Somebody I Used to Know’s Alison Brie Talks Developing the Messy Romantic Comedy

Most romantic comedies serve somewhat as wish fulfillment for audiences, as we see charming characters cross paths with one another in unexpected ways as they fall in love, they face adorable struggles, and ultimately showcase the ways in which love can triumph. With the upcoming Somebody I Used to Know, however, viewers witness what happens when figures whose love story has seemingly come to an end cross paths with one another at a later point in life, potentially allowing their love story to earn a sequel or serving as an epilogue to explain why that story ended in the first place. Somebody I Used to Know launches on Prime Video on February 10th.

In the film, workaholic TV producer Ally (Alison Brie) faces a major professional setback which sends her running to the comforts of her hometown. She spends a whirlwind evening reminiscing with her first love Sean (Jay Ellis) and starts to question everything about the person she’s become. Things only get more confusing when she discovers Sean is getting married to Cassidy (Kiersey Clemons) whose confidence and creative convictions remind Ally of who she used to be. Directed by Dave Franco and written by Franco & Alison Brie, Somebody I Used to Know is an unconventional love story about three people who unexpectedly help each other rediscover who they really are, where they came from, and where they’re going.

ComicBook.com caught up with Brie to talk writing the film with husband Franco, finding new perspectives on the genre, and the franchise she’d like to return to.

ComicBook.com: You’re no stranger to collaborating with other writers to create a script, but this is a slightly different level, this is a different connection that you have with Dave. What were some of the unexpected opportunities that working with someone so close to you presented, and were there any unexpected challenges that you hadn’t really entirely predicted?

Alison Brie: Maybe some unexpected pros of the process are inherent to how well we know each other. We have woven a lot of things into this movie that are pulled from our real life, like my penchant for streaking and stories about our cat puking and defecating on a flight with me, but even just parts of our personality, me singing little ditties around the house. It was fun to work with someone that we know so intimately, and Dave and I have so many of the same sensibilities that it was just nice. 

We have all the same experiences to draw on, essentially, and also get to know it. Maybe a little surprising, too, to get to know some different things about each other’s past, as this movie does touch upon people you knew back when, so that was fun. And the only downside I can think of is sometimes it can be a little hard to set that boundary when you’re living in the same space as your working partner. It’s hard to take time off work, but we could do it sometimes.

I wasn’t sure if it was you’d be at Target or something like, “Could you go get the cat litter?” “Oh wait, I just had a great idea for…” “What? No, no, no. Could you get the cat litter? Then we’ll talk.”

It’s more like, in the middle of the night trying to sleep and Dave’s shooting up in bed and his cell phone light is on, and I’m like, “Who are you texting at 4 a.m.?” He’s like, “I’m just writing down an idea, because for that one scene, I cracked it.”

What I enjoyed about the movie is there’s no clear-cut right or wrong. Everybody’s messy, everybody’s got their flaws, especially in that love triangle, if you will. Everybody has their own issues. When it came to developing that, how do you find that balance of making these people very likable, but then also making sure that they are flawed? Is that baked into the script from the get-go or is that, you get to the end of the script and retroactively say, “Wait, let’s make this a little bit more tense, or make this a little more uncomfortable,”?

A little bit of both, for sure. I think from the get-go, we wanted to make sure that there were no villains in the movie. We wanted it to be true to life, where everybody is going on their own emotional journey, everybody has a complex backstory, everybody’s working with their own baggage. And, of course, my character is certainly throwing a wrench into a lot of things, so a lot of the other characters’ behavior is everyone’s reacting off of each other as well, and we wanted to have people doing that in the realest way possible, in ways that felt really honest to how people react today. 

At the same time, to your point, once we had a couple of drafts of the script under our belt, then it came down to really fine-tuning. It really is a balancing act. It would’ve been a real easy way out actually to just go like, “Well, what if Jay’s character just sucks, and in the end, we blame everything on Jay?” It was like, we didn’t want to give ourselves that easy way out, but then it was just constant, little, “What if we turn this up a hair here, and then uh-oh, that means…” 

Also, everything’s very interwoven, so it was like, “Well, if this character reacts that way, there’s a butterfly effect to everybody else.” It was a lot of delicate balancing act, and that continued into the edit as well, I would say. Even while we were shooting it, then you would find yourself in scenes sometimes when we wrote them, I’d say, “This seems totally reasonable,” and then we’d be shooting a scene in the bar and I’m talking to Jay and his fiance’s sitting right there, and I’d be like, “Oh, this is uncomfortable. Oh, this is weird.” So, it informed everything, the performances, and then also the way we would edit it.

It’s funny that you mentioned that bar scene, that whole sequence, because I was relieved, coming from your last collaboration with Dave on the horror film The Rental, like, “Oh, this will be a little bit more relaxed, a little bit more lighthearted.” And then the scene where she sits you down and is like, “Let’s order some shots,” I was so tense and so uncomfortable, and it wasn’t a relief at all.

Great. Well, Dave loves — this is Dave’s sweet spot, and I guess I love it with him, too, we both love putting characters in difficult situations. We love really diving into complex relationships between characters, and this movie is hitting on a sweet spot for me because I love the dynamics between female characters in the work I do. That’s a sweet spot for me, and seeing the way that women play off of each other, because we can fulfill so many different roles for one another. Are we friends? Are we enemies? Am I jealous of her? Do I want to be her? Do I want to have sex with her? And we’re running the gamut in this movie.

Also, to that bar scene, it has a super fun musical sequence, the incorporation of a Third Eye Blind classic. Was that baked into the script of, “This is a song we’re going to use and if we can’t make it work, we’re just going to have to abandon the scene,” or did that go through a lot of iterations? Did it evolve to what we see in the movie?

It was always the Third Eye Blind song, 100%, absolutely. That song is etched into my brain from my adolescence, but there was a tricky little period of time where we thought we might not be able to use that song, and then we were in this frantic tailspin of making a list of other iconic songs from our youth and bands. We were like, “Are we looking at Smash Mouth? Are we heading towards Chumbawamba territory? Is Alanis Morissette creeping in here?” But luckily, we got to keep it as our dream song.

Those versions of the “Tubthumping” with parody lyrics, that’ll stay on the cutting room floor.

That one didn’t make it past the incubation stage.

I talked to you previously about Marvel and fans wanting you in Marvel and how you would actually like a villain role or something like that. But speaking of just growing up and foundational things, whether it be music or movies, is there a particular franchise that you grew up with that’s really near and dear to your heart that, Marvel or whatever, if it was like Star Wars, you would do anything to get in, or like Star Trek, anything along those lines?

That’s interesting. I don’t know that you’re going to like my answer, and also it’s like, I selfishly have already fulfilled the prophecy, but the Scream franchise was a huge … I know it’s not quite in the vein that you were hoping for, but I was so obsessed with the Scream movies, 1, 2, and 3, and then I got to be in Scream 4 years later, and that was a major dream come true.

Well, and hey, [Hayden Panettiere’s] coming back for Scream VI.

I heard. I was like, “What, Rebecca Walters doesn’t have a twin sister who’s still alive?” Didn’t get the phone call, but I’ll be around for 7 if anybody’s listening.

I’m sure Dave, after the rom-com, will be itching to get back into the horror world.

Dave and I are going to write Scream 7. You heard it here first, and we’re bringing Jamie Kennedy back.

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Somebody I Used to Know launches on Prime Video on February 10th.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity. You can contact Patrick Cavanaugh directly on Twitter.