Producer/Director Paul Feig, “The Housemaid” based on Freida McFadden’s novel

[1:24]Zibby Owens: Hi. This is Zibby Owens, and you're listening to totally booked with Zibby. Formerly, moms don't have time to read books. In my daily show, I interview today's latest best selling, buzziest, or underrated authors and story creators whose work I think is worth your time. As a bookstore owner, publisher, author, and obviously podcaster, I get a comprehensive look at everything that's coming out and spend my time curating the best books so you don't have to. Stay in the know, get insider insights, and connect with guests like I do every single day. For more information, go to zibbymedia.com, and follow me on Instagram at Zibby Owens. This is a very special episode centered around the movie, The Housemaid, based on Freedom McFadden's best selling novel. I had the opportunity to attend a press junket, which basically means I got to go to the Essex House Hotel on a floor where every room was inhabited by a different important person from the film The House Made. And I was ushered into the room with Paul Fieg where there were, like, I don't know, 10 cameramen and 10 other people. And I just sat right down in the chair and we had this amazing conversation, which not only was about the movie, but about what makes great movie adaptations from books and some other really important stuff that I thought you all would really enjoy. Here's a bio on Paul, and also I encourage you all to see the housemaid and read Frieda McFadden's novel. Paul Fieg is an American film director, producer, screenwriter, and actor. He is best known for directing films such as bridesmaids, the heat, spy, ghostbusters, a simple favor, and last Christmas. He has also directed episodes of the office. Paul often collaborates with actress Melissa McCarthy. He is also a brilliant advertising director with his diet coke spots showing his incredible comedic talents. Enjoy. Welcome, Paul. Thank you so much for coming. I'm totally booked. Delighted to have you. Thank you, Sabine. So good to meet you. Good to meet you too. Congrats. The housemate is amazing. Oh my gosh. Love it. I loved it. Oh, good. Thank you. I feel like we need a shoppable housemate.

[3:41]Producer/Director Paul Feig: Like, I would like to get a few of the things from the house. Yes. The outfits. Are you do are you working on that? Yeah. You know, we should actually get the whole store going. Yeah. Well, it's funny because when when I when we were putting the movie together, my my main thing that I said to everybody on the team was like, this has to be like a Nancy Meyers movie that goes horribly wrong. Yeah. So it was really fun to get that to make that house so bright and, you know, wonderful

[4:04]Zibby Owens: and lovely and then turn it into a a hellish prison. Yes. I mean, it's one thing to get it in your mind when you read the book and see what the the screenogram looks like, but it's another to see how you depicted it and what it looked like and how it feels and the fabrics and think, oh, well, what if I had that couch? Yeah. Well,

[4:21]Producer/Director Paul Feig: I mean, a lot of credit goes to my my production designer, Elizabeth Jones, who just did such a great job. Yeah. And she, you know, she was very into the idea of artwork around that was very female centric, but also male gaze at the same time. And, you know, but there's like the big Gauguin and then the, you know, the living room and his whole history with women and all that. And and so there's such a rich texture to the things that you're seeing on screen that you're not even kind of aware of. All the pops of red and the foreshadowing. Love it. Yeah. Exactly. Definitely, that was red. They they really wanted to play with that. That's kinda symbolized that there's danger in this house even though it looks really, you know, lovely and and perfect and pure. Yes.

[5:05]Zibby Owens: By the way, my husband would not have his company if it weren't for you because he and Austin Riddell, who Billy Lord is someone you know anyway. So they met when they had a meeting at your office and became business partners and started their company. Are you kidding me? Yeah. That's wow. That's wild. So so you're like a known you're like a legend in our in our in our home in the company, Lord. Even though you weren't even there. I'm honored. Yes.

[5:29]Producer/Director Paul Feig: So why when did you read the book? I mean, I'm assuming you read the book. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Well, I read the script first. Okay. Yeah. Because I was doing another simple favor Yes. And they were Lionsgate was very happy with it. And so they, you know, sent sent me the script. And I love the script and I was really, you know, surprised by everything in it. And then I immediately say, okay. And now I have to read the book. And I was I was glad that I did it that way because Rebecca Sunnichine did such a good job of adapting that book, which is it's it's it's both a great book to adapt and yet a hard one because a lot of times books you really have to change a lot to make them screen worthy. But the structure of Frida's book is so good that Rebecca was able to cherry pick what she needed to cherry pick, but then I was able to, after reading the book, like, oh, now that we've got this down to size, let's bring this back in, let's bring this back in. And then we expanded out the, you know, the end of it, which that was Rebecca's idea of, you know, when she adapted it, it was to take it further and then we were able to add stuff back from the book. But in that, because I I you know, it's when you're making a movie out of a book that everybody so many people know that has so many twists and turns that you you need to give them something extra. But at the same time, it's dangerous because you don't want them to go like, hey, you mess with that. But I think we did a really good job at, like, giving you that extra thing that you need out of it and and making it making, well, like, what Millie has to do in the attic a little more I wanna say cinematic. You you you you want the audience to be so desperate for retribution that what happens up there has to

[7:15]Zibby Owens: make you that angry. Yes. And actually, your final scene was like the perfect ending for the whole thing. It was just it was just tied up with such a bow. It was perfect. Oh, excellent. It's just perfect. Even the way you used music in the in the film. I mean, all of the it was so richly textured. It felt, like, completely

[7:34]Producer/Director Paul Feig: immersive. And instead of using, like, you know, scary horror music, not that it's horror movie, but No. I like really great music that I'm like, what is this? I wanna listen to this too. Oh, good. Yeah. Well, I mean, it was a combo of, you know, the songs that we found. I was very, very hung up on wanting to find what's Millie's sound. Mhmm. And to me, it's Linda Ronstadt. I just for some reason, Linda Ronstadt's life and her work and her personal story just seemed to kind of feel like Millie to me, you know. And at one point, they were they were expensive and so, you know, the studio didn't wanna pay for them. So we're trying all these other songs and nothing worked. It just like it's just Millie's sound. So the studio very kindly ponied up the money for those songs, you know. But then all the the other needle drops that we have in there were just very, you know I I have a great music supervisor in Erica Weiss who I work with all the time. And then, you know, my producing partner, Laura Fisher had ideas on it and our other producers had ideas. But we audition a lot of songs. I'm really hung up on the music in movies. It's really important to me and to get that right to not have to be something you're like, you know, get jarred out of the movie. And you know, I also don't want it to feel too indie, if you know what I mean. Like indie movies are really great at putting cool songs in, but then it kinda sometimes make the movie feel smaller. And then on the other side of it, I've got my great composer, Teddy Shapiro, who put together that beautiful soundtrack. And, you know, when I worked with Teddy, he's done everything with me ever since Spy. And our thing that we have is he starts composing before we even start shooting the movie. And there's it is just like, what are what's our little theme? You know, what are our, like, eight note theme that we do? And each character should have a theme. And so he comes up with those and then as I'm shooting, he's recording these kind of what he calls suites, which are like a two or three minutes, you know, soundtrack that then we can cut up and and put in as we're editing the movie. So I'm not putting in music from other movies, which I hate doing. It it because then you have what we call the business temp love. Oh. So you temp score, you're like, oh, then a poor composer comes out. Can you make it sound like this that was already in a movie and it's it's a disaster. Been there, done that. Exactly. Yeah. But but what I love most about what Teddy did is he, this female voice that he that he brings into it. Mhmm. You know, he brought this female vocalist in who just did a whole day of just, you know, sounds. And he took those and then put them all through and I think that that really gives it that feel that's like you say, it's not a horror movie, but it's it's definitely a tense unsettling

[10:09]Zibby Owens: score that then, you know, builds in certain places and everybody's has their own theme. So it's it's yeah. It's not go on and on about music. It's no. It's it was it was really noteworthy. The music and the song. Was for sure. How at this stage in your career, you can do whatever you want. You can pick whatever projects. Why this one? Like, what was it about it that appealed to you so much? I've said a few things. I mean,

[10:32]Producer/Director Paul Feig: Sydney Sweeney was already attached to it when they brought it to me and I've been dying to work with Sid. So that was at first like a real like, oh, like I I hope I like the script because I really wanna work with her. And then reading the script, I I fell in love with it. But what I fell in love with is the chance to really mess with an audience Mhmm. In a way that I hadn't done before. Because what's brilliant about Frieda's book is you she makes you root for everything you should not be rooting for for the first half. And then she pulls the rug on you so hard and you regret everything that you rooted for. And I think that just helps with the retribution that happens. Like, you're so angry that you got fooled by these characters, you know, especially the one character that you just say, I just want that person to really go down hard. And it it was a a play on something that I don't normally do, which is I'm always very hardcore about my movies having to be one person's point of view. Mhmm. I don't like when movies bounce around and over here this is happening and this person doesn't know about it. It's more it's it it's all my comedies are kind of a thriller in that way because you don't know what other people are doing. And so you're with this person like, are these people for real or not? But it was fun to go, like, oh, no. I this is the one time I'm gonna, like, do the total switch because as Laura Fisher, my my producing partner says, this movie, the first hour is all questions and the second hour is all answers. And I think it's very satisfying for an audience. Absolutely. Today's episode is sponsored by Quince.

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[15:02]Zibby Owens: And what what were you all trying to do in terms of power dynamics, privilege, class? I mean, you have someone who is literally eating out of her car and and then, you know, the the top of the pyramid, so to speak, and everybody clashes. And how what should we take away from that? What is the message there? Well, I mean, it it's kind of a classic, you know, like, people are crazy

[15:27]Producer/Director Paul Feig: sort of story, which I think these days is kind of a fun story to tell, you know, because we're so surrounded you know, everything is so kind of out of balance right now. But what I I like most about it is it's sort of like how the judgments that we make at first that we're so convinced that our right can be wrong and can be horribly wrong. And I think our world right now, everybody's just buying into the first thing they hear and they're buying out of misinformation that we're surrounded by con con people. I mean, you know, just watch any documentary on Netflix. It's always somebody's conning somebody and then I don't know, you know, I I feel like I do know why we're there right now because certain people in power who are lean that way. But I I think it's an important story to tell of just like, you know, I don't want I I never want a story of like, don't trust anybody you meet. But at the same time, like, just be a little more discerning, you know, in if that looks like the shiny object, is it really the shiny object or is that shiny object got something terrible behind it? So

[16:31]Zibby Owens: what do you think then the role is of art itself and movies and the books that these are based on? Is it to get us to question or just be more aware of some of the pitfalls of society?

[16:42]Producer/Director Paul Feig: I think it's it's too dramatized or, you know, dramatized in a fun way or not fun way, but should be in a fun way as far as I'm concerned. Little lessons like that, but I also I'm I don't like things that preacher like are in my face. Like, if if it's just buried Mhmm. If you just if somebody has a great time, they can have so much fun and then they're like, oh, I never thought about this or I should think about this. That's great. What I don't like is I hate when somebody says this is a very important movie. It's like, I don't wanna see an important movie. That sounds like homework to me. Let me just escape. Yeah, let me just have a good time and then if there's inside the peanut butter there's a little pill and it was a good pill then great. Well, this was like the ultimate escape. Little worried for a while but

[17:27]Zibby Owens: escape on edge. That's the best way. Exactly.

[17:31]Producer/Director Paul Feig: Are you a big reader yourself? Yeah. I love reading. I have to read so much for my work Yep. That I don't get to read for pleasure as much as I'd like to. And I'm very slow reader. But when I get into a book that I get immersed in, then I'm just in it. And what's been fun about doing this movie with Frida is now I'm just reading all Frida's books and it's really fun. Yeah. She's really great. She is. I, you know, I I got to hang out with her a bunch and I was just like, how do you do it? Like, you know, she I mean, she's she made some book like every three months, I think it is. It was interesting because I said, how do you get these twists? And she said, she just in her course of her life has an idea for a twist and she just keeps this file where she just puts in, you know, writes them down and then eventually goes through and go, oh, I can write a book about that. And I was like, that's so brilliant. What a great way to do it. Because I'm obsessed with twists. Like any movie I do, I'm like, I gotta find a twist here somewhere. Because it's just fun for an audience to go, you know.

[18:27]Zibby Owens: And she's like a brain surgeon. Right? Didn't she write a lot of these in med school? I mean, she's literally surgeon. Yeah. Like like a brain trauma. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No. It's crazy. And when you also know that,

[18:37]Producer/Director Paul Feig: like, she hid her identity. And she was in a book group. I love that story. She was in a book group that read her book and they didn't know she wrote it. So funny. Wow. Well, it just shows like the right stories get brought to life. Right? So not all the time, but if you just work hard enough. Yeah. Yeah. No. It's true. And and then yeah. It's really to be that inventive, I think, is great. And, you know, for us in in movie land, we're just always desperately looking for new stories and interesting ways to tell them. There's a million thrillers out there and a lot of them are really great. It's just they have to have that thing that merits being on the big screen. And sometimes that's something that we bring to it. But if the bones aren't there in the story,

[19:21]Zibby Owens: then you you what's the point? Yeah. What are your thoughts on getting people into movie theaters? I know this is gonna drive people,

[19:28]Producer/Director Paul Feig: some but people don't you know, as you know, the industry is changing. What are your thoughts about it? Well, I think I think it's up to us as filmmakers to make people wanna go to the movies. Mhmm. You know? And people just you know, there's so much. It's not like the old days. We're just gonna default go to the movie on a Saturday night. It's They have to go like, I heard this is great or that trailer is so cool, I wanna see that or oh my god they made this out of my favorite thing, I have to go see it. You have to make things undeniable. So you know, a lot of it is on us that for a long time Hollywood was got lazy, you know, and we just kind of oh, yeah. People just show up. It's like that's why I really like I would say Jordan Peele is really brilliant because when you see what a trailer for one of his movies, you're like, I gotta go see that. I I don't know what I didn't know what that's about, but that just looks like something I have to see opening weekend so that I can see it first and nobody can spoil it for me. So if if we do our job with something that that is undeniable, then people will come back. And I think being people seeing movies together is the most important thing in the world for us in movies because, you know you know, it's not I come from the comedy world and I consider all my movies both to be comedies and I also consider all my comedies to be dramas that just happen to be funny because the emotional stakes have to be, you know, very serious at at the bottom of it. But, you know, when you see a movie that you love for the first time in a theater, you carry that experience with you every time you watch that movie Yes. By yourself in your house. And that's why it's so hard to kinda get a streaming movie to be to mean something as much as like a movie in the theaters do to an to audiences because, you know, look, a movie has to stand on its own, obviously. But when you watch it at home, know, that was really great. But when you watch it with a bunch of people, you carry that like, oh my god. I I remember everybody laughed here. And I remember everybody, like, screamed here. I remember everybody gasped here. And that just makes a movie much more special to you and makes them a kind of a a a a treasured memory. And so to be back in movie theaters you know, my last two movies were streamers and it was I was thankful we got to make them, but it just wasn't the same experience. And and audiences didn't have the same experience that they normally do with my movies.

[21:40]Zibby Owens: So I talk to authors all the time, and every author wants their book to be a movie. Of course. Obviously, twists is one way to get there and to capture interest. But when you're evaluating books or when people are writing books and really want them adapted, what is it about a book that has that that gets them over the finish line? Well,

[21:58]Producer/Director Paul Feig: it's it's a great question. It's a number of things. It's gotta be great characters that are very engaging. Has to be a story that makes you lean in and pulls you through, has a good driver in the middle of it that just drives you through the story. It doesn't necessarily have to be big and and, you know, splashy as far as, you know, production value. And it's actually probably better off if it's not because it you know, both gonna be too expensive to make. But it has to again have that undeniable thing where it's unique and you're like, I gotta see that on the big screen. And it it that it's gonna let allow a filmmaker and a and a bunch of actors be at their best. So it is a hard thing to qual quantify or qualify, but it just has to be it has to mean I won't say it has to mean something because I'm that's sounding like it has to important. No. It's true. You I mean, why do something if it doesn't mean anything? Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. But it just has to be something that just is so grabs an audience whether it grabs them because it's so much fun or because it's so tense or it's so like heartbreaking, know. Just I think everything needs I'm a maximalist. So you're getting it from my my side of this, which is I think everything just needs to be extreme Mhmm. But not unreal. You just like the most interesting people we know are like kinda you're like, wow. Is that person for real? But they are for real. Mhmm. Versus if you meet somebody's like putting on crazy and you're like, no, you're just you're just trying to act like you're crazy or you're trying to be outrageous and shock everybody. That's not fun. But people who are just like, you're like, wow, that person is really out there. Those are the people we we want to watch on the screen or we wanna read about, you know. And so I think if you can put characters that are those kind of extremes into a situation that is itself extreme but real at the same time, I think that's what makes an audience go, oh, I'm leaning into this. I love that. That was a good good answer. There you go. I'm nervous with you because you're so smart. Oh, please. Oh my gosh. Are

[24:10]Zibby Owens: you going to continue on with the Frieda books or what's going on next? It depends how the movie does.

[24:16]Producer/Director Paul Feig: I would love to revisit Millie. I think Millie's you know, we really set her up really well in this movie and, you know, and I love the the the books. So yeah. And I love so much of Frida did has done. So yeah. I'd love to I love making these kind of movies. And how are you gonna celebrate when the book when the movie comes out? Like, what is what do you do that day, if anything? We we the favorite thing to do is to drive around the movie theaters and sneak in the back and see if see if there's anybody in there. Sometimes, it's the most horrifying thing you can do when you walk in and there's 10 people in the audience. But, you know, when it when it's a movie's working, you know, like when we had bridesmaids come out, you know, it just we thought it wasn't even gonna do well, and we're told it wasn't gonna do well. And then suddenly that night, they're like, it's doing really well. So Melissa McCarthy and her husband and my wife got in the car and went down to the the arc light and what was that? The arc light and came in the back of the place was like a rock concert and packed and sold out. And so that's That must feel good. That's the joy. That's the joy you don't get out of a streaming movie because you can't drive around people's houses and look through their windows. I guess so. But then you get arrested. Exactly. Maybe that'll be your next movie. Hey. There you go.

[25:23]Zibby Owens: Do you have any advice to aspiring creatives in any field? You've turned your art into a career and all that. How do you do it? What's the advice?

[25:32]Producer/Director Paul Feig: I mean, you have to really, really want it. You have to be undeterred by things that don't work out. You have to be able to pivot when the thing you think you want is unattainable and you discover maybe it's not exactly what you should be doing, but you can if you go a little to the left, that's what you might be good at. If you're creative, you have to find your own voice and tell your own stories because your stories are unique to you. Don't try to recreate other people's stories or get, oh, this is really popular, so let me do something in this direction. I mean, it's a genre, sure. If you got a story that works in that genre, of course. But bring your own it comes from when I was I was so dumb when I was starting out as a creative because I thought in in my head for some reason I wouldn't like when I heard Norman Rockwell like had models and he like painted the models. I was like, well, that's cheating. Like, it has come off from your head. You have to imagine all. And then so as a writer, was like, it has to be something you have to make up out of whole cloth because, know, I've read a lot of science fiction and all that. And then realized when the one when I did Freaks and Gates is like, oh, no. The the thing that is most personal to me, that's the only thing people really care about because I'm heavy. Have an experience and nobody else has. They might have a similar so they relate to it, but the specifics of my you know, what I've done is unique to me. That's why I don't worry about AI as much as everybody else does because AI is just recreating everything that's happened before and it doesn't have any experience. Know, it's just sure it can mix a million different people's things as their data scraping everything we've ever done which I have my opinions about that. Did any of us ask for AI? I don't think so. I hate AI. So I refuse to use any of it. But in the say, I don't I don't worry about it because sure you can they can kick out scripts and but they're gonna be sort of rehashes of things that have already happened versus these unique stories that are happening for billions of people every single day. Any person you talk to ever will have some story where you're like, oh my god, really? That happened to you? And that's that's where it all comes from. I love that. Well, thank you so much. Congratulations on the film. Thank And just so exciting. Thanks for the time. No. No. I'm so glad this worked out. Me too. Thank you. Thanks. Okay. Thank

[27:45]Zibby Owens: you for listening to Totally Booked with Sibby, formerly moms don't have time to read books. If you loved the show, tell a friend, leave a review, follow me on Instagram at Zippy Owens, and spread the word. Thanks so much. Oh, and buy the books.