Aaron Tveit on ‘Grease Live!’, ‘Stereotypically You’, and ‘BrainDead’
BY CHRISTINA RADISH 2 DAYS AGO
Stereotypically You is a NYC dating comedy that follows Charlie Carroll (
Aaron Tveit), who quits his job and his girlfriend on the same day, seemingly finding his freedom, but also wondering if he’s made a mistake. Not equipped for single life or even life in general, Charlie is forced to go on a journey of self-discovery so intense that he begins to suffer from surreal hallucinations, flashbacks, and sex fantasies, and his journey to find “the one.”
While at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival (SBIFF), actor Aaron Tveit sat down with Collider during a break between screenings of his film, Stereotypically You, for this exclusive interview about what drew him to the project, just how close the finished product is to the script he read, the appeal of telling an unconventionally structured story, and funny sex scenes. He also talked about his upcoming CBS summer series,
BrainDead, a one-hour comic-thriller from
Robert and
Michelle King (The Good Wife) about alien spawn who have come to earth and eaten the brains of a growing number of Congressmen and Hill staffers, and the experience of playing Danny Zuko in the recent three-hour
Grease: Live! televised production (available on DVD on March 8th).
Collider: This is a movie that seems like it was so much fun to make and that you guys had a lot of fun with each other?
AARON TVEIT: We had a great time. We shot in New York, two summers ago, and anytime you get to shoot anything in New York, it’s very fun, especially a film. There’s a pace to it that helps, especially a film like this where you don’t have that many days. The cast was all great and we all got along really well. We really just had a blast. I’ve worked on stuff where you try to hide where you’re pointing the camera, but in New York, anywhere you point, it’s just production value. It was really cool.
How did this come about for you?
TVEIT: It came to me when my agents called and said they’d gotten the script. I think (writer/director) Ben [Cox] contacted them about me. I had a Skype session with Ben and we talked. I read the script, which I loved. I thought it was really interesting. This kind of story from a guy’s perspective isn’t necessarily the norm, which I thought was cool. It was a really heartfelt story from a guy’s perspective, and I just thought that was very different from a lot of stuff I’d read. And then, I loved all the sequences that lifted out of reality. I thought they were really, really interesting, the way they were construction. And when we had a Skype session, we really hit it off and he asked me if I wanted to do it, so I jumped on board.
There is a very conversational feel to many of these scenes. Was that all in the script, or did you improvise any of that?
TVEIT: It was really well written. There wasn’t too much improv. A lot of times, when you get that conversational feel, it’s the actors making changes to what’s on the page. But, that’s what Ben wrote. He wrote it really, really well, and how people talk to each other.
Is the finished film pretty close to that original script that you read, or did it go through an evolution?
TVEIT: I think Ben had been working on it for awhile before I got involved. The script that we had and read and worked on is pretty much intact. It was great working with Ben because he has an editing background, so there’s an efficiency to his directing. It’s even apparent in the script. There were so many scenes, but it was almost like he already had it edited while he was shooting it, so we were able to work through them in a very fast way.
This film has an unconventional structure for a romantic comedy. Was that part of the appeal for you?
TVEIT: Yeah. It’s totally out of order and non-linear. It wasn’t just a paint by numbers romantic comedy. It had all of these creative elements on top of it that I thought were really interesting. That was a big part of what drew me to it. So many romantic comedies are trying to be Annie Hall or When Harry Met Sally, but you can’t. It’s interesting when they find a new way to tell a story. This was the first one that I’ve ever done, so the fact that it’s told in a very different way is exciting.
Did you guys get any time to hang out and get to know each other?
TVEIT: Abby [Elliott] and I spent some time beforehand. We got together a few times. Especially because of the way that relationship plays out, where you’re dropped right into the aftermath of it, we wanted to have some common ground between us about what the relationship was. We talked a lot about the months before this movie, with the two of them, so that we at least had some commonality. And I met Shane [McRae] a few times before this and knew him a little bit. Shane, Lauren [Miller Rogen] and I hit it off immediately. You have to make it look like these relationships are years long, and a lot of times, you’ve only known the people for a few days. Sometimes chemistry does the trick, and other times, you have to forge that with the people.
The sex scene montage in this is very funny. Is it easier to do those scenes when there is some humor to them and you can laugh about it?
TVEIT: Definitely! With this movie, in particular, we were completely laughing our way through it with how ridiculous it was. I think one of the girls slapped me, at one point, because Ben was just yelling out instructions. It was hilarious! That was indicative of that whole process, that day of shooting. It’s much easier when it’s a funny, fun thing. It’s uncomfortable. People want to glorify it and act like it’s something more than it is, but when there are a bunch of crew guys standing around, it’s not the most sexy thing. I think people hope that it is, but it’s really not. It’s definitely more fun when it’s in that vein. And then, the aftermath of that, riding on the bus with those people, was always one of the funniest scenes to me, in the script. Riding home in his nun outfit was just so funny.
You get to do a lot of different things in this film. Was anything particularly challenging?
TVEIT: The time frame made it all challenging, but I think there’s something to that that takes the pressure off, a little bit. You don’t get in your head as much. There’s just no time, so you just have to do it, get it done, move on, and not think about what you did or didn’t want to do different. You just have to prepare, and then let it go. It really is a good exercise in learning how to let that go.
This is not the kind of romantic comedy where everything is wrapped up neatly with a bow. Was that also appealing to you?
TVEIT: Yeah, and I think that’s something Ben also really wanted to convey. Even though the film goes out of reality, the real reality of the movie is realistic. Things don’t always tie up in a nice bow. Even when you make strides with people and relationships, it’s complicated. Life doesn’t move in a linear fashion. Life makes lefts and rights, and it doubles back. What I also really liked about Ben’s script is that Charlie is okay, but he’s not riding off into the sunset with a new girl, which is another way that it doesn’t fall into cliche.
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