For Gretchen Mol and Julianna Margulies, the characters in the screenplay for Edward Burns’ new film “Millers in Marriage” felt a little like shadow versions of different pieces of their own lives.
In the film, Margulies, Mol and Burns – who also wrote and directed – portray the Miller siblings Maggie, Eve and Andy. All of them in their 50s, all questioning where their future lives are headed.
“It’s rare to get a script nowadays that’s really targeting 50-year-olds,” says Margulies, 58, whose resume includes starring roles on “ER,” “The Good Wife,” and “The Morning Show.” “You know, what is their second act? Are they relevant once the kids go to college? How do they affect each other? Can they still talk to each other without the kids around?
“Who are we when, without someone to care for at home, we are both equal adults who have known each other for 30 years?” she says.
“I hadn’t read anything in such a long time that was speaking to something so contemporary,” says Mol, 52, whose career includes leading roles in “Boardwalk Empire,” “Life on Mars,” and “The Notorious Bettie Page.” “I think I was just happy to read something that was full of truth. That doesn’t always happen.”
Mol and Burns talked by phone before she took the part. Margulies, who’d met Burns socially, connected with him at a cafe in their shared New York City neighborhood.
“I didn’t know him that well, but within an hour of us talking, I was chomping at the bit to go,” she says of Burns, 57, whose breakout debut, “The Brothers McMullen,” turns 30 this year. “I couldn’t believe my luck that he thought of me for the part.”
In “Millers in Marriage,” Maggie (Margulies) is a successful writer married to fellow novelist Nick (Campbell Scott) whose writing career has stalled. Eve (Mol) was in a briefly successful rock band in the ’90s but gave that up for a family with her manager Scott (Patrick Wilson), who’s become a mean drunk. Andy (Edward Burns) is a painter, the only sibling without children, whose wife Tina (Morena Baccarin) just left him.
As the story unfolds, each of them looks at where they are in life and wonders about a future, with or without their spouses, with or without the outside characters in their orbits, including Dennis (Brian d’Arcy James), Johnny (Benjamin Bratt), and Renee (Minnie Driver).
The movie opens in theaters and streams on digital services on Friday, Feb. 21.
In a joint interview edited for length and clarity, Margulies and Mol talk about working with Burns, how their characters’ life changes in small ways mirror their own, and how the independent nature of the film led to good experiences with fellow members of the ensemble cast.
Q: I know your children aren’t quite out of the house yet, but how did parenthood and other parts of life in your 50s help you create Maggie and Eve?
Gretchen Mol: I’m not an empty nester yet, but I think as soon as you have kids, you start thinking about when they’re going to leave, for better or worse. Sometimes you are waiting for a moment of brain space. Most of the time, it’s, ‘Uhh, what’s it going to be on the other side? So even as I have teenagers now, I can start to understand that.
You get a script like this, and it puts the magnifying glass on a little of [her marriage]. ‘Well, what are we going to do?’ I want to keep our relationship actively exciting and wonderful. Then as individuals, what are you thinking about? How do you feel? So it’s a very real moment. It’s speaking to something that I speak with my girlfriends about, where we’re talking about just having a little bit more space to think about the things that you dreamed about, and is there time for that?
Julianna Margulies: There’s also the through-line in the film – you’ve been playing this role of parent for 18 years, but who are you when they’re no longer in need of you the way they always have been?
And it’s kind of the same in acting. It’s like, are you relevant without the job? Do you feel relevant in your own life without the label or without working? I just finished a Broadway run and people are like, ‘Are you OK?’ I was like, ‘OK? I’m in heaven. That was a heavy lift, and I’m finally like cooking my family a meal.’
Then they say, ‘But next year’s his last year at home, so then you’re going to be an empty nester. Are you going to be OK?’ ‘Well, I’ve literally turned down every job abroad so I could be with him, because I don’t want to regret not seeing him grow up. I’m excited for the next chapter. Will I be sad? I’m sure. But it’s the right order of things.
Q: That sounds a little like Gretchen mentioning her occasional thoughts of having some time to herself again.
JM: I’d gone to see my mom, and she’s turning 90 in May and she’s not doing well. I don’t mean this in any [negative] way, because I will be devastated when she dies. But I looked at my husband and I said, ‘I have been caring for my mother since I was 26 years old, emotionally and financially. I’m going to be OK when she goes because I’ll finally just get to rest for a minute.
I know it sounds selfish, but it’s the truth. And I wouldn’t have said it if she hadn’t said, ‘I’m ready to go,’ which she did. She is really, and it was beautiful she could tell me that because that’s life.
It’s like Gretchen was saying earlier, the situation changes, but it doesn’t mean that you stop living. If anything, maybe you live more, who knows? We don’t know the next chapter. So that’s what I love about this movie, is that it’s about second chances and it’s about you navigating your life. Hopefully, you still have a marriage once the kids leave. But if you don’t, you still get to live your life. You’re only dead when you’re dead. Be living every moment.
Q: I appreciated all the different facets of the characters in the film. They’ve got dimensions that not all movie characters do. Was that in the script? How did Maggie and Eve emerge fully formed?
GM: Well, we didn’t have any time to rehearse because of the independent nature of the film. Ed was smart in that he did spend time on the phone with me, and you two got together. Not a lot, though. It was just an initial conversation about Eve and I was like, OK, I’m on the same page, we’re on the same page. I’m not crazy. It’s in the script.
Once you have that connection and that trust then you don’t really have to worry. It just becomes about letting it stew. It’s just about trusting that it’s on the page and that you have something to bring to that character.
JM: And it really was on the page. Then he put together an ensemble of actors who have all been doing this for a while, so he could trust it in our hands. And as a director, he really gave us the freedom to play with his words and his characters. There are lots of directors [who don’t], and I’m not saying one’s worse or better.
When I did the sixth season of ‘The Sopranos,’ every ‘if,’ ‘and,’ and ‘but’ had to be said. Whatever was literally on the page had to be said. There’s a freedom to that, too, in that if the writing’s very good, you’d say, ‘OK, well, I am here to service the writing.’ With Ed, we would do one take exactly as written, and then he was like, ‘We’ve got that, go play.’ Because you never know what you’re going to get in the playing of it.
Q: We’ve been talking about how it’s an ensemble movie, and it is, but I think that the way it was shot, there are some actors you never shared a scene with.
JM: Well, my favorite day of shooting actually got cut, which was Morena, Gretchen, Patrick Wilson. All the siblings and their spouses. In your apartment, I think.
GM: I think it was Ed’s apartment.
JM: Yeah, yeah. It was a flashback in the movie and Ed just said it didn’t work. But that was my favorite day because I had never worked with Patrick or Morena. It was also fun to see, because you don’t see the siblings all together in any other scenes.
GM: I was never in scenes with Minnie.
JM: I had that one dinner with Minnie. Are you in scenes with Ed?
GM: No, I just have the phone call.
JM: You just have the phone call, right. So that was fun that day, because we were all there.
GM: That was a kind of rehearsal day without realizing it, because we actually saw everybody in their character and started to understand the dynamics. And if you came to set early one day – I think I came in when you and Campbell were finishing up a scene – and we were all sitting around the breakfast nook of that house [watching the scene].
That was when you’d see why Ed came up with that scene. Or, you know, ‘Oh, is that what you think of the dynamics of the siblings? Isn’t that interesting?’ I just loved that he was always incredibly open to the discovery. He was like, ‘Now that I’ve cast you, it’s yours. You know it better than I do.’
Q: It sounds like a very warm, collegial set.
JM: It is the joy of independent filmmaking, because there’s such a small budget. You know, there’s no trailers. No one’s going back to some fancy trailer. We were all in the green room together. So when they’re lighting a scene, we’re all getting each other coffee and sitting and talking and getting to know each other better.
It was so genuinely organic for all of us to be sitting in that one room together, and just loving hearing each other’s stories. It brought us closer as characters to the material.