Lizzy Caplan has had an adventurous couple of years. She met a rather unfortunate end in Cloverfield and helped John Cusack change his future in Hot Tub Time Machine. She's that snarky chick from Party Down who managed to make a bowtie and cummerbund hot, but she also got hooked on vampire blood and had crazy sex with Ryan Kwanten in an altogether too short arc in True Blood. All you really need to know, though, is that Lizzy Caplan is the coolest chick in any room.
Caplan's also got plum parts in two very buzzy Sundance films this year. She stars in the lovely romantic drama Save the Date as Sarah, a sweet comic book artist and bookstore manager who's severely allergic to commitment. She costars with Alison Brie, who plays her marriage-minded sister Beth, Martin Starr as Beth's fiancé Andrew, Geoffrey Arend as her ex-boyfriend Kevin, and Mark Webber as her new paramour. This wonderful ensemble brings tons of heart to a relatable story about how scary love, sex, marriage, and loneliness can be.
On the opposite side of the spectrum is the brutally black comedy Bachelorette with Kirsten Dunst, Isla Fisher, James Marsden, and her old Party Down paramour, Adam Scott. Caplan plays Gena, a coked-out mess who returns to NYC for an old friend's wedding. Besides the utter havoc that she and her gal pals Regan (Dunst) and Katie (Fisher) cause for the bride-to-be at her rehearsal dinner, the trio go on a secret all-night quest to get the bridal dress fixed after a drunken mishap. On the way, things get really, really ugly. Forget Bridesmaids and even The Hangover; writer/director Leslye Headland takes us on an overnight tour of three impressively messed-up female psyches. GQ chatted with Caplan about both films, her crazed week in Park City, and the joys of simulated sex.
GQ: Is this your first Sundance?
Lizzy Caplan: No, I was here two years ago for a short film that I was in, but I produced it also. It's called Successful Alcoholics.
GQ: But it's still pretty surreal, right?
Lizzy Caplan: Oh, yeah. It's a very different coming with a short film, because it shows in a shorts program as opposed to your own premiere, and then to have two films here this year is pretty insane. Luckily they're in separate categories so I'm getting to experience the premiere and also the competition vibe, but yeah, it's overwhelming. I'm tired.
GQ: It's that time where everyone forgets what day it is.
Lizzy Caplan: Oh, totally. If I wasn't leaving today, I'd have no idea what day it is. I'm just waiting for people to tell me where to go and for how long for so many days in a row. I just need to go home and exercise my independence for half a day or something.
GQ: What is it like having this instantaneous feedback on your movies? I mean, even beyond buzz on the shuttle bus or in the bathrooms afterwards, you've got people leaving the screenings and Tweeting things immediately.
Lizzy Caplan: Yeah. Yeah. It's super intense. I'm not on Twitter, but I've been checking it, not having an account, and it's—I mean, I guess there's nothing to do about it but accept that's the way it is now. Otherwise, you'll drive yourself crazy.
I shot Save the Date in the summer and Bachelorette late summer, and they turned them around so quickly and we're seeing them now, and so that part of the instantaneous, the immediate gratification, it feels more like television than film, so that I like. The Tweeting business, that's a little too instant for my liking. But then again, you get to hear what people are thinking—like, people, lots of people, you get to hear their individual opinions as opposed to just a reviewer or critic.
GQ: Obviously, you can't get away from the fact that the themes of both your movies at Sundance are commitment, fear of commitment, fear of growing up, stuff like that. Are you at that stage where everyone starts getting married?
Lizzy Caplan: Well, I was born and raised in Los Angeles, and we don't get married there. [laughs] Not 'til way later, for the most part. I have a couple friends from growing up who are married, but the vast majority of us are not. I think it's similar in New York, or maybe it's just similar in this business. The way that I see marriage is different than the way my sister sees marriage or my brother, even though I guess they were raised in LA also, but I think there's something about this business that you can stay sort of young and immature for longer than maybe you should. I think the themes are just going to start popping up more and more as I approach 30, because that's just a very appropriate milestone to base a story around.
GQ: It's a big one. It kind of socks you in the face for a few years.
Lizzy Caplan: Does it?
GQ: Yeah.
Lizzy Caplan: Uh-oh.
GQ: It's fun. It gets better after that.
Lizzy Caplan: I know Mike Mohan, the director, has talked about this in a couple of interviews. I feel like Save the Date is a kind of anti-marriage movie, like the happy ending for Alison [Brie] and Martin [Starr] is that they call off the wedding, which is not to say they won't be together and get married down the line; I'm sure they will. But it seems like the happy ending comes with calling off your wedding, if you really boil it down and simplify it. But Mike Mohan, the writer and director, is happily married for multiple years, so he does believe in it. And both of our producers who were on set everyday, they're both married and dig it, but I find when I talk to people who are married, I always ask, "Do you like it? Are you still having fun with this person?" And clearly it's a different answer for everybody, but the institution of marriage, the fact that we still take it as seriously as we do when it seems kind of like an antiquated way of thinking, is ridiculous. Like, the amount of pressure, I'm sure, when you hit 30, 35, as a woman… And I'm not even anti-marriage, I'm not. I probably will get married; half the time it's a very exciting idea to me, the other half the time, it's [like], why? Who cares? As soon as you get married, you're closer to getting divorced.
GQ: The message of both movies is "Do your thing" and "Fuck everyone else." Which I like.
Lizzy Caplan: I do too. So much easier said than done, because you really do get that pressure. I felt lucky that I had kind of avoided it. My family's very chill about that stuff. They're not asking questions about if and when I'm gonna get married, even though both of my siblings are. My sister got married a few years ago, and I know a lot of girls, when they go to their sister's weddings, the family just descends upon them and starts asking them those questions. People, for the most part, leave me alone, but I also feel that the timer's about to expire and I'm going to be getting that question quite often, and it'll just make me probably not want to do it. But whatever. We'll see.
And the thing is, when you have a child with somebody, that, to me, is a true bond for life. Way more so than a wedding or just a marriage. As soon as you have a kid, then you're really stuck. [laughs]
GQ: What I thought was really cool about Save the Date was that no one's villainized. Even Sarah's new boyfriend Jonathan, everyone's like, "Yeah, he's a good guy. I hate to say it." It's so nice, in a story about love and how complicated it is.
Lizzy Caplan: Totally. I think that all of the characters are recognizable from a lot of people's lives. I hope that they are. And I do think that [in] life, minus the occasional psychopath here and there, everybody truly is just doing the best that they can, and a lot of times, doing the best that you can hurts other people's feelings, and it's unavoidable. I do like the idea of the nice guy kind of getting shit on, because that is what happens. I mean, he is so loving, and I know personally, in my past, if guys have been so nice to me—nice is the wrong word—anything I wanted, they treated, and put me on a pedestal and all that, I do get sort of bored with that and want to push them away. I don't think it's as cliché—it's certainly not for me—as like, "I like guys who are assholes to me." Definitely not. But that pure, sweet niceness, I don't know, I liked seeing in a movie that that's not really working out for him trying to get this girl.
GQ: At the same time, a lot of characters and real-life guys have this victimization thing, like, "I'm so nice! Why are women so shitty to me?" And then they're kind of the biggest assholes.
Lizzy Caplan: Yeah, they hate women. I was just talking to a guy in the hallway who I spoke to before in an interview, and he's 25 and a nice guy, and it's like, he really did seem like a very, very super-nice guy, and he really connected with that character in the film, and I told him, "Yeah, it sucks to be a nice guy when you're 25 'cause girls that age do not want to be with a nice guy." Like, in five to 10 years, girls will want him, but in the meantime, I dunno. Obviously, exceptions to every rule but the girls that I know and the girl that I was when I was 25 was not super interested in the perfect person to bring home to your dad.
GQ: The audience response to Bachelorette this morning was really fun. In the ladies' bathroom, on the bus, everywhere, people of all ages.
Lizzy Caplan: Really!
GQ: I love that it was written and directed by a woman, of course, and that's kind of my jam, and you guys are so mean.
Lizzy Caplan: So mean. So mean!
GQ: What's more awkward, these really authentic, beautiful sex scenes in Save the Date or pretending to be a giant cokehead and saying "cunt" in front of everyone in Bachelorette?
Lizzy Caplan: You mean to shoot or to watch?
GQ: Both.
Lizzy Caplan: To shoot, I think the sex scenes are actually sort of easier, especially if you have an amazing costar, and I had two in this, but especially Mark [Webber] because that's where the real intimate ones were. I'm a big fan of shooting those. I think it's hilarious and awesome that that's part of my job, to simulate sex with somebody I just met in front of, like, 10 strangers. That's so weird that I think it's hilarious and fun. But trying to maintain a level of coked-outness is harder, I think, when you're shooting. But then watching it—I enjoy shooting a sex scene and I hate watching them. Oh my God. Watching them with an audience—it's just brutal. I just covered my eyes and held onto Mark's arm the whole time. It's so embarrassing. It sucks. [laughs]
GQ: Watching the coke scenes in Bachelorette made me a little nervous, just because by proxy I'm all jittery now.
Lizzy Caplan: People have said that, that they leave a little amped up from watching it. The character overall though, it's easier for me to do those coked-out drinking scenes because that's all just blocking out real emotion and doing whatever you can to not feel feelings. That's her whole M.O., whereas being laid completely bare and vulnerable, that's just personally a harder place for me to get to.
GQ: So is Adam Scott's wife tired of you making out with her husband?
Lizzy Caplan: [laughs] Adam Scott's wife and I, Naomi is her name, and she's incredible, and we get along super-well. And I say this sometimes in interviews, but I think I might like Naomi more than I like Adam. Like, at parties when we see each other, I'm spending the whole time with Naomi, not with him, so it's cool. I don't know how I would feel [laughs], necessarily, but she's bad ass. She's the coolest woman. She would never be intimidated by the likes of me, ever. She would have no reason to. She's the raddest. Everybody loves her.
GQ: It's kind of funny. He's a huge crush object now.
Lizzy Caplan: I know, I see that stuff. It's really funny to me because I've known him now for a few years, and we have kind of a relationship where I pick on him quite a bit, and to see him becoming this lust object for girls is so funny to me. I just can't. Whenever something comes up in conversation about that, it makes me laugh.
GQ: All the girls after Save the Date were like, "Martin Starr is jacked! What happened?"
Lizzy Caplan: Martin Starr, man. He has the sickest body. It's like the best kept secret ever. Martin Starr has a smoking hot bod. Yeah. It's awesome. It's awesome. And the last thing I'll say about Adam, if I could shoot every movie with him, I would, just because it's so easy working with him. We know how to do it now really well.
