[Editor’s note: The following interview contains spoilers for “Friendship,” now in theaters.]
Kate Mara is piling on the cringe comedy, one “weird” role at a time. The actress, who has deftly balanced indie features alongside the rare IP film and dramatic TV roles, gives a standout performance in viral hit “Friendship” alongside her onscreen husband Tim Robinson. It’s Mara’s dedication to being the straight-faced heroine who rediscovers her sexuality in a tunnel sewer system post-chemo (while also kissing her teen son Steven, played by Jack Dylan Grazer, on the lips at home) that makes her character Tami’s outrageous behavior seem sane. Leave it to Mara to have her comedic debut be akin to a serious. dramatic performance — one that should be recognized come this awards season.
“I don’t know why our director thought of me,” Mara told IndieWire of being cast in “Friendship” by writer/director Andrew DeYoung. He makes his feature directorial debut with the critically acclaimed A24 buddy comedy. “But he offered it to me and I read it and loved it, and I had the same thought. I was like, ‘Why did you think of me?’”
It turns out Mara’s non-comedy career is what made her the perfect fit to act alongside “I Think You Should Leave” creator Robinson. “[Andrew DeYoung] just was like, ‘I want to surround Tim with some more dramatic actors.’ That was what Andy had said to me, and I was just so excited to be in this world, in this very, very weird world,” Mara said.
That weirdness was almost a shock to a certain degree, as Mara was not used to Robinson’s previous work, including his “I Think You Should Leave” series. “I was so embarrassed that I wasn’t [familiar with it because] once I started watching, I couldn’t stop. It just made me that much more excited and surprised to be a part of this,” she said. “He’s such a specifically unique comedian and there’s nobody like him.”
There is a below the line overlap between “Friendship” and Mara’s other works, though: The feature had the same composer as Mara’s 2020 Hulu series “A Teacher,” where her character similarly kisses a teen (just not her son).
And according to the actress, “Friendship,” which was written for Robinson by DeYoung, had little to no improvisation on set: All of the jokes were “on the page” while director DeYoung encouraged various takes for tone and delivery. “He is so open to ideas and play, he’s up for whatever you want to try, but yeah, it was all in the script and then we had some talks beforehand, just little ideas for Tami’s character and her relationship with her son and her relationship with her husband. He’s a great writer.”
Mara opted to stay in her lane as a dramatic star to ground the absurdity of the film, including the antics between Robinson and Paul Rudd onscreen. “I treated it like I would any dramatic role,” Mara said. “I talked a lot with Andy about what her story is outside of what we see and and why her relationship is the way it is with her husband, who she’s been with forever. They had a kid right away and it’s all the things that make really comfortable relationships maybe become a little stale. She’s a cancer survivor, so that stuff was really interesting and the fact that she has this passion of being a florist and is frustrated in her life and all these things.”
That serious of Mara’s Tami, though at times had to be broken, especially during certain scenes where Mara just couldn’t not laugh. “There was sometimes where there’s no way of not breaking,” Mara said. “A lot of it is so outrageous, the things that are said and the scenarios, but what a fun feeling to have to try and hold in your laughter and your joy. There’s something very special about making a comedy.”
The now viral scene about Craig (Robinson) telling Steven (Dylan Grazer) that he is going to go “to the new Marvel” is among Mara’s favorites. Her character Tami meanwhile is going out with her ex (Josh Segarra) before kissing Steven. “The whole scene was so wildly outrageous and we’re playing it in such a normal way,” she said. “It was just really hysterically funny doing that scene.” (And for the record, Mara’s own Marvel adjacent background starring in the second “Fantastic Four” iteration for Fox was not referenced while filming: “It didn’t even cross my mind. It was definitely not like a wink or anything.”)
One sequence that wasn’t as fun to film? Tami being lost in a tunnel…a very real tunnel that was in New Jersey. The scene was shot for two days, with Mara having to climb through a bat-filled tunnel that was wet and cold. “I was so grossed out by it, and freaked out by the bat,” Mara said. “When I read that part of the script, I just didn’t really think about like, ‘Oh we’ll actually go into like a real tunnel.’ I thought for sure they’d build something in a stage somewhere, but absolutely not. It was definitely not my favorite location but again, since we were doing ridiculously funny things in it, it was worth it.”
Mara’s next project has also already caused a stir online, with the first look photos of her Werner Herzog debut “Bucking Fastard” adding to buzz surrounding the feature. Mara co-stars alongside her sister Rooney Mara as real-life inseparable, “sex-crazed” twin sisters Joan and Jean Holbrooke who share an ex (Orlando Bloom), speak in their own twisted language, and warrant the help of a social worker (Domhnall Gleeson). Herzog says the drama closes out a loose, operatic triptych that also includes his films “Fitzcarraldo” and “Grizzly Man.” And the letter-swapped title is a play on the Mara sisters’ onscreen dialogue: “It’s the greatest title, but yeah, you have to like really think about it when you say it,” Mara quipped.
Mara explained that the film almost seemed “too good to be true” and was perfectly “odd” and that it was an “obvious thing to say yes to.” (Read more here.) Not that Mara needed any convincing, but it also helped that “Friendship” director DeYoung had his own Herzog connection. “Andy did a Werner Herzog workshop, I don’t know how many years ago, as a young filmmaker. He was accepted into this Werner Herzog workshop, and it’s like a whole like philosophical thing,” Mara said. Herzog himself has deemed his 11-day workshop a “film school for rogues” that emphasizes how to fund indies and direct on shoestring budgets.
Herzog wrote Mara and her sister Rooney a “beautiful letter” asking them both to star in “Bucking Fastard” back in 2024. “We were both so thrilled because we have been wanting to work together for a while, but nothing made sense,” Mara said. “We’d been offered things that we sort of thought about, but it’s hard to find a film where there are two really awesome characters that you both equally want to play, with also then a filmmaker that you both are excited about. […] It was the most special experience working with Werner, who is wild and fantastical. He’s like everything you want him to be and he’s so clear: He just knows exactly what he wants.”
Mara continued, “And then working with my sister was equally as much of a dream. I’ve known her my entire life, but we’ve never been in the working space together and it is a very specific kind of space…You can be friends with people and then you go to work with them and it’s a totally different side of them, so really you just have no idea how somebody is at work or what that’s going be like, and she and I felt just so aligned and it was so easy. We were so sad when it ended. Making movies is hard, even in the greatest scenarios, but we had our families there and it was just so special. Before the movie ended we were like, ‘Oh God, how are we going make another movie without [each other]?’ We were immediately trying to think of our next one.”
Mara will next appear in Apple TV+ series “Imperfect Women” alongside Elisabeth Moss, Kerry Washington, Joel Kinnaman, and Corey Stoll. She also may reunite with “Friendship” team Robinson and DeYoung for a cameo on their upcoming half-hour HBO comedy series “The Chair Company.”
“I hope,” Mara said. “If he invited me, I would! God, that’d be so, so fun. Absolutely.” It seems that Mara is now a certified comedy star thanks to making more than a few “Friends” with this indie.
“Friendship” is now in select theaters from A24. It goes into wide release on Friday, May 23.
