“Isn’t it weird that I keep making my plots revolve around this?” Nicole Holofcener asks with a laugh. We’re talking about her new film “You Hurt My Feelings” (in theaters Friday), but we’re also talking about her very first feature, the wonderful “Walking and Talking,” in which a key moment of emotional turmoil occurs when a character accidentally overhears what another character really thinks of them. Now, in “You Hurt My Feelings,” the character is writer Beth (Julia Louis-Dreyfus), who has been struggling with her latest novel; she overhears her husband Don (Tobias Menzies) confessing to a friend that, despite his assurances to the contrary to Beth, he thinks the book is terrible. And just like that, their entire relationship feels like a lie.
READ MORE: Summer 2023 Movie Preview: 52 Must-See Films To Watch
Holofcener hasn’t been through this with someone she loves, but unsurprisingly, an early, formative experience did influence this thread in her work. “I was screening my student film,” she recalls. “My first short, that was way too long. I thought it was going really well with this big audience. And I heard a schoolmate behind me say, ‘Ugh, when is this going to end?’ That was painful. And clearly, I still remember it. And he was right – it was a pretty sappy, way-too-long short film.” But writing “You Hurt My Feelings” wasn’t really about exorcizing that moment, either: “It’s a really good way to get the ball rolling in a movie because we don’t say what we really feel to each other’s faces. So I just do it this way.”
Before Holofcener had even written the script, she thought of Julia Louis-Dreyfus, with whom she’d collaborated on “Enough Said” a decade ago. “She pitched me the germ of this idea over lunch one day, just the concept,” Louis-Dreyfus recalls, “and I cottoned to it right away. I said, ‘Oh, I love that.’”
“I said, ‘Wouldn’t this be a fun movie?’” Holofcener says. “I actually started thinking that the character would be an actress, whose husband, you know, criticizes her performance or something. And we both decided not to. I think Julia didn’t want to play an actress because she’s an actress, you know, and then it becomes kind of self-referential, and she’s making fun of herself and all that. And I didn’t really want that either, so we made her a writer. I don’t know why. I don’t know any writers who have, you know, issues!”
Whatever the profession, the character offered a new challenge for Louis-Dreyfus, while also letting her explore a similar struggle to her character in “Enough Said,” who also knows more than she should about her partner. “Both films explore the idea of truth and honesty, and betrayal,” Louis-Dryefus says. “There are very similar themes, albeit in each film, they’re distinctly different from one another. And I think that these themes of betrayal are sort of borne out of a fearful place, which is an interesting human thing to consider. You know, what is it about the truth that is so frightening?”
“I think it’s fun for an actor to play because it’s got layers to it, right?” Holofcener says. “It’s a really interesting thing for a person to walk around knowing something that they can’t express. And I think a clever, subtle actor can do it honestly, which is, to me, the most important thing.”
The ideas of honesty and truth come up a lot when talking to Holofcener and Louis-Dreyfus—especially when they’re talking about each other. “What’s so remarkable to me about Nicole is her voice is its own,” Louis-Dreyfus explains. “There’s nobody out there who’s doing the kind of work Nicole is doing. She’s very interested in exploring the dynamics of human relationships, and of characters, in a very truthful, very authentic way. There’s not a false note in her scripts. There really isn’t.”
“I’m always surprised by her,” Holofcener says of her star (and co-producer). “I pictured her in this role, saying these things—which is a gift, to be able to write with someone like that in my head. But then it’s a bigger gift because she doesn’t do it like I pictured in my head. She does it her way and adds to it. And that’s a thrilling thing for a director, to watch an actor make my scene and my words that much better.”
But it’s not merely a respect for each other’s talent that made Holofcener and Louis-Dreyfus want to reunite. “I like working with her because she’s really nice,” Holofcener confesses, charmingly. “You know, you never know if your movie is going to turn out well, so you might as well have a nice time making it. That’s what I say. Because imagine if you have a shitty time making it and it turns out shitty? It’s like, oh, how do I get two years of my life back? I think we do our best work under friendly, safe circumstances. And I actually do research about actors and some crew people, about what they’re like as people, because I don’t want to work with assholes.”
Louis-Dreyfus concurs. “Let me tell you something, without a doubt, I am very uninterested in the asshole contingent of our business,” she notes. “Utterly uninterested. I don’t care how famous or how anything, I’m trying to have a good time and spend my time wisely. And that time is certainly spent wisely, working with Nicole Holofcener.”
She is, thankfully (for her, and definitely for all of us), at a point where she can make that choice. Julia Louis-Dreyfus sits at an enviable crossroads of the entertainment business: she’s starred in three long-running and beloved television shows, appears in independent films, and pops up in Marvel movies and series. But spectacles like the latter, are increasingly crowding films like “You Hurt My Feelings” out of theaters and onto streaming platforms. Is Holofcener—who frequently directs for television between films—worried that they’ll disappear from the multiplex altogether?
“It’s always hard to get a movie like this made,” she admits. “It’s never easy, you know, unless you have really big stars in it. The thing is, it’s good and bad because there’s so much good stuff on TV now. So that’s good because the TV jobs I can direct are kinda like movies: they’re single camera, and they’re really quality, and that’s really lucky.
“But it’s not the same as having a bunch of people sit in a movie theater, of course. And I just hope people will do that with this movie, I really do. I’m sure it’ll have a life streaming at some point, but it’s really important to me. And it’s important to me to see movies in the theater too. I’m often very lazy about it, just like everybody else. But when I’m in a theater, I’m really happy that I’m there.”
Louis-Dreyfus’s response to this concern is more pointed. “Well, sure, I’m worried about that,” she admits. “But I’m gonna keep making them. Let’s just put it that way.”
“You Hurt My Feelings” debuts in theaters on May 26.