Marcela Valdes in The New York Times:
“There’s nothing that ruins a movie like a bad wig,” the director Olivia Wilde said. So when the actor Penélope Cruz told her, about two weeks before they started shooting “The Invite,” that she wanted to make her character blond, Wilde felt she might have “a full-on heart attack.”
During the 10 days that they rehearsed the film — a comedy involving two couples at a swinging dinner party — Wilde, who also stars in the film, encouraged the actors to be the architects of their characters. She and Seth Rogen took the lead on developing her anxious stay-at-home wife and his embittered music teacher, while Cruz and Edward Norton fleshed out her acerbic sex therapist and his unbuttoned former firefighter. Cruz consulted with the popular psychotherapist Esther Perel to ensure that her character’s marital wisdom rang true. This building phase was over, however, when Cruz told Wilde that she wanted to go blond.
At first, the director tried to persuade Cruz that no changes were needed. Everything was already terrific! But Cruz insisted, Come see it. “Olivia kind of grabbed me by the elbow and said, Will you come look at something with me?” Norton recalled. “We walked down the hall and we turned the corner and Penélope was sitting there in the wig and our jaws just hit the floor because it was like, Oh, she’s gone, and there’s this thing here — this Spanish Esther Perel.”
More here.
Enjoying the content on 3QD? Help keep us going by donating now.