Paul Feig attends a premiere for the film Hamnet in Los Angeles, California, on Nov. 18.Mario Anzuoni/Reuters
There is no filmmaker who better embodies the freak-to-geek-to-peak-talent pipeline that Hollywood can offer today than Paul Feig.
While his early career was marked by creating the short-lived, but near-immortal in influence, NBC series Freaks and Geeks, Feig has since evolved into a genre-crossing phenom, directing everything from instantly classic comedies (Spy, Bridesmaids) to high-gloss fantasies (The School for Good and Evil) to suburban-angst murder mysteries (A Simple Favor and its recent sequel). And he’s always doing so while clad in the most stylish three-piece suit you’ll ever see.
Review: Put Sydney Sweeney and Amanda Seyfried’s sudsy The Housemaid under lock and key
This weekend, Feig returns to his Simple Favor territory by pairing today’s biggest, or at least most talked-about, actresses – Sydney Sweeney and Amanda Seyfried – against one another in The Housemaid. Adapted from Freida McFadden’s bestselling 2022 novel, the film focuses on two women at opposite ends of the socio-economic spectrum, with Sweeney an ex-con desperate for a gig and Seyfried a stay-at-home housewife to a tech mogul looking for help around the house. Soon, the two clash over status and sex.
Ahead of the film’s release, Feig sat down in Toronto with The Globe and Mail to talk about his not-so-simple style.
With the Simple Favor films and now this one, you’ve quickly become Hollywood’s expert on a particular kind of suburbia-set soap. There’s a blend of melodrama, psycho-sexual thriller and high camp in these films that feels it must be pulled from your own particular tastes ...
I say this with love, but I love a bland exterior. Suburbia, it’s a world that seems very safe. Oh, nothing bad ever happens here. Look how pretty everything is! I don’t want to be one of those guys who is like, oh, the suburbs are all filled with terrible people. I’m not cynical that way. But I think that there are pockets where people hide behind things, and I find that fascinating. I also love the idea of unsettling things happening in bright, nicely appointed rooms, as opposed to the shadows and darkness. Anyone can make a scary movie in the dark.
I can’t help but feel that interest stems from your childhood, which you’ve previously talked about in terms of you being fascinated with adult life while growing up. You never really wanted to be a kid. You needed to peer into the dinner parties your parents were having. That seems reflective of the characters in your films – they’re children in a way, learning how to play house as adults.
Well that’s interesting that you say that, because I’ve always felt not quite mature. Even though I’ve always wanted to be an adult, I always felt like I have a kid’s brain. The person who wants to be the “fun” adult. The characters I’m most drawn to are very, I won’t say underdeveloped, but they’re emotionally not fully functional. They’re pretending to be so in a world that makes you feel insecure. My heroes are always these kind of underdogs who don’t know their place in the world, and they’re trying to earn respect. But they persevere in the end, because I’m very much a Hollywood filmmaker. I don’t want down, depressing endings. I want to say, you can win, it can happen.
Feig at the premiere of No Other Choice in Los Angeles on Dec. 9.Caroline Brehman/Reuters
Most of your films are very women-centered projects: Melissa McCarthy, Anna Kendrick and now two of today’s biggest actresses. Is that by design or happy accident?
I just feel more comfortable working with women. I was an only child, and very close with my mom. And I grew up next door to eight kids, six of them girls. All my friends in high school were either nerdy dudes like me or all the girls in the drama club. I just enjoy their stories more. I don’t feel I have any sort of deep understanding, but I’m open to wanting to work with women to make sure their stories are told right. I’ll deputize some of the women I work with on set to say, please tell me if this is not right. If this doesn’t feel natural. Let’s change it, let’s make it work.
Was there any particular deputization here with Sydney and Amanda?
They were in sync with the script from the beginning. The fact that the book is there, and Rebecca Sonnenshine wrote the adaptation, makes it all pretty much right there. Then it’s just my direction. I just try to make sure I’m not asking them for something that they wouldn’t do. I’m also at the point now with actors where I’ll just give a general direction – I don’t rehearse at all. I don’t do read-throughs or table reads of the script. I want their feedback, and we get that on set.
Your previous three movies before this were all streaming titles. This is going to theatres, though, and you’ve said before that you make films for an audience, for “the room.” How does the landscape for theatrical titles, especially ones that have comedic elements, feel now?
People are going back to theatres, but they’re only going back to things that they have to see. So I wanted to create a movie they felt they had to watch in the theatre. This was very engineered for that group experience, for vocal interaction with the audience. For them to laugh and be horrified. I want people to turn into little kids. The tone of this is nuts. You have to give these little signals as the director to let the audience know that it’s okay to laugh. That there can be uncomfortable, cringey laughs. I’ve been chasing that ever since Freaks and Geeks.
Before we have to go, you’re sitting across from me making me feel extremely un-stylish. I understand you dress impeccably on set, in the tradition of Alfred Hitchcock, and contemporaries like Wes Anderson, Sam Raimi. How important is personal style for you in the process?
It’s several things. It’s a love of Old Hollywood, where you’d see photos of what a director used to look like. If I see a picture of a guy directing in sweatpants, that kind of takes the glamour out of it. Directing a movie is a privilege, so to not dress respectfully for the cast and crew and all these people who are putting themselves out there for me, it just seems wrong.
This interview has been edited and condensed.