![‘Magic Hour’ Review: Katie Aselton & Daveed Diggs Fuel A Charming Duplass Production [SXSW]](https://cdn.theplaylist.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/10142945/MagicHour_KatieAselton_DaveedDiggs_CredSarahWhelden_Still07.jpg "‘Magic Hour’ Review: Katie Aselton & Daveed Diggs Fuel A Charming Duplass Production [SXSW]")
It’s hardly surprising that Katie Aselton (“The Freebie,” “Black Rock”) and her co-writer and husband Mark Duplass (“Cyrus,” “Jeff, Who Lives at Home”) would turn a modest relationship movie into something stranger, thornier, and more emotionally slippery. Their new film, “Magic Hour,” follows Erin (Aselton) and Charlie (Daveed Diggs), a couple working through a difficult stretch while staying at a friend’s desert home, only for the getaway to open onto self-discovery, grief, and an unexpected reveal that reframes the story (read our review).
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The Playlist’s Brian Farvour sat down with Aselton and Duplass to discuss the film’s origins, from an early conversation about returning to the scrappy intimacy of their earlier work to the more vulnerable ideas about marriage, codependency, and grief that eventually shaped the story. The pair also discussed building the film around Aselton and Diggs’ chemistry, finding room for improvisation within a tightly prepared framework, and what festival audiences have revealed about the movie’s emotional pull.
How did the idea for “Magic Hour” first come together?
Aselton: [There was] this conversation around New Year’s, where Mark had said, “What do you want to do this year?” I said, “I want to make a movie, I need to make a movie.” And he asked, “What kind of movie do you want it to be?” And I said, “I want it to go back to the way we used to make movies. I want a “Puffy Chair.” I want a “Freebie.” And he said, “All right, well, great, let’s write it.” So we were on a road trip for about six hours in a car, and started spitballing about how “Puffy Chair” was great because it was about us, but not about us. And “The Freebie” was fun because it was about other people we knew, and we were mining all of our close friends for information. And this was, “Okay, well, let’s go back to that idea.” And we’re like, “Well, we’re so boring. We’re married with kids, we’re happy. Like, that’s not a fun movie!” And so, then, we started playing with the idea of, well, what if we went into hypotheticals, and that sort of idea.
Was the impulse less about recreating the old model and more about figuring out what you could speak to now?
Duplass: I remember it so differently. I remember us talking about, yes, wanting to make a movie. Still, I remember us talking thematically about what we uniquely have to offer at this stage in our lives, and what we could offer up that has that vulnerability or that something that makes it worth watching when you’ve got 5,000 movies and TV shows on your queue, you know? And we started talking about our codependency, and how we’ve always been pretty codependent as a couple, and how it got even more so during the pandemic and with our kids, and the positives and negatives of codependency. And we joke around a lot about reclaiming the word codependency, which has such a negative connotation. But there’s also this feeling of, “Isn’t that why we’re here, to love someone so much that [we] can’t live without them, and that it might just devastate you beyond repair?”
I know that’s technically unhealthy when I go to my therapist, but at the same time, I want to feel that deeply, and Katie and I have found that, for whatever reason, and the energy of our relationship, we’ve gotten to that place. I’m terrified of losing Katie. I don’t know what would happen if she were not sitting next to me. What happened is we started going down that road, and then I said, “Well, I mean, I would just haunt you, but I would be making fart jokes in the way I still do today. That’s my plan, if I ever pass on, is to 100% still stay in this mindset and still hang out.”
So, there was a little bit of that. And I think that this other part of me, when we went into the craft mode of this and thought about the movie, “The One I Love,” that we both really love, and that really is centered around a couple, but it’s not just a couple going away. There’s something extra there. There’s a little something different that you can latch on to. And we like that model where you still make it modestly, and it’s still intimate, and about two people. So, I think that was the soup for me, where I was coming from. We knew we wanted Katie and Daveed to rely on their chemistry and improvise some of it so that they could really feel the naturalism and the chemistry there. And we spent a year doing that.
Aselton: It also explains how Mark has a business brain—what kind of movie would work? And I’m more of the romantic.
How did you approach the film’s arc and its unexpected progression?
Aselton: If you look at a simple breakup, when a couple separates, the ghost of that person lives with the other for so long, the presence of that person is so present, and how much of that do you actually have to sit and measure and say, “How much of that presence do I want to keep in my life?” Because if there was real love between you, you don’t want to eradicate this person completely and who they were to you, because you loved them. And so, even in the most simple of separations, I think there is a presence that is left behind, and it’s hard, especially in those early days, months, years, and then there are different versions of breaking up and separating. And I think the remnants of those relationships stay with you. I think “Magic Hour” is a different version of that.
How did Daveed Diggs enter the picture as Charlie?
Aselton: We love him. It was a much longer casting. This was way trickier than I would have anticipated; it was sort of like finding a soulmate, because there was going to be so much improvisation, and we’re making a smaller movie, so finding someone who has a little bit of weight in the business, in the industry, and some name recognition is important. I had flagged Daveed as someone we wanted for a while, but he was on “Snowpiercer” and had zero availability, so we took some swings at some other people, but honestly, nothing felt quite right. And out of nowhere in the process, we got a call from one of our agents, and he said, “[Daveed is] off this show now,” and from the second I met him, he is Charlie.
Duplass: Not to get too inside baseball, but there’s this thing that happens when you’re casting a small movie where you have to make offers to people, as opposed to auditioning them. In a movie like this, you want to know that there’s going to be some chemistry. And so, the three of us just had dinner together. And I think I’m threatened enough by the chemistry that means this is going to be good.
Katie, how do you know when something is working in the moment versus when it’s just spontaneous?
Aselton: I think when you’re in a scene as an actor, you can feel when things feel good, but that doesn’t always translate to the other side. So you need prep with your team so they know your goals in the scene and what it should be, and you need to establish enough trust that you can come out of one of those crazy scenes and say, “Did we get it?” And they could say, “No, go again.” You’re like, “Okay, all right,” but it doesn’t always work that way. Sometimes, a lot of it happens in the edit, and you have to build it and get it there. And that’s the very honest answer.
Duplass: I don’t think you give yourself enough credit, though, for being the co-writer of this thing, the co-parent of this for years. You had a pretty good instinct. And you wanted to have a system of checks and balances.
Aselton: And that is all part of the prep, having just such a deep familiarity with the thing, and there’s a strong vision of what it should look and feel like and be, but you’re still surprised sometimes.
Was there a day on set you’ll never forget, or a scene you wish you could go back and revisit?
Aselton: Good question! The massage scene didn’t look the way I wanted. That’s one that I would like to get another go at.
Duplass: Watching the dailies of that really tricky scene with the car going back and forth, which is all in-camera effects, nothing special, and the light was fading. That, to me, is the essence of independent filmmaking, where they were forced to move very, very quickly, make some adjustments.
Aselton: We had logistical issues.
Duplass: You’ve got someone lying inside the car pushing the brakes and the gas by hand. Sometimes the gods are on your side, and even though the sun’s going down, and that scene had to happen in 27 minutes, it did wonderfully. And that to me is the magic of these kinds of movies.
What did you take away from the experience that you didn’t expect?
Aselton: Getting Daveed to sing whenever asked! In our outline, it was, “Charlie hums along to the radio.” And I said, “Guess what? I’m getting a convertible, and that guy’s gonna sing in the field!”
Duplass: Sharing the movie with limited audiences and film festivals over the last year. It’s been the nature of what people connect with in the movie. I really knew we had a great movie that was romantic and a little strange, and great performances. Still, there’s something deeper happening with audiences as they examine what it would be like, either to lose the person they’ve loved and their romantic connection, or for those who have lost it, or even those who are almost grieving the loss of that romance, because they are in love and they imagine it. So it’s been kind of the conversations we’ve had afterward. Very nice and connective. Everyone stays for the Q&A because they all want to talk about it. That was really fun.
This interview has been edited for clarity. “Magic Hour” is in theaters May 15.
