Sibling relationships, spouse relationships and other “extracurricular” bonds are what make up most of the plot of ‘Millers in Marriage.’ The new film from writer-director-actor Ed Burns features a stacked cast (with the likes of Burns, Julianna Margulies, Gretchen Mol, Minnie Driver, Patrick Wilson and more) and an even more stacked storyline of familial and marital dysfunction.
In the film, Margulies’ Maggie Miller is examining the changing dynamics between her success versus her husband’s (played by Campbell Scott.) Mol’s Eve Miller, on the other hand, is trying to find her voice again in a toxic marriage through a new budding friendship.
To chat more about their characters and dynamics, both Margulies and Mol sat down with Metro to dive into ‘Millers in Marriage.’
Why sign on with ‘Millers in Marriage’?
Mol: It started with, I’m going to send you a script [that] Ed Burns is directing and wrote— immediately, I was excited. And then there were just all these amazing female roles…it was people just talking and acting. It also felt contemporary and very much something I could relate to as far as the arc that the character takes. So really, it was an easy decision.
Margulies: Very much what Gretchen said, but also, I think it is very rare to get a script for people in their 50s and at this point in their marriages. All three siblings [in the film] are going through a crisis in their marriage, and it was so refreshing to be able to read a script where I couldn’t wait to turn the page and see what happened within the relationships of all of ’em. And not just the marriages, but the siblings in general and the pecking order.
So much of their childhood reflects back into their present day and how they deal with their marriages. I think for Gretchen’s role, to see a woman sort of get capped at the knees just when she’s hitting her peak to stop to have babies and make that choice—was it her choice? Whereas my character is a writer. I actually, in a strange way, think that my character got the luck of the draw because she could work while she had children. She could write her books while being at home, and she didn’t have to make that choice. And now she’s at a crossroads where her career is more successful than her husband’s, and can her husband handle that?
I was so excited to do a movie that had no green screen, there was no sequel. It’s an adult film for adults and for people who can relate to it, who suddenly are finding themselves without children at home. So I found it really refreshing to be able to dive into it and to see that an actual movie was getting made about something I was interested in.
When you were first reading the script and then went on to film, since everyone is so intertwined in it, what were the most fun relationship dynamics for you to explore or see unfold?
Mol: I think what I loved actually about the sibling relationship is all of these characters are interconnected by these parents that you never actually meet, but who get a few mentions throughout. So in every interaction, we would get together and we would talk about that and we would sort of figure out which sibling was this and how Juliana was sort of the caretaker and how that might be frustrating to have my character being sort of the messy one a little bit.
So all of those dynamics were just laid in so beautifully and subtly. They get to this time in their lives and you see them still unable to really have fruitful, lovely relationships. Their relationships are a little bit broken. The movie creeps up on you in a way because these particular people still have a lot of growing to do and learning and exploring and discovery to do. Hopefully, this is sort of the second chance or the beginning of a new chapter where they do understand themselves and the decisions that they made earlier and why they make the choices that they make.
Margulies: I loved playing with Campbell Scott, it was just so delicious. He was so open and every actor on the set, we had such a fun time making this movie together, all of us. And when you work as an actor for Ed Burns who’s written it and is directing it, every day on set is kind of joyful. I mean, I’m really not exaggerating when I say the days were fun. But I wanted to see every relationship, really. I wanted to see Minnie Driver’s relationship with Maggie, or how is Gretchen’s character Eve and Maggie going to take her in?
I think Maggie’s a little bit closed off to human emotion because she’s the eldest and she’s always taking care of everyone. And now it’s her turn. And I understand it. I mean, the other day someone said, are you going to be upset when your kid goes to college? He’s a junior right now in high school. And I said, no, I’ve been taking care of my elderly parents, my kid… maybe I’m just naive and I’ll probably be a crying mess, but I’m really looking forward to what my next chapter is. And I think that’s what this movie’s about.
I saw that Ed himself is very collaborative with his actors on set. Were any moments from the film born out of that collaboration that stand out to you?
Margulies: Oh yes, every day Ed would always get what was written and then he would tell us, we got that, now you go have fun with it. Say whatever you want to say as long as it’s in the context of the scene. For my character, one of the scenes was in the bedroom after the dinner party where she and Nick [Campbell Scott] get in a fight because he doesn’t appreciate what she said at dinner. We improv some of that that stayed in the movie.
And then at breakfast when she has given him her book to read and the next morning she comes down the stairs and he says, so seriously, “That’s me, I don’t appreciate what you’re doing.” We got it in the first couple of takes and then Eddie just said, just go. I think Ed was so confident in the material that he wanted to see what it brought out in us. And that comes from having experience as someone who writes and directs and acts in his own movies.
Mol: I had that experience too, he is such a great storyteller. I felt like from the first conversation that we had on the phone about Eve, the next time I read the script there were these little changes and little things that we had talked about that made their way into it. You really got to find everything and different possibilities in each scene. And it was a similar thing with Patrick Wilson playing a drunk because I mean, he’s such a talented actor, and how many different ways can you play a drunk?
Sometimes he would be hysterical and I’d say, people are going to like you too much if you play it like that. And then he would be so awful sometimes where I would be off camera almost in tears because it felt so abusive really. He really had such a rolodex of drunks and ways to really let him go for it, and it was just fantastic to be in the room and see.
Catch ‘Millers in Marriage‘ in select theaters and on Digital.
