Iliza Shlesinger leads the new Netflix movie Good on Paper as Andrea Singer, a stand-up comic who’s always prioritized her career over dating. However, then she meets Ryan Hansen’s Dennis Kelly and he appears to tick all of the boxes. While Andrea finally opens up to starting a relationship, her best friend Margot (Margaret Cho) isn’t buying Dennis’ act. Margot convinces Andrea to do some digging before taking things any further with Dennis in an effort to figure out who he really is.
Sounds like a fairly traditional romantic comedy, right? Maybe a story that’s ripe for the big screen but can’t possibly happen in real life, right? Not so fast. Good on Paper was actually penned by Shlesinger and it’s based on a real experience she had.
While on Collider Ladies Night celebrating the Good on Paper's streaming debut, Shlesinger discussed one of my favorite qualities of the film - how it balances its familiar zany romcom qualities with a steady streak of heart and earnestness. She pinpointed the importance of keeping things grounded and honest, and used Margot and Andrea's friendship as an example:
“First of all, this did happen so I could always reference the source material, but wanting to make sure that we were being authentic in the way that women do speak to each other. That is how my best friend and I speak to each other. It’s not candy-coated, we’re not slap tickling, we’re not like, ‘What up, girlfriend?’ It’s very blunt. And I don’t know if that’s because my best friend is queer or because I wanted Margaret to be that; there’s a bluntness to it. You know, like we’re sisters. We’re not just dumb girls.”
Shlesinger also spoke about how that dedication to authenticity applied to Andrea and why she had to consider how viewers would respond to the character:
“This is a really sad story that happened to a very normal, strong woman and so I was mindful the whole time, how do we make sure that the audience likes her? And unfortunately, as a woman, you do have to think about that even though I was just living my life. She’s just living her life, paying her way through life, working hard and he sought to disrupt that. So making vulnerable choices gives her texture, because I think it’s so easy to vilify a woman who, god forbid, stands on her own two feet and has her own thoughts in her head, and I didn’t want that to happen to her.”
Given that Shlesinger descried the experience as a “really sad story,” one might wonder how bringing it to screen made her feel. Was it painful or cathartic? Here’s what she said:
“The writing of it was extremely cathartic. So this happened around 2015 and I started quietly writing this as a process, as a cathartic process for about two years and that was before I’d met the producer who would eventually produce this. And I am a healthy person and I made a choice after it happened. I was like, ‘I’m not gonna pay this forward to anyone,’ and I do choose to trust people. This is a freak thing. Even though this happens to a lot of people, this is a freak thing. So I was very honest with people that I dated, like, ‘Hey, my cage kinda got rattled. I’m a little weird.’ And I’m fine, I’ve been married for three years. He’s cool, he’s the best. But the writing was cathartic and of course when you’re writing it I’m like, ‘This is a revenge romcom! The ending is so people feel vindicated if they’ve ever been screwed over unjustly.' But I don’t feel any of those things now. I’ve worked through it so much that now, and I can say this honestly from the highest light, I don’t even care if Dennis Kelly ever sees it. This isn’t about his reaction. This isn’t about the man’s reaction to what happened to the woman. This is about her story. And when I think of that story now, I picture Ryan Hansen and Margaret Cho and Kimmy Gatewood. I think of the movie, not the original pain.”
It’s one thing for this movie to be based on a mostly true story, but it’s a different thing to actually convince a viewer of that, and Shlesinger knows it. Here’s what she told us about addressing the believability of the situation and why there were no red flags when she actually went through this:
“I definitely have watched things where some girl’s like, ‘I’m in a cult. It can happen to you,’ and I was just like, ‘No way, what is wrong with you?’ But then I was like, ‘But this happened to me!’ Here’s what I will say, because it’s very easy and it’s okay because I put it out there for judgment. This art is no longer mine. It belongs to you guys and I hope it sparks a conversation. I hope some people find her likable, some don’t. Some believe it, some don’t, because that means we did our job … it’s because he lied about things that nobody really lies about that he passed for so long. He didn’t come out with lies about how much money he had and horses and castles. We weren’t in a relationship. All the songs, hiphop and country and everything’s about someone who cheats on you. Movies are about cheaters. These are the things that we’re inculcated to sort of look out for. In the first five minutes you meet someone they tell you where they’re from, maybe where they went to school, what they do, maybe where they live. We’re not conditioned to question these things because nobody lies about them. So that’s what I slip in … it was about amassing tons of tiny lies that built a character versus big lies that might make a red flag, so there were no red flags.”
If you’re looking for more from Shlesinger, hang tight! We’ll have her full Collider Ladies Night conversation covering her Last Comic Standing experience, what it was like working on Pieces of a Woman opposite Vanessa Kirby and so much more for you soon. In the meantime, be sure to check out Good on Paper streaming now on Netflix.