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If you managed to make it to 2010 without seeing the name “Alison Brie,” then it’s clear that you weren’t watching the right TV series. Between playing Pete Campbell’s wife, Trudy, on Mad Men and the start of her six seasons as Annie Edison on Community, Brie took TV by storm and became a regular fixture until the end of both shows in 2015, by which point she was already a year into voicing Diane Ngyuen on Netflix’s BoJack Horseman. Of course, during the run of that critically-acclaimed animated series, she started doing double Netflix duty, also starring as Ruth Wilder in G.L.O.W.
While in the midst of all of this small-screen work, however, Brie has also managed to carve out a consistently strong movie career, one which continues with Spin Me Round, which premieres today in theaters and on AMC+, and reunites her with writer/director Jeff Baena. During the course of her rapid-fire promotional junket for the film, Brie discussed her many collaborations with Baena both in front of and behind the camera, the comedic chemistry of Spin Me Round cast, coming to terms with the cancellation of G.L.O.W., and her continued hopes for that oft-discussed Community movie.
Decider: I had a chance to watch the movie last night, and I have to say that it’s been a long time since I’ve seen a comedy that kept me guessing so much for so long.
Alison Brie: I’m glad! I take that as a very high compliment.
It’s probably safe to say that Alison Brie likely gave husband Dave Franco a heads up about some very spicy moments in her latest movie.
In an exclusive interview with PEOPLE, Brie, 39, opens up about her wild new comedy Spin Me Round. The film — which she also co-wrote alongside frequent collaborator Jeff Baena — sees Brie star as Amber, a woman whose company flies her out to an Italian immersion program. But the trip’s romantic and dreamy beginnings soon take a chaotic turn.
In the movie, out in theaters and available to stream on AMC+, the GLOW alum had to shoot a few steamy kissing scenes — including one with costar Aubrey Plaza, who is married to Baena, 45, and once shared an onscreen kiss with Franco, 37, in 2017’s The Little Hours.
“Dave and I usually do have some kind of conversation before any job, I think just to give the other person a heads up of sort of like, ‘Oh, I have some romantic scenes in this movie,'” Brie tells PEOPLE.
Last summer, Alison Brie took part in the most idyllic Italian getaway. Settled in the Tuscany region between the beautiful cities of Lucca and Pisa, she found herself surrounded by good people eating incredible food and drinking amazing wine at a time when the country was just starting to reopen. “It felt like our secret trip,” she shares on a Zoom call. “[We were] going to these places where we felt like we had it to ourselves.” It was the Italy trip the characters in her new romantic comedy/thriller, Spin Me Round, wished they were having.
The film, which had its world premiere at this year’s South by Southwest festival and hits theaters and AMC+ August 19, follows lowly Tuscan Grove restaurant manager Amber (Brie), who wins an all-expenses-paid trip to her company’s infamous “institute” outside of Florence. However, when she catches the eye of the chain’s handsome and charismatic owner, the vacation of her dreams takes a turn for the chaotic. Instead of exploring gorgeous Italian villas, indulging in local cuisine, and partaking in romantic sightseeing adventures, Amber, along with an unhinged group of franchise managers, finds herself put up in dingy, motel-like accommodations and spending most of her time indoors learning how to make the restaurant’s far-from-palatable dishes.
Like the title infers, Spin Me Round is a wild ride that manages to get more fun and dizzying with each turn. “We really love to take characters and put them in awkward or uncomfortable, very human situations and play out in real time the reality of how one might react in those situations,” Brie tells us of her creative process with co-writer Jeff Baena. Brie has worked with Baena on four projects now, including The Little Hours and Horse Girl, and the two have a proven track record of writing films that feel fresh and exciting in a sea full of adaptations and reboots. There’s an artistic freedom that comes with working together. They get to make the movies they want and go down some “strange roads” together.
Following The Little Hours, Horse Girl and Joshy, Jeff Baena and Alison Brie are back for their fourth indie collaboration — and second (after Horse Girl) as co-writers.
Spin Me Round, which Baena also directs and produces while Brie stars and produces, follows a woman who wins an all-expenses-paid trip to Italy through the Italian restaurant where she works, setting up an adventure after she meets the restaurant chain’s wealthy owner.
“After we made our film Horse Girl together, Jeff came to me and said, ‘I read an article about an exemplary managers program that is run out of an Italian chain restaurant in the States,’ and the article sort of outlined how lackluster that program was; how there were big promises of full immersion in Italian culture but actually it was just like a lot of American managers from restaurants hanging out,” Brie told The Hollywood Reporter at the film’s Los Angeles premiere on Wednesday. “We just thought that idea was really funny. He had sort of beaded out the main plot points and I got to come in and really dig into the characters with him.”
The film co-stars Aubrey Plaza, Molly Shannon, Fred Armisen and Debby Ryan, who have all worked with Baena and Brie on their previous films; Brie joked they’re creating a “Baena-verse” and explained why she works so well with Baena and Plaza, who are married.
“The three of us love film, we love filmmaking, we love independent film, so it’s really fun to work with them because they’re so unique in the way that they think about film and storytelling,” she said. “It’s just really satisfying to work on something where the sky’s the limit and you can follow your imagination wherever it goes.”
Plaza said she took on a smaller role in this project as she was working on her new film Emily the Criminal at the same time, opting to become “the cast cheerleader — I was organizing all the social activities, driving people around Tuscany.” And what did those social activities look like? “Just dinners, basically. That’s what you do in Italy: You drink and have long dinners.”
Plaza also celebrated reuniting with several of their longtime comedy friends for the film, noting that Baena “has a shorthand with all of these actors, so I think it just makes the process more fun. When you’re shooting movies it’s a tough life; it’s hard when you’re shooting small movies, so it’s good to feel like it’s all in the family and we’re all friends. It just makes the experience that much richer.”
Spin Me Round hits theaters Friday.
Source: The Hollywood Reporter
Alison Brie and Dave Franco are the cool cat parents pet owners aspire to be.
The longtime couple — who wed in 2017 — share cats Arturo, Max, and Otis. Their beloved feline Harry, unfortunately, died in June 2020.
Giving an update on her trio of fur babies, Brie, 39, tells PEOPLE exclusively they’re doing “great” at this time. The actress also shares just how invested she is in the cats she cares for with Franco, 37.
“My husband has to always kind of calm me down,” says the actress and screenwriter while promoting her new film Spin Me Round out in theaters and on AMC+ on Friday, August 19. “Lately, I’ve been obsessed with getting some leashes to take them out of the box. He’s like, ‘No.'”
But Brie’s reasons for wanting to leash her cat children are valid.
“They’re indoor cats. We live in an area with a lot of coyotes, so we really can’t let them be indoor-outdoor because animals get eaten by coyotes all the time,” the Community alum explains.
Brie and Franco, 37, aren’t “dressing them up in much,” but the pair enjoys bonding with Arturo, Max, and Otis as much as possible.
“We love to play with them,” she says. “We’re really devoted.”
Thinking of ways to get her pets outdoors, Brie has contemplated getting a knapsack for carrying her cats while walking around her neighborhood.
“I’ve seen people do it, hiking with their dogs, with a baby carrier. I don’t know,” she explains. “I worry that next time I see you, I’m going to have rashes all on my neck. I’m going to be like, ‘I tried to carry the cats in a carrier.'”
Figuring out ways to bond with her cats isn’t the only thing that’s top of mind as of late. Brie is starring in Spin Me Round as Amber, a woman whose company flies her out to an Italian immersion program, but the trip soon takes a chaotic turn.
“[My collaborator] Jeff [Baena] came to me with the idea. We’ve worked together four times before, and this is our second time writing together and producing together,” the GLOW alum says of the film. “He really had based it on this idea of this exemplary managers program that the characters go on to Italy, thinking that they’re going to get this immersive Italian program, but actually it’s a very Americanized situation. He came to me with that idea and really was basing it on some articles that he sent me about a similar program that exists.”
“I think we just thought that idea alone was so funny and a great chance to get a great ensemble together, playing different characters and getting to bounce off of each other, their different expectations and disappointments around this program,” she continues. “And then he laid out these additional beats. We extrapolated it from there in terms of how a trip like that could go wrong.”
Brie also got to pull from her real-life encounters with men, which loosely inspired her character’s primary love interest, played by Alessandro Nivola.
“It was really fun for me to come in and infuse the story with the nuances of my personal experiences as we were fleshing out the different characters,” she adds. “I find that is, like, a fun way.”
Spin Me Round hits theaters and AMC+ on Friday.
Source: PEOPLE
Alison Brie and Dave Franco continue to inspire each other in more ways than one.
At a screening for her new film Spin Me Round in Los Angeles Wednesday, the actress, 39, told PEOPLE about how she and husband Franco, 37, support each other as they venture behind the camera.
Franco made his directorial debut in 2020 with his film The Rental, which he also co-wrote. Now, it was Brie’s turn as she co-wrote Spin Me Round with director Jeff Baena. She says watching each other wear new hats in their career is “inspiring.”
“Within our household, it’s really fun because it’s inspiring,” she says. “It’s fun to watch each other work on other stuff.”
Brie continues, “I think that was the impetus for any writing on my part was watching Dave write The Rental with Joe Swanberg and seeing his excitement as he was trying out this new endeavor every day.”
Brie recalls her husband being “so empowered and electrified by the process” when he would return home. She says that “empowered” her to explore an idea she had with Baena.
“I think it’s just really fun to come into our own confidence at the same time and in these different ways of working, and that fuels each other,” Brie says. “And it’s a new way for us to connect with each other as well.”
She says the two have “always” related to one another as actors and these new ventures have “just expanded that.”
The couple tied the knot in March 2017. In 2020, Franco opened up about working with his wife on The Rental, which Brie starred in alongside Jeremy Allen White, Dan Stevens, Sheila Vand and Toby Huss. Speaking to Moviemaker Magazine, Franco told Moonlight director Barry Jenkins he couldn’t have done it without her.
“We’ve acted together, and so we knew that we would get along well on a set, but we’ve obviously never worked together in this capacity,” Franco told Jenkins in the cover story. “But what I will say is that I’ve always known that she’s an amazing actress.”
Franco said Brie was indispensable on the set, not just as an actress but as a teammate.
“There were moments throughout the shoot where I would really get into my own head and start to doubt myself in small ways,” he admitted. “And so to be able to go home to her every night and have someone who would build me up and remind me that things were going well and that I was doing a good job — it was invaluable and I honestly don’t think I could have done this without her.”
He continued, “But I swear, watching her intently every day for five weeks, I realized that she might be the greatest actress on the planet and I’m not just saying that because she’s standing 10 feet away.”
Spin Me Round — starring Brie, Aubrey Plaza, Tim Heidecker, Zach Woods, Debby Ryan, Ayden Mayeri and Molly Shannon — premieres Friday in theaters, on demand and streaming on AMC+.
Source: PEOPLE
Alison Brie and Dave Franco are one of those rare Hollywood couples that seem to just work. Brie says one reason for their close connection apparently stems from them working hard to keep in touch, despite their schedules.
Brie and Franco walked the red carpet at a special IFC screening of her new film, Spin Me Round, at The London West Hollywood at Beverly Hills, and the celebrated actress spoke with ET’s Cassie DiLaura about her happy marriage of five years — as well as their upcoming project.
Brie is starring in the forthcoming romantic dramedySomebody I Used to Know, which Franco is directing and was co-written by the couple.
“To me the best part is getting to experience all these other people on set realizing how incredible he is,” Brie said of getting to work with her husband on a film. “I already know, [but] its really fun to watch all the new eyes kind of take him in. And as a director, he is extraordinary.”
Franco previously directed Brie in his directorial debut, The Rental, which came out in 2020. It’s just one of the many projects the pair have collaborated on, and for Brie, its one way the pair stay close.
Reflecting on her secret to maintaining a healthy and happy marriage, Brie shared, “Communication. Its all about good communication.”
“Everybody says it, but I think that’s why we try to work together so much honestly, just so we can spend more time together,” she shared. “So we don’t have to be apart so much.”
“But even when we’re apart, we really make an effort to connect every day,” she added. “and that’s important.”
As for her latest film, Spin Me Round, Brie not only stars, but also co-wrote the script with director Jeff Baena, and she serves as a producer.
The movie follows Amber (Brie), the manager of an American restaurant chain who is selected to go on a company trip to Italy for special chef training. However, the idyllic vision of a European vacation slowly takes a strange turn.
“Its really unexpected,” Brie said of the movie excitedly. “I don’t think its gonna be like anything that they’ve seen before and to me that’s exciting! It might not be exciting for everybody, but I hope that they’re excited by it and that it makes them want to rethink their vacations.”
Spin Me Round is in theaters, on VOD and is streaming on AMC+ on Aug. 19.
Source: ET Online