“There’s literally an ambulance right next to us,” a blurry, but perfectly blown-out Alison Brie explains from the back of a moving vehicle, where she’s seated next to her husband, Dave Franco, between press engagements for their new film. “Going so great already,” she adds with a smile. When I ask if they’d prefer to use Zoom audio, Franco insists, “It’s always nice to see,” shifting the phone as sirens subside.

The couple’s warm if chaotic greeting would have fit right into Somebody I Used to Know, an evolved, somewhat raunchy refresh of the rom-com that debuts on Prime Video today. Brie stars as Ally, a reality TV show producer who, after her show’s abrupt cancellation, reconnects with her former hometown flame Sean (Jay Ellis). Their reunion is complicated by the minor detail that Sean is set to marry the punk-rock-singing Cassidy (Kiersey Clemons) in mere days. 

If that sounds like the plot of My Best Friend’s Wedding, it more or less is. At one point, Cassidy even warns Ally against pulling a Julia Roberts. But this film is concerned less with the one who got away, and more with how a person becomes disconnected from who they once were. 

Franco directs the film from a script he and Brie cowrote in the early days of the pandemic. “Everyone was taking stock of their lives, and it was a major moment of reckoning, sitting around trapped in our homes, thinking, Did I make the right decisions? Am I happy with where I ended up?” Brie tells Vanity Fair from a now relatively quiet car. “We realized that we really are happy and very lucky. Feeling really grateful, we just wanted to create something that was hopeful and put that back out into the world.”

Says Franco, who also cast Brie in his 2020 horror directorial debut The Rental, “Going through this together has brought out our most honest selves, because we just trust and can lean on each other through everything. So it’s really opened me up and made me take risks that I probably wouldn’t have done on my own.” 

After almost six years of marriage, “It’s a nice reminder that the person who’s right for you is the one that’s gonna let you be yourself wholly and completely,” Brie adds. “I certainly feel that way about Dave—even more so after making this movie.” 

Vanity Fair: What did a typical day look like when you were writing Somebody I Used to Know?

Alison Brie: I think we would get up, work out, have breakfast—

Dave Franco: Put on our…

Brie: Matching—

Franco: Palo Alto sweatsuits. 

Brie: Then we usually go to the living room. We both start out on our computers and by an hour in, it’s mostly Dave at the computer typing. I’m up walking around the room. Dave is asking, “How would you say this?” I’m workshopping dialogue, which works nicely since we knew that I would be playing the main character.

Franco: I would essentially ask her to improvise in the moment, and we would then just go back and forth and I would write down her exact words. That’s one of the benefits of also being actors who are trying to write.

The two of you wrote the script early in the pandemic, a period during which Alison’s Netflix series, GLOW, was canceled. In the film, Ally is reeling from similar professional disappointment. Did that real-life event serve as inspiration?

Franco: That’s a good question [laughs]. 

Brie: It’s probably not an accident that Ally’s show is brutally canceled between its third and fourth season. We were already shooting the first two episodes of GLOW season four, which was why we had a special urgency [to finish the script]. We were like, oh, we have these two weeks and then I’m going to go back into production on the show. I guess that just wove its way in.

Franco: But on top of that, there have definitely been moments in our careers where we feel like we’ve been holding on a little too tight because we’re scared that it’ll all go away. You almost forget why you got into it in the first place. And what ends up happening is you stop taking risks. That’s part of the reason I even got into directing. It’s something that I’ve been wanting to do for a long time, but candidly, I was scared. And then after enough time I just said, “Fuck it. This is something I want to do and I have to be true to myself.”

It’s fascinating to me when real-life couples work together, because for every Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach or John Krasinski and Emily Blunt, there are couples in the industry who swear that their relationship works because they don’t cross that professional line. Why does it make sense for the two of you?

Brie: Part of it is that we don’t question the magic of it. We love being around each other. We have really similar sensibilities. For all the reasons that our relationship works, those are also the reasons why working together works. And we have had the advantage of taking it slow. It’s been a gradual progression for us. We acted together in a couple projects, and that was the first toe dip to know that we liked being on set together. Then I got to act in Dave’s directorial debut, The Rental, and that was this watershed moment of, oh, wow, this is a great dynamic for us. I can take bigger risks as an actor because I know he’s not going to hang me out to dry. 

Franco: Directing is absolute insanity, and there are inevitably moments where you get in your head and start to spin out a little, but it was invaluable to have Alison there with me at the end of every day just to have someone to ease my mind. I think about when I was in the edit for the movie all day, every day, and sometimes you lose sight of what the movie is because you’re just enmeshed in everything. So I used Alison as a secret weapon where I would keep her away from the edit for a few weeks, and then I would bring her in with fresh eyes.

We also just genuinely really believe in each other. I’ve always known what a great actress Alison is, but when I was able to watch her intently for months at a time, I realized that she’s one of the best. She is so unique in her ability to navigate back and forth between comedy and drama.

You use My Best Friend’s Wedding as a template and then subvert our expectations of that film. How did you decide on that as a reference point, and how many times have you seen the movie by now?

Franco: I would guess I’ve seen it four times.

Brie: And I’ve probably seen it 24 times, at least. [laughs] I love that movie. I guess we were circling a love triangle, and we must have been honing in on a wedding theme.

Franco: We’re drawn to characters that are a little messy and feel human and hopefully relatable. Julia Roberts’ character in that movie is making questionable decisions throughout. She’s not your typical lead character in a romantic comedy, and it makes it so that you don’t know where the story’s going. 

Brie: Part of the reason that we wanted to make this movie is because we are such fans of the rom-com genre—to pay homage while also being the anti-rom-com. We’re embracing it and pushing it away at the same time. So you have to figure that characters in today’s rom-coms have seen all of the rom-coms that the audience has seen. We all have that reference point. And once you know those rules, you can have fun breaking those rules. 

One of the dynamics that I found most surprising—and ultimately rewarding—is between Ally and Cassidy. They’re positioned as adversaries, then become friends, before ending up as these mirrors of each other. What was it like fleshing out their relationship?

Brie: Writing the character of Cassidy, right off the bat we knew that we wanted to play against type in terms of what the normal bride represents in this type of movie. We thought, what if she’s the coolest character?

Franco: As opposed to what people might expect from that “bride to be” character, the sweet, naive—

Brie: They can’t see what’s going on. Or is she an evil hag and nobody wants anyone to end up with her?

Franco: So by making her great, it complicates Ally’s journey so much more because she’s there to break up this couple, but then she meets this woman who’s amazing—

Brie: And reminds her of her younger self.

Franco: But what we are excited about too, is that in most love triangles, it’s two people going after the same person. In this love triangle, they’re all going after each other.

Brie: Anybody could end up with anybody.

How did you go about casting some of the ensemble?

Brie: We wrote the roles for [Brie’s former Community co-star] Danny Pudi and Haley Joel Osment. Julie Hagerty’s role we wrote with her in mind as dream casting. 

Franco: We also called in some friends to make cameos at the start of the movie—Sam Richardson and Zoe Chao, Kelvin Yu, Ayden Mayeri. I basically called on every actor I worked with on The Afterparty. 

Brie: Amy Sedaris is so incredible. I had worked with her on BoJack Horseman for years, but we never met in person. We reached out to her and she was just so gracious to come and hang for a day and improvise a bunch of hilarious stuff. 

Then, of course, it’s all anchored by these beautiful performances by Jay Ellis and Kiersey. Jay, it’s so tricky, that role. It was so important to both of us that we cast someone who is redeemable. We want the audience to like him even when he is making some bad decisions.

There’s some nudity in the film, both in this celebratory moment between Cassidy and Ally and in the ending. 

Brie: The impetus for the idea really comes from my own life. I used to love streaking in college. I went to art school, where clothing was optional everywhere but the cafeteria, and nudity was very much embraced. For me, it’s always been about, first and foremost, joy. I used to really love getting naked at school to make my friends laugh, always from a place of humor, running across campus, swinging on a tree. Something about streaking represents the embodiment of joy, self-acceptance. It became just the perfect metaphor for Ally’s journey.

Franco: At the beginning of the movie, she’s very buttoned up. She’s a little more rigid. And by the end, everything is literally all out for the world to see, and she’s back to the most pure essence of herself.

Is it true that you are working on something new together?

Brie: There are a couple things in the works… [dramatically] We don’t want to talk about it. 

Franco: We’ll just say that we would be working together in a different capacity. 

This interview has been edited and condensed.