sing it like we feel it. And I think that there's something really refreshing about that to Joe as well. Like, it does make him uncomfortable, but I think that it's so, unvarnished and it's so raw that it's actually intriguing. And this is a night where people will have to reveal some hard truths and Edward gets the party started right away. This, as I mentioned earlier, is inspired by this Spanish film that was under a different name. And Will, you actually came up with this idea of The Invite being the title of the movie and it has double, almost triple meaning.
Yeah.
How does The Invite set up its dinner-party premise in the opening scene?
Yeah, it felt like it worked in a lot of ways. It also just felt like classic. It felt sort of iconic, like The Graduate. I just like the sound of it. There's something horror-like about it, too. Right, right. We talked about that a lot, which I think plays in well now with the kind of tone and the—
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Chapters
6 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–4:21
2
How does The Invite set up its dinner-party premise in the opening scene?
4:21–15:52
3
Why did the writers choose the title 'The Invite' and what layers of meaning does it hold?
15:52–18:00
4
How do the writers build character tension during the early apartment scenes?
18:00–24:22
5
What themes of middle‑age disappointment and private grief do the writers explore in The Invite?
24:22–41:14
6
How did Rashida Jones and Will McCormack form their long‑term writing partnership?
41:14–49:27
Speakers
8 identifiedMore from Fresh Air
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