Adam Pally is staying up all night

Never let anyone say Adam Pally won’t take one for the team. The “Happy Endings” and “Mindy Project” star is so eager to promote his new dark comedy, “Night Owls,” that he starts our interview with a very forward overture. “I will kiss you. If you want that for a story, I will kiss you. Tell everyone I will kiss them for a good review,” he says, before proceeding to do just that. But back to the film: Pally stars alongside Rosa Salazar as a beleaguered assistant and his drunken hook-up spending the night at his boss’ house — which meant filming pretty much in just the one location.

Shooting an entire movie in one house has got to be a bit daunting.
I didn’t even think about it, to tell you truth, because at the time I was so happy to have been given a script to read that was not where I was playing a guy named Booger or something. It was nice. And then the fact that it was a really tight script and it felt logical, and it seemed like a way to do a movie at this size. We’re not supposed to tell you how small the budget was, but it was, like, mad small. (laughs) Like, really small. So when you’re doing a movie like that you just kind of have to roll with it and know that you’re going to be in one house.

That kind of living-working situation has to be good for cast bonding, though.
For Rosa and I, we didn’t know each other that great going in, and then you’re like living with someone, and you’re like, “Oh, I really don’t like you.” (laughs) No, but it becomes more than just shooting a movie when you do a 14-hour night shoot and then you wake up and you go downstairs to have a bowl of cereal in your pajamas and your co-star is there. You just get to know each other so quickly and it just becomes really intense, and that showed onscreen.

How did the house spaces break down, “Real World”-wise?
Rosa’s room was definitely the Zen space if s— got intense. There would be days when they would give us, like, 14 pages of dialogue. The breakup scene was shot over two days, and we’d had such a lovely time and become really, really good friends, and then you have two days of essentially breaking up and being really mean to each other. And we got all weird with each other and wouldn’t talk to each other, and it was very much mimicking the movie in that way. And I think that showed.

You guys kind of beat the crap out of each other in this. How is it negotiating physical comedy with a new co-star?
We never talked once about it. Without knowing each other, I knew that I could withstand a beating from her — and I was so wrong. Holy s—.

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