‘Over Your Dead Body’ Interview: Jason Segel, Samara Weaving & Jorma Taccone On Balancing Brutality & Comedy, ‘Shrinking’ Season 4 & More [The Discourse Podcast]

We’ve all probably been incredibly annoyed with our partner at one point or another, and thought (just for a second!) “I could kill them,” then went and made dinner as a perfectly functioning adult. The comedy thriller “Over Your Dead Body” from director Jorma Taccone (“Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping,” “Macgruber”) starring Jason Segel, Samara Weaving as the warring couple, asks what would happen if you didn’t let that thought go. What if you actually planned it… and it was a really, really awful plan?

And that’s what the film is about. It’s not about professional killers or brilliant criminals. It’s about a couple in a relationship that’s on the rocks who think they are clever enough to get away with murder, and almost immediately show that they absolutely are not.

What happens next isn’t a neat thriller. It’s more like a series of awful choices triggering each other, poorly thought-out plans, and doing things in a panic. The film’s style changes as it goes along, beginning as a sharply funny look at a failing relationship, becoming a farcical murder attempt, and then becoming far more chaotic than you’d anticipate.

READ MORE: “Normal”: Bob Odenkirk and Derek Kolstad On Building A Genre-Swerving Action Oddity Independently, ‘John Wick’ Exits, and‘ The Room’ Remake [The Discourse Podcast]

On this episode of The Discourse, host Mike DeAngelos chats with Jason Segel, Samara Weaving, and director Jorma Taccone about how they made all of that look easy, how being bad at things became the movie’s main source of humor, and how changing the tone of the film actually made the story feel more believable.

The story, based on Tommy Wirkola’s Norwegian 2021 film “The Trip,” is about a couple whose relationship is already in pieces, and then explodes into a murder attempt, which neither of them is in any way prepared to manage. From the beginning, the feeling that things could fall apart at any moment was woven into the acting. Weaving specifically worked with that same action team to make sure she didn’t appear capable of anything.

“The stunt team was so great,” she explained. “And I talked a lot with them about not being like playing someone who’s not a fighter, you know? So I really did want it to be like sloppy. And I think that’s where a lot of the comedy comes in when it’s like, honestly, you’re trying to fight, but just not very good.”

Segel took this and explored it from a more personal perspective, making the craziness feel rooted in something we’ve all probably felt.

“I mean, if somebody broke into my house, I would have no idea what to do. Zero, let alone three people,” he said. “I would have no idea what to do.”

Comedy and awkwardness are directly linked in the film, especially in scenes where the actors have to do something surprisingly hard: act badly deliberately, while still holding the audience’s attention. “It’s so funny you asked that because that was the challenge,” Segel said. “I actually tried to like picture people who I’ve seen not do good acting and just copy them.”

Weaving went with a more personal approach, reaching for her very first instincts. “I just went back to when I was in my first acting job. I was like 13. I was so proper, and I was not good. So I just did that,” she said. “You’d have to say things like, ‘Romeo, like, why didn’t you call me?’ Like, it just was not good.”

That nuanced acting, good actors intentionally being bad, is one of the film’s funniest and most repeated jokes, and Taccone wisely allows it to develop. In a particularly good scene, the actors were encouraged to go far beyond what was written in the script.

“They’d written a lot of those lines,” Weaving said. “And then Jorma just let us go for hours, and I just wanted to see what Jason kept saying.”

Taccone felt that this freedom was crucial to making the film seem full of life, and he didn’t want to copy the original. He saw the first film as a guide, not a restriction. “I love the original,” he said. “But for me, it really is just like a tonal shift… pushing the humor as much as I could and having that sort of stitch all of the tones together.”

He describes the film as “almost three films in one,” becoming increasingly extreme while still keeping everything tied to the characters. “It goes here, and it just ramps,” Taccone explained. “You can tell when an audience is just in, even if it’s like a quieter scene, like jokes going into violence. It’s so rad.”

This balance between sympathy for the characters and the messiness also helped Segel continue to challenge how people see him on screen. He knows how audiences view and like him, and is deliberately trying to change that.

“Yeah, this was an attempt at it. And I’m doing more,” he said. “It’s interesting because no matter how hard I try, I always end up so damn likable… but I will find my thing.”

Taccone encouraged this, not seeing it as a problem but as something he could use to his advantage. “There’s a certain trust level that he’s kind of earned by all of the roles that he’s done,” Taccone said. “We’ve got to spend it here.”

However, even as the film gets darker and wilder, it doesn’t lose sight of its basic point. These aren’t geniuses. They’re just people, desperately trying to stay one step ahead of the consequences of their own awful choices, and flailing around as they do it. The humor comes from how real that is, and the violence is more shocking because of it.

And before they finished, Segel also briefly mentioned another show fans love, giving a little hint about what’s next for “Shrinking.” He didn’t say what would happen in the story, but did say that the next part will move forward in time, both in the story and in how it looks.

“It’s going to be a narrative time jump,” he said. “Yeah, I’m growing my hair in an attempt to help sell that time jump right now… I want people to go, ‘Well, it’s been a while. Look at his hair, it is longer. How many years has it been?’”

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It’s a small thing, but typical of Segel to find humor in the details of how a story is told, and to treat something as simple as hair growing as part of the acting.

“Over Your Dead Body” hits theaters on April 24th. You can watch the conversation with Segel and Weaving via the YouTube embed below. To also hear the full conversation with director Jorma Taccone, head to The Playlist Podcast Network and subscribe on your app of choice!

The Discourse is part of The Playlist Podcast Network, which includes Deep Focus, Bingeworthy, and more. We can be heard on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Soundcloud, and most places where podcasts are found. You can stream the podcast via the embed within the article. Be sure to subscribe and drop us a comment or a rating, as we greatly appreciate it. Thank you for listening.

Mike DeAngelo

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