The comedy The Five-Year Engagement, from co-writer/director Nicholas Stoller (Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Get Him To The Greek) and producer Judd Apatow takes a look at romance in a very real, funny and often awkward way. When engaged couple Tom (Jason Segel) and Violet (Emily Blunt) keep postponing their wedding, two people who once dreamed of the perfect day just keep spiraling further apart. Meanwhile, Tomâs best friend Alex (Chris Pratt) spontaneously marries Violetâs quirky sister, Suzie (Alison Brie), and they have two kids, all before Tom and Violet even set a wedding date and the two begin to wonder if their relationship is even right. For more on the film, hereâs the new red-band trailer, 5 clips, and 24 images.At the filmâs press day, co-stars Jason Segel (who is also the filmâs co-writer and executive producer) and Emily Blunt talked about telling the story of a romance that is simply about the fact that different people can want different things, the challenges of getting a movie like this made, their shared pet peeve of having two actors matched together in a movie just because theyâve both had successful movies the year before, how this movie ended up not having a puppet, and the scenes and plotlines that were ultimately cut. Check out what they had to say after the jump:Question: Most romantic comedies nowadays revolve around somebody concealing something or some ridiculous coincidence. How hard is it to make a romance, which is simply about the fact that different people can want different things?JASON SEGEL: Yeah, it was a challenge to write, and was certainly a challenge to edit, because there are no big plot movements. Thereâs no car accident, thereâs no big earthquake where someone dies, and thereâs also no big contrivance like, âIâm a scientist and she hates science.â Itâs a very earnest exploration about how a relationship is fluid, and when you choose a partner and say, âI want to marry you,â youâre not saying it for this moment, youâre saying it for your whole life, and whatâs going to be ever-shifting power dynamics.  It really is an honest exploration of relationships. It was tricky to write, but the best ones are that. Annie Hall is that, and When Harry Met Sally is that. Itâs about taking a good, hard look at relationships, and I think people can relate to it. EMILY BLUNT: I do think that with a much more simple premise, thereâs just so much more room to play amongst that. As actors, thereâs a lot you can do to really make these relationships complex and interesting and messy and flawed and loving, and all of those things. Itâs a movie with great heart. The situations these two are put in are ludicrous and outrageous and obviously heightened for the spectacle of the movie, but yet you invest in them as a couple, in a very real way, hopefully.Emily, you are married while Jason is not. Did you ever find yourself going, âNo, no that is not how a marriage works, writer boyâ?BLUNT: Nick [Stoller] has been married for a long time as well, so he really gets it. Jason, even though he isnât married, is a romantic. Heâs been in long-term relationships. I think everyone who was involved in the film has had experience with relationships. It felt very collaborative. They did a great first draft, and then I signed on, came in and gave a couple of ideas. They were incorporated or not, but it was very collaborative, with different perspectives of what we feel about relationships. I think it was a very personal movie. Everyone talked and shared a lot, and a lot of that made it onto the screen. SEGEL: Yeah, itâs part of our process. As soon as we hire somebody, especially to play the female lead, the first thing we do is sit down with them and have a long talk. Itâs not even about acting, but how you feel about relationships and how you would actually handle the scenes. Then, we do a rewrite to tailor it to the person thatâs playing the role.Was Violet originally conceived as British?SEGEL: It was written for Emily. I wrote it for Emily. Itâs really true.Had you had social interactions before? BLUNT: Weâve worked together. SEGEL: Weâd done two movies together already, The Muppets and Gulliverâs Travels. We were also really good friends, and Iâm good friends with (her husband) John [Krasinski]. Itâs really hard, in a romantic comedy. Weâve both said that one of our pet peeves is when it just looks like two viable actors have been matched together in a movie because theyâve both had successful movies, the year before. What I thought was most important was that, in the in-between scenes, it looks like theyâre best friends. I know we can do the acting scenes because weâre good at what we do, but itâs the in-between scenes, where youâre just walking, where you can feel on screen that weâre buddies. I wrote it for Emily because I knew we would look like best friends, on screen. Violet is this character that moves to Michigan and her career is flourishing while Tom is not happy at all, but at no point is resentful about her success. How did you go about creating that dynamic? BLUNT: I think itâs a very fine line to tread. You want to understand everyoneâs predicament. You can see that Violet isnât fulfilled, at the very beginning of the movie, and then she finds her place in the world, she feels, when she moves to Michigan and has this fantastic job. Yet she can see that itâs making her other half suffer. And, even though she wants to embolden him and help him and be there for him, he shouldnât martyr himself either. It becomes quite complex, as to how she feels, in the moment. I think that is a credit to how it was written. It doesnât necessarily side with anyone. You understand their positions. Itâs no bad thing that Violet is a tenacious girl. Itâs no bad thing that Violet is following her dreams. I donât think sheâs heartlessly doing so. I think she defiantly gets swept up in it, and sheâs hoping that Tom will be able to survive in this environment, as heâs promised her he would be able to. Itâs complex. SEGEL: The only reason you question if itâs heartless or if itâs selfish is because itâs a woman. Honest to god. That same plot, if it were the man that was moving, everyone would be like, âWell, of course. Itâs his job. Youâve got to go support him.â I try to write every part, as though Iâm going to play it, including the female parts. I donât think of how a girl would speak or talk. People are all the same. I really do think that. Itâs going to be a female, by the fact that she is biologically a female. No one is going to be watching that and thinking, âThat doesnât seem very much like a woman.â Sheâs a woman, and people talk the way they talk.How much harder is it to convince a studio to make a movie like this? SEGEL: We have Judd [Apatow] behind us. We have a good track record. Also, our movies are relatively cheap to make. I donât demand a giant fee, and Nick doesnât demand a giant fee. BLUNT: Everything goes on the screen, which is great. SEGEL: Yeah. I remember when Judd first pitched Forgetting Sarah Marshall to them, he said, âI can give you a Ben Stiller movie for a quarter of the price.â That was his initial pitch, and we still stand by that idea. Thereâs no reason to get greedy about it. Weâre so lucky. Weâre all doing fine, financially. Thereâs no reason to cut off your nose despite your face just to prove that youâre worth it. Itâs about that we really love doing it.What inspired your ridiculous facial hair?SEGEL: Thatâs something that I do, that I have done in the past, which I call passive-aggressive facial hair. Iâve done it to make a point, when I was unemployed. It was kind of like, âReally, Hollywood, you wonât cast me? Well, watch this. I donât give a fuck either.â Thatâs where it came from. Iâve done it in a relationship. It is a weird, passive-aggressive move I have that Iâm trying to move past. The two couples in the film are polar opposites with one being super-spontaneous and the other being more calculated. Which did you relate to more, or are you in the middle?BLUNT: I donât know. What I liked about that storyline of the supposed fuck-ups, (played by) Alison [Brie] and Chris [Pratt], who are actually the ones who donât over-think and just go for it, is that they end up having a very successful relationship and are very in love. Weâre the ones who over-think everything and strategize everything, and I think that gets in their way as much as their life circumstances get in the way. They get in the way of themselves, trying to wait for the perfect moment. Iâve always been quite a spontaneous person, so I would lean more towards, if you feel it and you know its right, then do it. SEGEL: I know this sounds strange, but having written all the parts, I see everyoneâs point of view. Thatâs my job, in terms of writing it. We think theyâre the idiots, going in, but it turns out that theyâre exactly right. Thatâs whatâs interesting. Thatâs what we were going for.How was it to shoot that scene where youâre in bed, fighting?BLUNT: It was so much fun to shoot. SEGEL: Thatâs how people fight. We really didnât want anything perfectly worded. Thatâs not how a fight goes down. BLUNT: Yeah, it should be messy and ugly. It was fun shooting that scene because I think we were really trying to make it real, like what really happens when you canât stop fighting. You make up, and then someone says something that just tips it over into that awful descent again. It just goes and peaks in troughs, all night. We actually shot that all night, and it was so much fun. SEGEL: It was great. That was my favorite. BLUNT: I think you improvised that bit where you were like, âDonât leave. Stay, but donât look at me.â And that awkward hug.You looked like you really knew your way around a kitchen. Are you much of a cook, yourself?SEGEL: I like to cook and I did go to culinary school for it, but I wasnât allowed to eat anything because they needed me to trim up. I was around the best food ever, and just suffered. It was really neat to learn how to cook. I can do some cool stuff now.Does that muddled awkwardness come from the script directly, or does that really come from the improv?SEGEL: It comes from the improv, but it really was in an actual thought-out plan. We wanted things to be messy and feel real. My big pet peeve is perfectly-worded fights. Thatâs just not how it happens. If you had that kind of composure, you wouldnât be fighting. Emily, with both Your Sisterâs Sister and this film, is your dream to have that small film nimbleness with bigger studio films?SEGEL: Well, this film has the same kind of vibe that the Duplass brothers have. Itâs a little more structured, but we try to keep it small. BLUNT: I love being a part of these small little gems. I think theyâre extraordinary. We shot Sisterâs Sister in 12 days. The movie was made for $80,000, and itâs just extraordinary and completely fresh. That was completely improvised. There wasnât really a script at all. I signed on for the experience and I thought, âWow, you can really stretch your limbs on this one. It will be really cool.â It was challenging and exciting. We all took a leap of faith with the movie and it has turned out to be really good. You just donât know what will come of it because improv can be really messy and unstructured. I think those movies are made in the editing room. I do hope that thereâs a place for those films out there. My personal feeling is that audiences are crying out for stories they can invest in and feel. I see a lot of big movies that leave me feeling rather numb. I think the reality is that theyâre not going to be on 3,500 screens. But, if thereâs enough word of mouth, then they can get around. If you look at something like Little Miss Sunshine or Precious, and any of these movies that were made for no money, they get a broad appeal. I think word of mouth is huge. They need a lot of pushing. SEGEL: Lars and the Real Girl slaughters me. You couldnât make that movie in a studio. BLUNT: No, never.Jason, youâre not afraid to get naked.SEGEL: No, I love it!Was that real snow that you were rolling around in?SEGEL: It was. They tried to put a layer of fake warm snow that they developed, but I was fucking freezing. There were people with camera phones watching. It was horrible. It was not my best moment. It may be why it was cut out of the film. Do you tune everyone out, when youâre doing those kinds of scenes? SEGEL: Between action and cut, Iâm pretty tuned out, in general. Iâm pretty focused on what Iâm doing. Iâm not thinking about much else. Was it nice for you to do a film without puppets?SEGEL: Oh, the turkey puppet was cut out! You had a puppet in this film?SEGEL: We did. This is my first film without a puppet, in years and years and years.  I was ready to take a little Muppet break. I did that for almost a decade. It all started with Sarah Marshall. It was nice to be acting next to a humanWhat was the turkey puppet?SEGEL: There was a Thanksgiving scene where I end up taking mushrooms, and the turkey came to life and ended up giving me a long talk about being way too old to be taking mushrooms with kids. BLUNT: Yeah, and it was Brian Posehnâs voice as the turkey.Emily, how long did it take to learn the Cookie Monster voice?BLUNT: I looked him up on YouTube. Iâd watched a lot of Cookie Monster before, but I was like, âOh God, Iâve got to do the table read today. How scary!â It was really nice that people laughed and loved it. We had a blast doing the scene. It was really fun. Our voices were just gone to shit, by the end of the day. We had no voices because weâd done it all afternoon.Are there scenes that were cut that you miss the most?SEGEL: We had a whole subtle plotline that became about money, about how I turn out to be broke and she has a huge reserve because sheâs much more responsible than I am, but it ended with her taking me on a date. We have the sweetest dance to Van Morrisonâs âSweet Thing,â done by a live jazz musician. BLUNT: It was so cool! SEGEL: It was really beautiful, but it was just a whole plotline that took half an hour, and we just didnât have time for it. BLUNT: But there was a very funny fight in this jazz club with the reveal about money, and that he had nothing. It was great. There was another plotline, which I loved, with an ex-boyfriend of mine named Gideon, who was British. He kept arriving at things, like our engagement party. That was really funny. SEGEL: She also bought me a restaurant, which then explodes. BLUNT: Thereâs like a whole other movie. SEGEL: We shot a huge explosion. That was probably the most expensive thing we did in the movie, and it got cut.
Jason Segel and Emily Blunt Talk THE FIVE-YEAR ENGAGEMENT
Jason Segel and Emily Blunt Talk THE FIVE-YEAR ENGAGEMENT. Jason Segel and Emily Blunt talk about starring in The Five-Year Engagement.