Adam Scott might not have been too thrilled to take on his role in “The Overnight” — playing a young father with a shameful anatomical issue who along with his wife ends up spending a wild night with an eccentric set of fellow parents. But when your wife is producing the movie, you kind of just have to go with it. Did you ask your writer-director if any of this was based on personal experience? Odd sexual encounters aside, how much did this story relate to your own experiences in L.A. as a parent? RELATED:Taylor Schilling on the kindness of ‘The Overnight’ What were your first reactions to this script? Where are we, exactly, would you say? Out of curiosity, how many projects do you sign up for hoping that they’ll never actually happen? Which was more uncomfortable during shooting, the prosthetic tiny penis or the goatee?
I didn’t. Maybe I should’ve. (laughs)
I remember early on when our first kid was just a year or so old, we were at the park in Silver Lake, and there were a lot of parents and babies there. I remember we heard one mom calling out for her daughter, and we just heard, “Yoko! Yoko!” And we kind of looked at each other like, yeah. We’re Silver Lake, how’s it going? Here we are.
As an actor it scared the s— out of me. The subject matter, the nudity, it all kind of made my skin crawl with fear. Mark Duplass gave us the script like, “We should do this,” and we were all in, but I kind of thought — as with any movie you try to get made, you just figure, “Well, there’s a 10 percent chance this will happen,” and I just figured we would never have to do it. But I have the misfortune of being married to a really good producer, so it ends up getting put together and we have a date and we’re starting and I’m just like, “Oh no. I’m going to have to do all of this.” But I’m really glad that I did. I think it’s a really interesting movie. I think a lot of people will relate to it, especially given where we all are in 2015.
Well, I’m in the United States. (laughs) Parenting in 2015 is a really particular thing, and being an adult you kind of spend your 20s exploring and figuring out who you are, and in your 30s you kind of settle in on what that is and you put your roots down and have kids, get married — I mean, some people do. I’m just speaking for the people in this movie and myself. And then if that gets turned upside down, where are you? It’s a tricky question.
(laughs) It’s funny, I have this kind of vestige of being out of work and wanting to never stop working just because I didn’t get to work for so long. I just want to stay busy no matter what, and that’s not a healthy way to approach a career. If you’re lucky enough to actually have a career to piece together, you can’t stay busy just for busy’s sake. You have to try to find things that actually mean something to you.
The goatee was kind of controversial. My wife kept questioning it, like, “Are you sure you want this? I mean, people will see the movie, and this will be in the movie.” But I felt like I definitely wanted it there.
Adam Scott was afraid of making ‘The Overnight’
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