Original subtitles

[SLOW INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC PLAYING]

ERIC APPEL: All right. Hello.

My name is Eric Appel, and I am the director of The Breadwinner.

And look at this glorious TriStar Pegasus.

I was very excited the first time I saw this

because I grew up loving TriStar movies.

Muppets Take Manhattan, Labyrinth, Monster Squad,

Short Circuit 1 and 2, Look Who's Talking.

Classics.

NATE: You guys like cups, right? You have a bunch of them.

I mean, by the way...

APPEL. Nate talking about cup holders here was unscripted.

This shot originally developed into Nate selling cars to this couple.

But we wanted to add a moment at the top of the movie

where we show that Nate's a great car salesman.

This happened later.

We wanted to show that he sold cars in his own unique Nate kind of way,

so we shot an additional scene to put in this opening

with Jared Curtis, who you'll see right here.

Jared Curtis was a high school quarterback

who just signed with Vanderbilt, which is Nate's favorite college team.

So, Nate had the idea that he could be selling Jared a minivan.

So we're showing that this guy is such a good car salesman

that he could put this flashy college quarterback

into, like, a dorky family vehicle.

This whole, uh... The whole opening of this movie,

we ended up sort of re-shuffling things, uh, around

when we were in post-production.

The original opening started with Mandy Moore's character, Katie,

going through her morning routine,

but we later decided to open it up with Nate,

since the movie's from his perspective.

But Mandy's character's, like,

one of these perfect Instagram moms.

She juggles a million things, she does them all perfectly.

We did a lot of research on command centers and home calendar systems,

which are really insane.

There's a ton of content on Instagram like this.

But she's... she's, like, very type-A.

She runs the house, she makes the schedules,

and, uh... and she loves it.

This couple is, like, totally happy with their roles,

as, you know, the... the breadwinner

- and the stay-at-home super mom. - "Buy Sam a horse"?

It's on the calendar.

- [CHUCKLES] - Yeah, nice try.

I can't hear you. What'd you say?

APPEL: And, of course, here, we're... we are introducing

the idea that Sam wants a horse, which, uh...

which factors into the story later on,

plays a pretty big role in the story, this horse.

NATE: Wait!

APPEL: And then we meet Nate, the hero of our story, of course, late

to, uh, bring the trash out,

which is something that, uh, I've experienced many times.

NATE: ...forget to take out the trash.

APPEL: So all this voiceover sort of came later.

And, uh...

we have a little fourth wall-breaking line here,

which was... which was fun to put in.

Like, Nate's narrator is aware that we're watching a movie...

[LAUGHING] ...which is kind of funny.

Trash came an hour ago.

APPEL: Uh, these trash guys are Brian Bates and Aaron Weber

from the Public Figures Podcast, which at the time

from the Public Figures Podcast, which at the time

was called The Nateland Podcast.

This was their first ever movie appearance,

and, um, yeah, it was super fun to have them on set that day.

Mom, I'm 13.

- I'm allowed to like boys. - KATIE: Oh, I know that.

But sometimes it takes dads a little longer to...

APPEL: This scene at the breakfast table here,

it was also something like the Jared Curtis scene

that we picked up with additional photography,

which took place, like, maybe six months after principal photography.

It must have fell from the tree!

APPEL: You'll notice, in that time,

Birdie, who plays Hadley, the middle child,

grew about three inches.

So, uh, if you've ever watched this movie

and wondered why Hadley looks a little bit different in some scenes, that's why.

Probably more noticeable to me, who, you know,

I've seen the movie about 7,000 times. [LAUGHS]

And, uh, it's definitely noticeable to me.

The other... What... What's less noticeable is the fact that Charlotte,

who plays Sam, the youngest daughter, had lost both of her front teeth

six months after we, you know, wrapped principal photography.

So... Which became a whole thing when... when we did this additional stuff,

we... we had to make her fake teeth to wear in these additional scenes,

which really... really bugged her,

and she said... she said it made her talk funny, but...

you know, she has a very cute voice.

And Mandy's wearing a wig because she was on another show with a different haircut.

Making movies is a, uh, very, very complicated thing.

You don't think about these... these things.

- GIRLS: Ooh! - Oh, yeah?

APPEL: So we just saw the, uh, the Star Minder, of course.

This is the product that Katie, uh, brings to Shark Tank.

This was designed, Jon Billington, our production designer.

Uh, we spent a lot of time working on designs for the Star Minder,

and... and came up with something that... For a moment, we were like,

"Should we actually go on Shark Tank and try to... try to sell this thing?"

...excited to meet you. He's always asking about you.

- Oh, that guy? - It's going to be fun. It's happening.

Well, you know I love a good hang with a stranger.

APPEL: Yeah, so Nate has no idea who the, uh... who the Ashfords are,

Conor and Angela, which is something that's kind of pulled right from my life.

My wife was very involved at our kids' school

and would often tell me stories about people who

I was definitely not on a first name basis with,

and she wouldn't give me enough context to understand who she was talking about.

So I'd be like, "Wait, who are Mike and Jeanie?"

And she's like, "Oh, they're Celia's parents,"

and I also have no idea who Celia is.

When my sister first saw the movie, she stopped at this part

and she was like, "That is... That's so you, right there."

...for those Titan tickets.

APPEL: Uh, this is Nate's first scene here at the Toyota dealership,

Zach Cherry plays Dan, the floor manager.

Zach and I were both performers at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre

in New York, but in different eras.

I'd been a fan of his for a while.

I love him on Severance, and we have a ton of mutual friends.

But I hadn't met him until we cast him in the movie, and he's great.

I loved... loved working with Zach. Super funny guy,

as is Kumail Nanjiani, who's also a friend.

We worked together on a couple episodes of Silicon Valley.

And Kumail and Nate have a connection.

They did stand-up together in Chicago,

and Nate actually said the first time he was ever written about

was in an article that was about Kumail.

Nate just, like, happened to be performing on the same bill

the night that, uh, this writer went to the show.

How long you been practicing this?

45 to 50 minutes this morning.

APPEL: There he is, bouncing his pecs.

When I first met Kumail, he was not, uh... he did not quite have this physique...

[LAUGHING] ...that he got for, uh... for his Marvel movie.

We only had three days to shoot everything that took place at that car dealership,

'cause it was a working Toyota dealership.

So in all of those scenes, just on the other side

of where the scene is taking place, people are actually showing up

and getting their cars serviced, which is pretty funny.

I can eat that one.

Okay.

Hey, what are these frisbees about?

- Disc golf! You play? - Oh, wow.

APPEL: Now we're at Conor and Angela's house.

The Ashfords, played by Colin Jost and Kate Berlant,

and, uh...

Yeah, in this relationship, Kate plays the working parent,

and Conor is the stay-at-home parent,

and, uh, at this point in the movie, Nate has nothing in common with Conor,

who's very thirsty for a friend.

Uh, he doesn't really hang out with other dads, so he's trying

to pretend he's really into disc golf to impress Nate, which...

NATE: You hit the target on that one.

...which I think is a sport that probably wouldn't impress Nate.

It's not only that Conor isn't good at it, but Nate, I don't think... [LAUGHS]

Nate's character doesn't really care about disc golf at all.

- So, Angela, how's work? - Oh, really good.

APPEL: We tried to make Conor, like, the opposite of Nate in every way.

So, you know, he's eating these weird, uh, vegan burgers

that our prop department put together. I don't even know what it looks like.

Some sort of kimchi, like...

beet slaw that's like squished together.

- I'll get Keith to do it. - Who's Keith?

APPEL: The crazy thing about this scene

is that we had to ADR almost all of the dialogue

because it was pouring out.

It was pouring out during the scene, so we had to, like, tent it,

and, uh, the rain was so loud,

our script supervisor Dea, her computer got wet

while we were shooting this scene and caught fire.

There was, like, flames shooting out of the keyboard. [LAUGHS]

And, uh, it was a pretty wild, uh... wild day on set.

We had to VFX the pool.

There were, like, raindrops hitting, uh... hitting the pool.

So, all of these shots have VFX that you would never notice,

where we had to, like, take the raindrops out of the water,

but then VFX ripples back into the water so it, you know, didn't look weird

and...and still.

Making a movie in Georgia in the summer is crazy,

because there's rolling thunderstorms that come through almost every day.

So, if you have an exterior scene that shoots multiple days,

you're always going to be battling the inconsistencies of the weather.

And, uh, don't worry, because I'll be pointing that kind of stuff out

throughout this entire commentary every time we're outside.

Basically, every time we're outside,

it's raining at some point during the scene.

Because her company sponsors that craft fair in Centennial Park,

and she thinks she can give me a booth.

Yes, of course.

APPEL: So here's Nate being, uh, a super supportive husband.

It was very important for us and for Nate that, you know, unlike a movie,

maybe from the '80s, where it would be like,

a dad is very resistant to helping out,

a dad is very resistant to helping out,

he wants to go to work,

and he doesn't feel like it's his place to help out at home.

Nate... Nate's... Nate's like a very supportive husband,

even here in this Shark Tank scene.

He's, like, very eager to help out, take time off work, support his wife.

It's really just that he's a fish out of water.

He's never done this stuff before,

and he starts to lose his identity during it,

which is why he, you know,

kind of takes matters into his own hands around the midpoint.

...can decide what the specific tasks are,

and you do them together.

APPEL: This Shark Tank scene was super fun to shoot.

We got to fly out to LA on a Saturday

during our, um... during principal photography.

We shot this whole segment with the sharks,

piggybacking onto an actual Shark Tank shoot.

So right before the scene, we got to watch the sharks

actually crush people's dreams. [LAUGHS]

I think maybe right when we got there, they had given someone a deal,

but, like, the rest of the day, they passed on everyone's deals.

We got to see, like, real... real tears. [CHUCKLES]

It was pretty wild.

And then they came up to the green room and we did a read-through of the scene,

like, that... that's where I met all the sharks for the first time.

And it was a... an extremely nerve-racking experience,

having to immediately give notes to the sharks

on how they were reading things.

Really, I just wanted them to be themselves,

'cause I wanted this to feel as much like a real Shark Tank segment as possible.

And we shot with their actual production team,

and all 13 of the cameras that they, uh, shoot their show with,

and their incredible director, Ken Fuchs, was in charge of all the cameras,

covering it the same way he would have if it was a real Shark Tank pitch.

So, like, any of those, like, slow zoom-ins on Nate's face,

or... or just the way that they cover it, it's really how they do it

on Shark Tank, and it's the way Ken would direct it as if it was a real episode.

- So... - [IMUFFLED] Now, it's gone.

Oh.

...we ended up like running the scene all the way through...

I think, four times with the sharks...

- I'm out. - [COUGHS]

...and then we... we released them and went in

for some pickup shots with Nate and Mandy

when they're negotiating with each other.

Tell us about you. What do you do?

[IN NORMAL VOICE] I'm a Toyota salesman.

APPEL: The first take, which was really just a rehearsal that we shot,

I think was the most fun, because Mandy felt like she was actually on Shark Tank.

You could feel her... her nerves.

And I think that the moment that we used before Nate comes out,

when it's her just talking to sharks, is probably from that first, uh, take.

I wrote out a bunch of fake figures for how many Star Minders she sold,

and, like, how much they cost to make, what the profit margins are. [LAUGHS]

And she quickly memorized it and then had to go out there

and spit out all these facts.

And I told the sharks to actually grill her

and ask her questions for authenticity.

So, I'm super happy with how it all turned out.

But, yeah, when they're holding the Star Minders and flipping them open

and looking at 'em, they're just like kind of making up the questions

as if we were on a real Shark Tank segment, which is great.

Maybe you could call your mom to come help?

Katie, I'm not calling my mom.

I mean, how hard can it be? I can do it.

I could do 80%...

APPEL: The other crazy thing about this scene was

there was a whole situation around the doughnut

that Nate was going to eat, where some wires got crossed

in production and Props had asked Nate what kind of donuts he liked,

and he said he liked Voodoo Doughnuts,

which are like pretty big, extravagant doughnuts.

I wanted something a little simpler that, like, you'd find in a... in a greenroom.

Like an Entenmann's or something.

And, uh... but they were like, "No, Nate wants Voodoo Doughnuts."

And I'm like, "I don't know if he really...

"you just asked him what is... What kind of donuts he likes?"

We ended up calling this Donut Gate.

For a moment, like... [CHUCKLES] ...it sort of went away.

A couple of weeks later, someone came to me while we were shooting a scene.

It was before we shot Shark Tank. They were like,

"So it's going to be $5,000 to get Nate this Voodoo Doughnut."

And I'm like, "What? What are you talking about? 5,000?"

They're like, "Well, just for consistency, like, we're shooting part of it in LA,

"we're shooting part in Georgia,

"there isn't a Voodoo Doughnuts in Atlanta.

"So we have to get the same donut from a Voodoo Doughnuts in Florida,

"and then, like, pay transpo to drive it up."

[CHUCKLING] And it just ended up...

[IN NORMAL VOICE] There was, like, overtime involved.

It ended up being this crazy expense.

And I... I was like, "All right, here's what you do.

"Go get me a box of Entenmann donuts and leave them at video village."

So they buy a box of Entenmann's.

Nate comes walking up, getting ready to shoot this scene.

I'm like, "Hey, Nate, are you cool

"eating one of these donuts in the Shark Tank scene?"

And Nate goes, "Can I have one now?"

And I was like, "Yeah, of course." [LAUGHS]

And then he eats this Entenmann's donut, and I'm like, "All right, great!

"I just saved us $4,995 by, uh, making it Entenmann's."

"I just saved us $4,995 by, uh, making it Entenmann's."

[LAUGHING]

- [GROANING] [CLATTERING]

APPEL. It's funny sometimes how, like, the wires can get crossed,

and you think that, like, "Oh, Nate's the star... M&M's,"

you know, but really, he doesn't care what he's eating. [LAUGHS]

Spaghetti falling out of the cabinets.

I don't know if you had a bad experience with spaghetti,

but if you've ever had to pick up broken, dry spaghetti off the ground,

it's very frustrating and very annoying.

NATE: Come on. Get through.

Oh, whatever.

Extra calcium.

Toast.

- [THUMPING] - Broken!

APPEL: We spent a lot of time shooting Nate making eggs.

The set smelled absolutely awful, nauseating,

just burning eggs all morning long.

We shot so many variations of Nate getting eggshells in the bowl.

At one point... [CHUCKLES]

...there was a shot where he just, like, slammed an egg down on the counter

to break it, and then kind of just pushed all the shells

and egg mess into the bowl, like...

like, made a little, you know, uh... you know, just flattened out his hand

against the counter and, like, scooped them all in.

It was really funny,

but it made his character seem... [LAUGHS] ...way too stupid.

It's like, this guy's made breakfast before.

We ended up deciding to pull back on some of that.

Dad, are you Mom now?

APPEL. But his idea to pour eggs into the strainer to get around the shells

was actually... I think that was actually kind of smart.

That's Nate showing his smarts, and then he burns them anyway.

And two, I'm your dad.

APPEL: And this is, like, the first real big scene with Nate and the girls.

Stella, Birdie, and Charlotte, who play our kids were the best.

We had so much fun on set together.

Before we filmed, Nate and I, along with, like, our... our...

Jeremy Latcham, our producer, and JoAnn, our line producer,

we took the kids to a bowling alley arcade, dinosaur-themed,

black light, mini golf place in, uh... in rural Georgia.

I wanted them to feel like a real family,

and, uh... and I thought it would be, you know,

just a really fun way to break the ice to... You know,

Nate had met them before, and they'd done family photos and stuff, but...

you learn a lot about each other when you bowl together.

And we gave each other fun nicknames.

They called me Wild Eric.

That was the name that they gave me.

That was, like, up on my... That was my bowling name.

And I crushed it. I think I actually played...

Everyone thought that I was hustling them, like, by coming up

with the idea to go bowling, because I got the best bowling score

I've ever gotten in my entire life that night.

And, uh, I will never get a score that good.

And everyone thought I was this incredible bowler.

When my kids came to town later,

we went back to the bowling alley with the actors, and I was awful.

I played like my normal bowling self.

You're going to want to check Hadley's model volcano here...

APPEL: Hadley and Gracie are, uh, both wearing Taylor Swift shirts.

Uh, when they came down the stairs, they were arguing about,

you know, how... [MOCKINGLY] "I wore it first."

"No, you're copying me."

- GRACIE: Oh! - KATIE: Mmm.

APPEL: [IN NORMAL VOICE] But we got them Taylor Swift shirts,

and, uh... which is not the easiest thing to pull off.

- Hey, I'm right here. - I'm going to be back before you know it.

I promise. Come here.

- We're all going to die. - [CHUCKLES]

- [CLANGS, RINGS] - Hey! I fixed the toaster.

- Bye. - KATIE: Bye.

- Have fun. - KATIE: I love you guys.

Don't worry about a thing.

When you get back, the house will be exactly like you left it.

- [DOORKNOB RATTLING] - Dad...

APPEL: In this next scene, where...

where, uh, Nate's driving the kids to school,

we have Opalite by Taylor Swift and... and, uh...

Spring Aspers, who... who, uh, sort of acted as our music supervisor,

deserves a huge shout-out for that.

We didn't end up putting Opalite in the movie

until we were on the mixing stage just days before finishing the film.

And then Spring, uh... Spring made it happen for us,

and it really was transformative.

We used to have a song that was sort of like a, um...

kind of like an old-school,

country-sounding song playing in the car.

And switching it to Taylor Swift put the whole scene,

like, in the kids' perspective.

And since they're messing with Nate in this scene,

they're not telling him exactly how to get to the school.

They're calling Mom. I think it just, like, really amped things up and...

and just gave a new flavor to the scene that we ended up liking

better than the old version. And we loved the old version,

but the Taylor Swift song definitely added a lot.

- [LINE RINGING] - No! Sam, give me the phone.

- Ringing! - NATE: Sam, hang up the phone.

- l was just... - You were just what, Dad?

No! No! I was just...

- Just say it! Admit it! - Dad. Just admit it.

- NATE: No, no, I was just... - Laser tag! Laser tag! Laser tag!

- Dad, look out. - I'm watching.

- Just give it back real fast. - I don't have it.

- Sam! - Say it! You were...

Okay! All right, fine, I was just bluffing!

- Ha! I knew it! - NATE: Now will you please

- hang the phone up! - Dad! Look out!

- [GRUNTING] [BRAKES SCREECH]

- [GIRLS SCREAMING] [SPLUTTERING]

[GASPS] [LINE RINGING]

KATIE: Hi, guys. What's up? You miss me already?

APPEL: This volcano splat moment was like in all of our trailers.

APPEL: This volcano splat moment was like in all of our trailers.

Big moment.

And we did the volcano in one take, I should mention, too.

And thank goodness,

'cause cleaning out the car and resetting it would have been a nightmare.

DAN: Well, it's an employee photo, and you are no longer an employee.

Dan, I didn't quit. I'm on leave.

I've heard that before.

I think you need to just figure out where your priorities are.

I did. They're with my children.

Great, okay, well, it hurts to hear you say that out loud.

Come on, man. If you had kids...

APPEL: So Nate's back here at the car dealership.

There's, like, smooth saxophone music

in the background that always really makes me laugh.

And I love the idea that Dan has five kids that he never talks about.

The comedic heightening of Nate's work world

means his boss thinks you should never even speak of your family at work.

Like... [CHUCKLES] ...work is a place for working,

home is a place for the family, which is ridiculous, yes.

But Zach Cherry plays it like it's reality,

and that's what makes it so funny to me.

And also, the... the idea that Nate's...

The floor manager at work treats...

He... He acts like he's some jilted lover in this situation. [LAUGHS]

Like, Nate and him are like work bros, and now that Nate's choosing his family,

it's like, I found a new man in... in Peyton.

- [PEYTON GROANING] - NATE: This is your guy?

That's my number one guy.

APPEL: Kumail originally broke Nate's mug at the end of this scene, too,

but I think it made audiences hate him too much.

He's Nate's work rival, but he's not a real bad guy.

He's... He's a guy willing to drink hot coffee to be right.

But there's a later scene where Nate goes back to work,

where he's drinking out of the mug,

and we had it all cracked and glued back together,

and then had to VFX the mug and do, like, 3D... [LAUGHS]

...you know, VFX-ing on it to make it look normal,

once we made the decision to not break it in the first place.

And this scene where Nate buys eggs,

this was also done when we went back for additional photography,

we wanted one more scene where Nate is out there

trying to do things, uh, that Katie would,

like grocery shop, but he's overwhelmed by all the choices at the store.

Like, there's a zillion different types of eggs,

which there never used to be. And he wants to do it right,

but he ends up panicking and not buying anything.

I really love this Pat guy that we... [LAUGHING] ...asked to...

to be the grocery store clerk.

Him and Nate really played well off each other.

NATE: ...grilling you pretty hard on the eggs

and I'm not wearing you out, am I?

APPEL: And that scene was edited by, uh, Eirinn Disbrow.

We gave her this scene to do, um, to get her an additional editing credit,

and she did a fantastic job with it. There was a ton of improv.

We basically just like...

That... So this grocery store is like a little two-wall set,

and, uh, we just rolled cameras and, like,

had these guys riff about eggs for... for like, an hour. [LAUGHS]

You know, one or two nights. Uh...

Twelve, thirteen tops. Thirteen tops. And...

APPEL: So, yeah, here's Nate trying to, uh...

He... He's once again picking up towels. It's all towels.

Katie told him to do the towels before you do the rest of the laundry.

And he's trying to talk on the phone,

call his mom, leave a message, walk with the laundry basket,

and he slips on a wet towel.

Nate's stuntman, Ben, did so many great falls in this movie.

I love the way he went down the stairs.

He landed so his foot went through the wall.

He... He really nailed it on, like, the first take.

The shot of Nate's face popping up and looking into the hole

was something that I went back and grabbed a couple of weeks after we shot the scene.

That was the real benefit of building the house interiors on stage,

that I could always go back for a pickup shot if I thought of it later.

And, uh...

you know, because we weren't at someone's actual house,

we could put a hole in the wall.

Shout-out to our production designer, Jon Billington,

for giving us such a great house interior

that looked good from any angle you shot it from

without, uh, feeling too big

for what I imagine this family's income level would be.

And then outside, we meet Keegan.

This was Will Forte and Nate's first scene together that we shot.

Originally, there was a shot where Will, after being hired,

throws a hammer up in the air in celebration.

And it almost hits Nate.

I think make... makes it into the gag reel at the end.

It was funny, but we didn't want to tip off

exactly how bad of a roofer Keegan was in this first scene.

So we wanted to save that reveal for the next scene with Keegan,

where Katie calls Nate to check in and you see him falling outside the window.

Will Forte is the best, one of the funniest human beings in the world.

He also played a record exec, Ben Scotti

in my first movie, Weird: The Al Yankovic Story.

That's where we first worked together.

And, um...

You know, when we sent him this script, I hadn't talked to him

since we shot Weird, and I sent him a text,

"Hey, Will, I know we haven't talked, you know, in a couple of years.

"I... 1 think you'd be really great for this part."

And I was so shocked, like...

two... like, an hour later, my phone rings, and it's Will Forte,

and he's like, "I read the script last night.

"I love it. I want to do the movie." [CHUCKLES]

It was crazy how, uh... how quickly he jumped on board.

He... He ended up being a big fan of Nate's.

So, it was like mutual love for both of those guys.

...introduce you to a concept called the bubble...

APPEL: And this teacher is really great, Charity Cervantes.

She played our kindergarten teacher.

We cast her out of Atlanta, and she really felt like one.

The second we saw her audition, we were like, "Yes."

She feels exactly like a kindergarten teacher.

The way she talks in such a gentle way.

- Uh, the beginning of it. - The beginning?

Yeah, the beginning and the rest of it, too.

- Okay. - [SCHOOL BELL RINGING]

APPEL: Yeah, it's funny. She says kiddos a lot too.

APPEL: Yeah, it's funny. She says kiddos a lot too.

I have kids and my wife was... was really involved

with their elementary school, volunteering.

She was, uh, the president of the parent's association.

She worked as an assistant librarian for a little while.

And the more time she spent there, the more she would sound

kind of like that teacher that we just had. [CHUCKLES]

There's something about referring to kids as kiddos that's really funny to me.

Friends is another word she would throw around all the time.

[IMITATING TEACHER] "We don't hit our friends."

[IN NORMAL VOICE] Everything was this friend, that friend.

[INTRIGUING ELECTRONIC MUSIC PLAYING]

Uh, the song playing here where Nate sees Brian

for the first time is Mr. Fantasy by Mr. Fantasy,

who I believe is actually the dude who played Archie on Riverdale.

I think it's like his alter ego.

Anyway, as soon as I heard it, I was like,

"Oh, it's perfect for this moment where Brian's doing a TikTok dance."

And it actually plays three times in the movie.

We already heard it once,

coming from Gracie's phone in the opening,

when she's watching that, uh... watching Brian dance.

And it will play again later,

when she has Brian over at the house in act two.

Brian was played by Maddox Batson,

who's a, uh, young rising country star.

When his audition tape came in, I showed it to my, uh,

then 13-year-old daughter, and I was like,

"What do you think about this kid being,

"like, the love interest for the 13-year-old?"

And she goes... [IMITATING DAUGHTER] "Maddox Batson auditioned for your movie?"

[IN NORMAL VOICE] Like, I had no idea at that time.

She was obsessed with the song of his and, like, totally knew who Maddox was.

And then, uh...

I met with him, and he was super nice and grateful for the opportunity,

and he ended up being the perfect Brian.

So, thank you to my daughter Adelaide, for turning me on to Maddox Batson.

By the way, I forgot to mention, it was also raining on and off

in that scene where... where they met... [LAUGHS] ...Brian.

We had to, like, stop down and wipe the windows of the... of the van

because there was rain on all of them.

Uh... Oh.

How do I say it? Um...

APPEL: I wrote all of the stuff on this construction paper,

the confusing notes Nick would have taken with the crayon.

I always love when you could put funny things in text,

and there's... there's, like, too much of it to read in one viewing.

It's like a little reward for those who watch the movie more than once,

or take a screen grab, or know how to use their pause button.

But...

there's a bunch of dumb, funny things written on the paper by me

ten minutes before we shot the scene.

So, definitely go back and pause it... [CHUCKLES] ...and take a look at those.

And this scene with Nate and Charlotte was... She was so great.

You could give Charlotte anything to do or say, and she would always nail it

and make it funnier than when you pitched it to her.

Incredibly talented.

GRACIE: Yeah, my dad would never let me have one. Are you kidding?

Gracie.

APPEL: And her room looked so much like my youngest daughter's room.

Our set decorator, Jen, did an incredible job

in making these rooms feel like real spaces.

Thirteen more days.

APPEL: The door slam. Gracie doesn't even have a bedroom.

What is built there is 'cause we only ever see Gracie,

like, opening and closing her door.

That's a little one wall set with the posters on it.

If you actually go in there, it's the stairs down to the basement.

Just in the construction of our set, we had...

The upstairs was built on one stage, and the downstairs was on another.

And all of those shots you just saw of Nate doing his chores,

those were my hands, so,

if you enjoyed that hand acting,

I don't know if there's anyone watching this

that is, like, a scout for hand acting in commercials, maybe, but...

You could reach Sony Pictures and get my contact info,

and I'd be... [CHUCKLING] happy to...

[IN NORMAL VOICE] ...to do more hand acting.

[CELL PHONE RINGING]

Uh, so that was the end of Nate's first day.

We really only see two days of Nate trying to live Katie's life.

And then we use a montage to jump us all the way to the last weekend,

his final challenge, which ends up being this sleepover.

KATIE: I called all the top-rated places

so I could make them bid against each other.

[CHUCKLES] Then I also called my friend's cousin, Keegan,

'cause his bid was so low...

APPEL: Yeah, Nate... Nate learns here.

I love this expression,

"Aye, yai, yai..."

- [LAUGHING] ...he makes. - [YELPING NEARBY]

Realizing that Katie actually called several roofers.

And this was just like the guy that she was using to drive everyone else's...

You know, to better negotiate with... with the other roofers,

and Nate just hired him, no questions asked, and...

he has fallen off the roof, and he's...

KATIE: Thank you, I love you.

NATE: Love you.

APPEL: Got one foot still up there.

So Nate... Yeah, Nate steps on pistachios here,

and we reveal Brett Cullen, who plays Nate's dad.

- What are you doing? - WALTER: I was sleeping...

APPEL. He's supposed to represent, like...

This will... This is what Nate will someday become

if he doesn't change by the end of this movie.

Like, his dad is super lazy, super unhelpful, always sleeping,

leaving pistachio shells all over the place.

Brett was awesome.

He's... He's really one of my favorite parts of the movie,

like every scene he's in, I... I think he's fantastic.

He also played Tim Riggins's dad on Friday Night Lights,

which is the, like, more alcoholic version, I guess, of Nate's dad.

So he has a history of playing really great, supportive men.

That's what I'm saying here.

And all the cleaning sprays.

Under our sink, it looks like a Baskin-Robbins.

APPEL: And these ladies at the school, the other moms, the room parents,

they used to be called the mug moms in early drafts of the script

of Nate and Dan Lagana's script.

And while the name didn't end up sticking,

they still... We kept their matching Stanleys.

They all have these matching big Stanley mugs

that are blinged out with dumb tchotchkes.

These are like... these are the ladies that Conor hangs out with,

and they immediately love Nate, uh, which makes Conor jealous.

He gets a little territorial here.

In the... in the script and... and what we shot, actually, he was...

He got a lot more territorial and... and was like,

"Stay away from these moms, please," to Nate.

But when we watched the scene back, there was a little too much going on,

and the messages were a little mixed. So...

We decided to focus their conversation, uh, here

We decided to focus their conversation, uh, here

when Conor follows him over to the car.

To focus it more on...

There's a little bit about the moms,

but focus it on Nate ignoring Conor's texts,

since we'd already established that Conor wanted so badly to be Nate's friends.

- I bring it to them. See? - Okay.

You know, and if you wanna hang out...

APPEL: He wanted so badly to be Nate's friend.

But Nate's just not ready yet.

He still, at this point, feels like he has nothing in common with Conor.

It's not until the end that he learns that these guys do, uh...

There's a little... little bit of common ground between these two.

- Yeah, like, the whole color changes. - I don't think I've gotten any of them.

- CONOR: Really? - Yeah.

Can I see?

APPEL: And a lot of this text message stuff,

this is... this is improvised.

A lot of this is improvised by, uh... by Colin and Nate.

- Bowl. - Bowl?

APPEL: Yeah, the scripted version of this scene

really was just focused on, like, stay away from the moms.

It was like he... Conor was almost... It was like a little mafia guy.

You know... [IMITATING MAFIOSO] "You want to bring them something,

"you bring me something, I bring it to them." [CHUCKLES]

[UPBEAT ROCK MUSIC PLAYING]

- [WHIRRING] [IN NORMAL VOICE] All right. Here's Nate.

This sort of follows Nate over the, uh... you know, the course of these two weeks,

trying to fix his oatmeal problem.

You know, there's more spaghetti.

All of the... Every issue that he has with his kids is heightened.

Originally, the montage was way weirder

and more dreamlike when I first conceived it,

but it just did not fit the tone of the movie.

I did this, like, LSD sequence in the Weird Al movie

that ends in this crazy black void

where Daniel Radcliffe, like, hatches out of an egg.

I'm like, "You know, I'm going to do another weirdo montage in this."

And it was just like... [CHUCKLES]

When we ended up watching it, we go, "You know what?

"This feels like it wants to be a more classic '80s montage,"

you know, since the whole movie is kind of an homage to, like,

the movies that Nate and I grew up with,

these... you know, the... the Mr. Moms, the Uncle Bucks.

[LOW RUMBLING]

So everything is in slo-mo, you know, which is... were in both versions,

but the old version was so much darker.

The music I used was Prokofiev's Dance of the Knights

from Romeo and Juliet...

which is just way moodier and darker,

and everything was longer and more drug out.

Uh, like the shot of Nate drowning in towels at the end.

That was the really weird dreamlike shot.

But the problem was it just didn't make you smile,

which... which ended up hurting the scenes that followed.

Before we fixed it, we kept omitting this scene here

where Nate... We kept going back and forth on this,

the scene where Nate talks to Katie on the iPad,

'cause it felt like the scene, it was dragging. It was such a downer.

But once we found the right tone for the montage,

everything that followed it,

it sort of lifted everything else up

and... and made us find the right version of, uh... of this scene,

you know, where Nate's talking on the iPad,

which is... which is important... It's an important scene.

- ...your healthy breakfast thing... - KATIE: No, I know.

- ...but, you know... - No, no, no, no. It's fine.

I wanted to check...

APPEL: Mandy shot her side of this iPad conversation

a week or two after we shot Nate's side.

And this was like in a little workshop warehouse space

on the Trilith Studios lot that we turned into a Korean factory.

And we shot it with an actual phone,

'cause it always bumps me when I see a scene in movies

that's supposed to be filmed on a phone or, you know, FaceTime or something,

and it's been shot with cinema cameras, and it just looks way more beautiful.

I like the imperfections of a cell phone camera.

I directed an episode of, uh, The Afterparty on Apple TV that was like,

all of the flashbacks in this episode were supposed to be cell phone footage,

and it was really, you know, that... that's where I...

and it was really, you know, that... that's where I...

We shot everything with the native iPhone camera.

It's like, I don't even want to use

Filmic Pro or something, where you're using an iPhone

to shoot log footage and make it look better.

Just like, use the native camera.

And all the imperfections make it feel real.

NATE: Ladies, I think we know why we're here.

APPEL: I love this joke here where Nate's dad doesn't even

know that Katie was out of town.

He's been sleeping on the couch for a week,

just completely oblivious to everything. [CHUCKLES]

And he just bounces as soon as his wife gets home.

There's like a little line as he goes up the stairs

where he's like, "Finally get a home-cooked meal,"

'cause, like, Nate's just been ordering pizza every day.

The towel interrogation was in Nate and Dan's original draft.

Uh, this used to be much longer.

This is actually the scene we used for chemistry reads with Nate

and the girls during the audition process.

We had six kids, and we mix and match them with Nate until we found the right combo.

And all the kids were great.

It was really like one of the most heartbreaking things

to have to tell three children that they did not get the roles.

But really, it is just... it just had to do with, like,

us finding the right combination of kids.

They were all fantastic actors,

and, uh, I'm sure they will all go on to do great things.

I pulled the Post-it off the calendar.

Okay, but did you call people's parents?

NATE: I don't even know your friends' names,

so how would I know who their parents are? You know.

APPEL. It was so fun putting, um, Colin Jost in this

ridiculous, like, line dancing outfit.

Like, he's almost... It's almost like he's bragging to Nate,

like, "See, I have... I have friends.

"I'm going line dancing with my friends."

We did so many takes of him, uh, line dancing down the walkway.

We almost used a version where at the end, the music drops out

and he hits his key fob to get into his car.

You hear, like, the... [IMITATES BEEPING]

...Of him getting into his car. [CHUCKLES]

He goes from doing this stupid dance to, like, walking normal,

just showing, like, the awkwardness of it.

But ultimately, we ended up going out

on my horror movie shot, where we're slowly pulling out

as the door is, like, magically closing.

Just one and done. And we got it. Okay?

APPEL: I like those little flourishes

where the reality gets heightened a little bit.

It's very John Hughes, I feel, where...

John Hughes would... The movie was...

His movies were always, like, pretty grounded in reality.

But there would be these little cinematic flourishes

where you get to, like, heighten things.

And it's something the camera does, or just the way it sort of uses

these, like, cinematic tropes to... to get an idea across.

And, uh, so that... that, I guess, was kind of my homage to that.

I've never had someone bleed like that before.

Jane, don't worry about it. I'm sorry...

APPEL: The song that's playing there, of course, is Candy by Mandy Moore,

which was a big song on the set of our movie

because, uh, Mandy's schedule was so spread out.

And she has small children at home.

She didn't stay in Georgia for the whole shoot.

So after she left, uh, for a couple of weeks

in the middle of the shoot,

the kids choreographed this whole dance to Canady,

and they made shirts and everything. [CHUCKLES] And when Mandy got back,

they, like, sat her down, and it was this big surprise.

They, like, performed this dance routine that they made to, uh...

to Candy.

Like I said, the kids were the best.

They made this just the most...

Real summer camp vibes on the set of The Breadwinner.

You can't repair the memory of a friend

telling you your eyes are too close together.

APPEL: Oh, and I forgot to mention, when we cut to that big, uh...

the wide shot of, uh, Nate screaming,

that was me screaming.

Seems quiet.

APPEL: I didn't want Nate to blow his voice out,

but I was fine blowing mine out,

'cause I don't have to, like, pack arenas full of people

and talk to them on a nightly basis. [CHUCKLES SOFTLY]

...group activity before they start splitting off and...

APPEL. Forte's so funny in this scene.

I kept having him, uh, say...

[IMITATING WILL] "That's when they're getting me."

[IN NORMAL VOICE] And, like, more and more intense every take.

I think I was just really trying to get Nate to break...

For roof... Him saying the thing about the ice cream for...

for roof reasons is really funny to me, too.

There were a couple other mentions of things that he did

for roof reasons that... that ended up getting cut, but...

That was another Matt Roller line... "Roof reasons."

- TRISHA: Stop, no, you're... - HADLEY: It has an "E" at the end.

TRISHA: Oh, my gosh! You're so dramatic about this. All the time.

APPEL: Zach and Leo, our composers, did a great horror score here.

They also scored my Weird Al movie and won an Emmy for it,

and, uh, Leo did the score for a show called Son of Zorn

that I used to direct on, uh, that was on Fox.

And, uh, I love those guys. They are the best.

They crushed it with all the music in this movie.

I have blisters from my flashcards.

APPEL: Hadley's spelling bee friends, Trisha and Avery,

are played by Jasmine Washington, who cried real tears in her audition,

so we had to... we had to cast her, and Maggie Toomey,

who is also Conor and Angela's daughter.

She plays Conor and Angela's daughter,

who got hit by the frisbee back in act one.

She had actually auditioned to be Hadley,

and she got really close to getting the... uh, the part.

So I was very happy to bring her back for this... this small role.

No one cares about a spelling bee.

What?

APPEL. I love the way she says "fiduciary"

to Nate here. [CHUCKLES] It was very funny.

She was like the darker version of Hadley.

Um, she felt perfect to be Conor and Angela's kid.

I wouldn't have them on my desk

because it would be kind of dumb.

APPEL: And I love that this is like our... It's a heartwarming scene

where Nate gives good advice,

but just in, like, the dumbest, worst way.

I don't know if it's just like a dad thing to do,

but I could see myself framing this in a similar way for my... my daughter,

trying to make her feel better by insulting the entire competition...

[LAUGHING] ...that she cares about and calling it stupid.

[IN UNISON] F-I-D-U-C-I-A-R-Y.

Look at that. You're already spelling better

than a grown man who owns a home.

- It doesn't matter who gets... - APPEL: Nate's makeup

the kids did, uh, was really funny, too.

Rebecca Hickey, our, uh, makeup artist, oh, went to my high school.

I have... It's crazy.

She... She also, uh... She's been nominated for multiple Emmys.

She does the makeup on The White Lotus.

And, uh, we went to high school together.

And, uh, we went to high school together.

She... She graduated...

Her brother married my sister's best friend.

We were, like, before... years before this movie,

we were at a wedding together.

We didn't know each other, and it's just wild

'cause we went to high school at... at Union-Endicott High School

in upstate New York, which is, like, as far from Hollywood as you can get.

And we both ended up here and working on the same movie.

Pick them up. Drop them off. Pick them up again.

Never get time to myself.

APPEL: Just when Nate thinks things are going well,

he got a fish tank full of water barfed on him.

If you look very closely, I think there's like oatmeal in that, uh, barf.

There's like little specks you could see stuck to Nate's shirt.

...back hurts. My jeans don't fit right...

APPEL: And hear Nate ranting about how hard Katie's job is,

you'll notice he's eating a whole bunch of KFC,

delicious KFC.

And they're not paying me to say that right now.

There's a lot of brands in this movie, real brands.

And that's actually something that was important to Nate,

because in his stand-up, he's always talking about real...

He talks about McDonald's.

He talks about Taco Bell and DoorDash.

Like, so many of his jokes are rooted in the real things

that people interact with on a... on a daily basis.

Nate should eat the same kind of fast food

and chain restaurants that, you know, a lot of America eats at,

and a lot of what he talks about.

" with a new email address."

Whole company is run by a robot.

You want a donut?

No. I was embarrassed on national television by a donut.

Oh, dude...

APPEL: And Nate's friendship with Peter is expanding here.

Uh, Martin Herlihy, he's so funny.

Love him on SNL and... and in Please Don't Destroy.

NATE: That's enough. Swipe it away.

- GRACIE: And action! - [SCREAMING]

PETER: Oh, dude, that's you!

APPEL: It's funny, Nate, like a lot of guys,

doesn't really have many friends outside of his work friends.

You know, they talk about the male loneliness epidemic.

That's it. A lot of guys just have work buddies.

Since Peyton hates him, I like to think that Dan at work is really Nate's

only friend and he misses him and he wants to go back to work,

not only 'cause staying at home is harder for him, but also it's like

his whole identity and social life is wrapped up into being at Toyota.

And we had gone back and forth on the ending of that scene too.

There was originally a scene after that, uh,

scene with... with Peter, where Nate accidentally

sets off these alarms in the house.

And when he goes outside, Keegan jumps off the roof

and beats him up, thinking he's an intruder. [CHUCKLES]

[LAUGHING] But...

[IN NORMAL VOICE] But the scene with Peter felt... really felt like the ending.

It really put a cap on the, uh... on the whole sleepover bit.

So, when the alarm scene was there, that button at the end with the Tik Tok

and seeing himself on TikTok wasn't. Uh, it felt clunky, but it actually worked

really well as the button for the first half of act two.

All right, dude. Just give me the lasagna.

APPEL: Nate seeing himself on that TikTok,

it's basically like Nate is forced to look at his own reflection.

He's in this, like, midpoint low, and he's forced to look at himself

being bad at what he's trying to do.

And he doesn't like what he sees, which leads to, you know,

the decisions he makes after this scene.

Nah, I'm fine. It ha... It happens all the time.

Does it?

Yes, it does.

APPEL: Alexis, uh, uh...

Our costume designer made this great apron for Nate.

We thought it... She put those frills on it.

We wanted it to look as, like, funny and feminine as... as possible.

And, uh, we thought it needed one more touch.

So she had... She got this great, um...

woman who did embroidery.

She had done, like, a bunch of horse embroidery on... on some clothes for Sam,

and we were like, "Let's embroider mushrooms."

[CHUCKLING] It's just...

[IN NORMAL VOICE] Mushrooms on this, uh, apron.

So those are, like, original embroidered mushrooms that we, uh... that we did.

...the flight info, and I'll see you tomorrow.

Okay. Bye.

- Are you leaving again? - GRACIE: What? Mom?

APPEL: We went back and forth a lot on the music in this scene. Uh, Tim Roche,

who... who was an additional editor that came out and did... did some work for us,

he's the one that, like, came up with the idea to put some tension in.

Like those timpani drums that hit when Nate, like, hears Katie on the phone.

That was, uh... That was his idea.

And... And Zach and Leo really ran with it.

KATIE: I know it's hard.

It's really hard for me, too.

APPEL: Yeah, we went... we went back and forth a lot on...

on this music, trying to find, like, what's...

what's too much, what's too little?

Is this going to make it too sappy? Is it...

'Cause... 'Cause they're not...

Like, things aren't that bad for the family here,

like, the girls obviously want Mom back,

and Nate wants his life back, but it's not like...

Things aren't dire enough to have, like, music,

that's... that's too... too sad or emotional.

[KATIE SIGHS]

NATE: [PANTING] All right.

APPEL: But I do really like Nate's...

Nate's acting in this scene, in this moment here.

I think it's some of his best in the movie.

We'll figure it out, all right? It's great.

- Thank you. - NATE: [STUTTERS] It is great.

Yeah, itis. It really is.

APPEL: This walking up, kind of recalibrating and...

and telling her it's gonna be okay.

He's trying to be supportive

even though he's frustrated.

There's like a lot of great subtext behind his facial expressions.

...of the future.

Oh, that's great. That's great.

KATIE: Oh. And this is the best part.

APPEL: And yeah, Katie... Katie thinks what's gonna help is a...

is @ more high-tech calendar, which is like the last thing that Nate is...

[LAUGHS] He's like, "I don't want more rules and schedules."

KATIE: You're gonna love it.

[ANIMATED CAT MEOWS]

APPEL: There was also a scene right after this

APPEL: There was also a scene right after this

that we deleted, where Katie wants to get intimate with Nate,

but he's... He falls asleep. [CHUCKLES]

And it was cute, but it wasn't really necessary,

and it was kind of the only moment in the film

that had any sort of... That, like, brushed up

against any kind of sexualized content,

so, ultimately, we decided to omit it.

You know, we... we thought, "This is going to be a great movie

"that you could bring families to, you know, that... that parents

"and their kids can see." And like,

let's just not have a scene in there where kids are going to be like,

"What was going on in that bedroom?" [CHUCKLES]

No... No uncomfortable conversations need to be had at, uh...

at home.

The second Katie leaves,

Nate gets caught not washing the kid's clothes.

Uh, because he can't get ahead of the towels.

And the girls', uh, reactions to this are just the last straw.

There was... Originally, it made it a little too long,

but there was a text message he got from Dan in here that was like,

"Peyton has pulled ahead in the... in the competition at work."

Or... Actually, uh, no.

I think Dan said something, like, uh,

"I promised myself I wouldn't text you, but..."

And it was just a little... It was like too wordy.

It was too much to read, and it... it slowed things down.

That's a lot of the reason you end up cutting stuff.

It just slows it down. It... It's funny in theory.

It's funny in the script, but...

You... You get the idea.

And unless it's not... If it's not a killer joke

that just has the whole, entire audience guffawing,

it's just, you've got to get rid of it.

...this was temporary, I thought, I'll just be her.

But clearly, it's not.

APPEL: This dad era speech, you know, we ran out of time with the kids.

Kids aren't allowed to work as many hours as, uh, adults are,

and the younger they are, the less they're allowed to work.

So Charlotte, who plays Sam...

We would lose her, I think six hours or something,

she's allowed to work. And that's not even factoring in school time.

So there are so many scenes where, like, we're on Sam's... Like in this scene,

when we're behind Sam in that wider shot.

That is not Sam.

We had body doubles for all the kids, just in case we ran out...

So that's not Sam there, that is Sam's double.

So it was really funny.

Like in the raw footage, whenever Sam speaks, it's, uh...

the voice of a middle-aged script supervisor... [CHUCKLES SOFTLY]

...we're hearing, which always made us, uh...

always made us laugh, this adult voice coming from the other room.

And there was a bit in here that we cut, where...

And we just found out that all our clothes are dirty.

APPEL: Oh, like, after the crying in the, uh...

When Sam's like, "I saw you crying in the closet," Nate goes,

"Oh, we're telling secrets now?" And he gets up in her face,

and he goes, "Sam sneaks down in the middle of the night

"and eats ice cream." [CHUCKLES] And she goes, "How dare you?"

[LAUGHS] But that was another one of those things.

It just made the scene a little too long.

There was also a little more hesitation

from Hadley getting on board with Nate's plan.

She, like, grabbed the iPad to call Katie,

but Gracie was like, "Wait, let's hear him out here."

Which... Which I thought helped set up Gracie lying and throwing that party

and having the friends over later, but it ended up being unnecessary.

Oh, I'll get two weeks of T-shirts...

APPEL: And this... this was super fun to shoot in a Walmart,

in a real Walmart, like, while they're...

while it's open for business. Walmarts are so huge that, basically,

they just closed down each section we were shooting in when we were shooting it.

But it's a little wish fulfilment, and I'm like, kids are really going to love this.

Just seeing other kids running around with shopping carts and knocking into stuff.

When I was a kid, there was a thing called the Toys "R" Us Super Toy Run

that was like on... I think it was like a Nickelodeon Sweepstakes thing

where you just got to run around in a Toys "R" Us with a shopping cart,

knocking things into it, and... and that's what I thought of.

That was kind of the inspiration for this.

So, we looked at lots of options that would fit,

and ultimately ended up using

We're Not Gonna Take It by Twisted Sister,

which actually ended up working better.

And it made it feel like Nate and the kids were being defiant as a team.

Which is what this really needed. They're all on board with this.

The kids are going along with it.

You know, what I've learned as a director is you always have to be open

to a different choice, because you never know.

It could end up being a better choice.

Just about everything in the montage was from the original shoot,

with the exception of Nate's running things like a dealership.

That... That we got with additional photography.

It's Nate's smart way of incentivizing his kids to do these chores

he's supposed to be doing, so he could go back to work.

...Is back!

Nate, what are you doing here?

Uh, doing what I do best.

Living life my way and selling amazing vehicles.

Peyton.

Wait! He's back? He can't be back.

Well, what about your daughters? Hey, does your wife know you're back?

Don't worry about my family. They're taken care of.

[KEEGAN LAUGHING]

GRACIE: All right, you guys can choose the next song.

You know, my ex-wife said she didn't think...

APPEL: And, uh, you know, Will and the kids here, this is a...

this is a little bittersweet to shoot.

This was the last... I think this was our last day.

So it was like... And everyone was like so close at this point, which was great.

The kids, like, loved Will so much,

them singing at the beginning of the scene,

the... the Bumble Bee song, like that is...

something that they were just doing.

They were singing it, like, before we even rolled,

and I'm like, "You know what, guys?

"Why don't we come into every scene, and you're, like,

"finishing that song and laughing?"

- [SIGHS] - I know.

Look, you want to get Brian's attention,

this is how you do it. It isn't edgy clothes.

It's to dress conservatively.

APPEL: Yeah, Nate's... Nate's solution

to the Brian problem is another just ridiculous...

Wear turtlenecks to school and take a different route to class.

Nate's way of dealing with problems is just to not deal with them.

You know, it's like, just, uh, cover yourself up

and, uh, don't look at this kid anymore.

It's just so... It's just so lazy and...

Put it on the board.

- [AIR HORN BLOWING] - [CLATTERS, SHATTERS]

Here's to work-life balance.

APPEL: The air horn was a...

[LAUGHS SOFTLY] The air horn was ridiculous.

It popped up a couple other times in the movie.

Originally, Nate pulled the air horn out in the Shark Tank greenroom.

[LAUGHS] But that was a little... It was a little too ridiculous

that Nate would have brought his little work air horn all the way to Shark Tank.

NATE: Yeah, Sam's still kissing kids.

APPEL: This shot with Nate, this was Nate's first shot in the entire movie.

This was on day one of filming.

We did three days at Toyota.

And, uh... And that was Nate's first.

He's been with us forever.

APPEL: The, uh... The horse seller here is Dusty Slay,

who was a really funny stand-up comedian

who was also on The Nateland Podcast with Nate.

Dusty is the first person we thought of for this scene.

There's something about Dusty that just

gives off a, "I'm gonna sell you a dangerous horse" vibe.

And there... And... And he's just got such a nice, like, friendly demeanor,

that it's like, "All right, I'll buy a horse from this guy.

"How bad could it be?"

The horse's name was Ace.

We call the horse Cinnamon in the movie,

but Ace was the actual... Cinnamon is in the credits as Ace.

Really incredible horse actor, the finest horse actor in, uh...

in the Atlanta area, which, uh, you'll see more of later

when he's clomping around the house knocking things over.

He had a really great trainer who... Yeah, Ace was just aces.

And, uh, this scene right here, this is something else we got

when we did additional photography.

We wanted to show that everything was working out well for Nate and the kids

before we pulled the rug out from underneath him.

And I felt it was important to tease out that

Nate was going to try to do both the spelling bee and his work party.

That scene when... when we did some test screenings,

and... and friends and family screenings,

you know, it didn't feel like there was enough tension there

in the back and forth.

Originally, it came out of nowhere during the spelling bee.

The idea that, like, today is also the day of Nate winning...

uh, accepting his award for Salesman of the Year.

But I think shining a light on it in this scene

helped increase the tension where you learn...

You know, he sets up, like, "Oh, I'm gonna do both of those things,"

and then when we see them happening, you immediately know, like,

"He's not gonna be able to do both of these things."

[AUDIENCE CLAPPING]

And the, uh, spelling bee was, uh...

This was a really fun day to shoot.

We have a lot of fun faces in the audience.

Well, I'll say first that the mug moms...

Originally, Conor was gonna be sitting by himself, but the day before this,

we shot with those ladies,

uh, the... the previous scene that we had seen with Conor and the moms,

and we had so much fun shooting with them.

There was so much laughing, the vibe was so good

that I asked them to stick around for another day

and be sitting with Conor at the spelling bee.

Other fun faces in the audience.

My wife and kids are, uh... are in this scene.

They are to the left of Nate, uh, behind him.

In between Nate and Conor in the background are, uh,

Nate and Colin's assistants.

And our producer Jeremy Latcham's parents

are over on the right side in the background in that same row.

There they are in the blue shirts. That is like our friends and family row.

- [APPLAUSE] - Unpredictable, man.

- That was a wild ride. - CONOR: Yeah.

That's not how I spell it.

- [UPBEAT MUSIC PLAYING] - [INDISTINCT CHATTER]

- [UPBEAT MUSIC PLAYING] - [INDISTINCT CHATTER]

APPEL: And here we are back at Toyota.

Salesman of the Year is happening.

This was our... This was the first shot that we got with, uh...

Yeah, the morning of our first day.

Dan and Peyton. The actual first shot was...

The actual first shot of the day was Kumail on the...

Jumbotron, which you'll see at the end of the movie.

That was the very first thing that we shot, was Jumbotron footage.

But the first, like, real scene was that little thing with Kumail and Zach.

They just keep going until there's only one kid left.

[SIGHS]

Have you not been to a spelling bee before?

[WHISPERING] They didn't have them when I was in school.

APPEL: Casting comedians, especially stand-up improv guys,

sketch comedy guys,

they give you so many options, and there's so much improv

that ends up on the cutting room floor and... and a lot of it ends up in,

like this... this little bit about, "Why don't you come sit up next to me?"

Like that was... You know, that came from Colin.

This guy eating the cake that... that cake shot, I feel like

we... we were asked to take that shot out a couple of times. [LAUGHS]

It was... People were really on the fence about that.

But we loved it so much.

We fought for it. So I hope if that background actor

that's eating the cake sees this, know that we fought for you, man.

We fought to keep you in this movie. [LAUGHS]

We just loved it.

Chill. Bring it down. I got to introduce you...

APPEL: It sort of helps make...

We wanted this... We wanted Nate's work party to look lame.

It's like, this is what you're... you're ditching your family for,

like, this lame work party with just like a bunch of...

middle-aged people milling about, eating, uh,

Nothing Bundt cake, that is a...

You'll see. [CHUCKLING] That's what they are eating.

I don't really know them.

- l was on one episode. - MIKE: Listen, don't hold out on me.

APPEL: [IN NORMAL VOICE] Mike Vanderholden here is played by comedian Derrick Stroup.

Um, he opens up for Nate a lot.

Uh, he was on Nate's CBS Christmas special.

That's how we... we learned about him.

Really funny, really nice guy.

This is the first time he ever acted, and he was fantastic, real natural.

There's a lot more to this scene that we ended up cutting,

again, for pacing,

which hopefully we'll put out in the deleted scenes.

But at the end of the shoot day,

Derrick goes up to Nate, you know,

he'd never acted before, never been on a set before.

And, uh, he goes up to Nate and goes, "Hey, before I leave,

"I want to say, uh, where's that Eric guy?

"The guy with the white Dodgers hat? He was really helping me out a lot.

"I wanted to go say bye to him."

And Nate's like, "The director of the movie?"

And he's like, "Oh, yeah, is that who he is?" [CHUCKLES]

So like, to Derrick, who had never been on a set, I was just some...

I don't know who... who I was... Like, in what capacity I worked for the movie,

but I was just some helpful guy that was, like, just giving him tips

on, like, what to say and how to say it.

[HESITATES]

Very funny and charming.

I ended up going and seeing one of Nate's shows that Derrick was at,

and Nate was, like, roasting him backstage about that moment.

And, uh, anyway, check out Derrick Stroup.

He's got a really funny Netflix special.

And, uh, yeah, I think... I think you'll be seeing a lot.

He's a real rising star.

We'll be seeing a lot... lot of him, hopefully more.

It's amazing to win Salesman of the Year, it is.

But the real prize will be when I go home...

APPEL: In this scene, there was a bit where Nate won the tickets

that made us all laugh that we ended up having to cut, again, for pacing.

And maybe 'cause it was a little too ridiculous,

but Dan originally had the Toyota next to him,

I think it was like a RAV4, present him with the tickets.

So it's like, they were on the trunk, which was open.

So Dan's like, "Presenting your tickets, the Toyota RAV4"

and he hits a button on the key fob, and the trunk lowers.

And the tickets just sort of slide off the trunk into Nate's hands, and he's like...

[CHUCKLES] Um...

"This is what you're giving up your family time for."

I just wanted you to be there.

You told me not to put all my self-worth into a dumb contest,

but look at where you are right now.

APPEL: This right here, this is Birdie's first shot of the whole movie.

She had to come in.

She had to come in hot, crying, yelling at Nate, which was, um...

I mean, she handled like such a pro.

She was, uh...

She had previously been on Stranger Things,

SO she was no, um... The final season of Stranger Things.

No stranger to acting.

And, uh, I would have been terrified as a 11-year-old,

to have to shoot all that.

But she was so good.

- [UPBEAT MUSIC PLAYING OVER SPEAKERS] - [INDISTINCT CHATTER]

KEEGAN: Looks like they're having some fun.

APPEL: Nate, this was also Nate's... you know, I should say,

Nate's first time acting, this movie.

He had... Other than SNL, Nate had never...

And one DoorDash commercial, Nate had never acted before.

What is happening?

APPEL: So it was a surprise to Nate that we shot things

out of order in the way that we did.

That we threw Nate right into like, "Yeah, we're... we're shooting

"three straight days of all of your stuff at the Toyota dealerships."

So, on one of Nate's first scenes, he's having to...

get yelled at by his daughter and soften and...

A lot of, like, complex kind of heavy acting that Nate had to do

with barely, uh, any experience.

And Jeff Dockweiler came on.

He's a great acting coach, Dock,

he came on and... and kind of helped Nate through all that, too.

And he was really... It was really fantastic to have Dock there.

It is not about lying.

No. It's about keeping us busy with shortcuts

SO you can keep doing whatever you want!

And, by the way...

APPEL: Gracie's, uh... Gracie's party's

something that we talked a lot about in prep.

I almost didn't even like calling it a party.

I imagine Gracie wanted Brian to come over, invited him.

Brian invited a couple of his friends,

a couple of those friends told their friends.

And suddenly, Gracie has, like, 20 kids at her house.

It wasn't like a rager college party, you know?

It's just like a bunch of kids milling about,

filming each other, doing TikTok dances. [CHUCKLES]

Trash day's tomorrow.

APPEL: And the dead horse bit here,

this is... this is pulled right from Nate's stand-up.

That's how the movie ended up with a horse in it in the first place,

we were trying to dramatize a lot of the ideas

that Nate had in his stand-up specials.

You know, Nate... Nate and, uh... and Lagana's original script was just...

It was all of these ideas...

A lot of ideas that came from things

that Nate had talked about on stage, sort of woven together in... in this...

in this story, in this movie plot.

The horse in the house...

[BOTH EXCLAIMING]

...which obviously, that's not something that's in Nate's stand-up.

That's just what happens when you try to move a dead horse.

We had a day and a half to shoot this stuff.

This required a ton of prep, building out a bunch of interactive gags

on the set that the horse could, uh... could interact with.

It was originally written as the horse

bucking and kicking its way through the house, but that would have been

a little too insane and violent with kids around,

SO we treated it more like a confused horse.

Just lumbering around the house.

And its big horse butt

is the thing that is like...

You know, a horse weighs a lot.

A horse tries to turn in a narrow space and sideswipes a banister.

That banister's going to get blown out from the wall.

So that's how we ended up, uh, with everything the horse does.

There was the one kick.

And... And this house is built on, uh... The exterior is an actual house.

The interior is built on stage.

So we had to have this horse at two places.

When the horse exits the front door, we had to bring this horse

into these real people's home, we had to ask permission,

can we bring a horse into your actual living room?

[CHUCKLES] And thankfully, they were okay with it.

And thankfully, the horse did not poop on their floor,

although the horse peeing would have been much worse.

Horse poop is easier to clean up. Pee is a different thing.

I remember there was one moment on the set where the...

where, uh, the horse was about to pee, and it was like, alarms going...

They're like, "The horse has to pee!" Like, everyone's running off set.

They're, like, quickly trying to get the horse out

so it can, like, fire hose all over the...

you know, all over the ground outside. [CHUCKLES]

I have fantastic news.

APPEL: Um, but just like the horse, the roof required a ton of planning.

We built a roof set on the backlot, and then we comped it in.

Let me pause real quick. That's my brother and my sister-in-law,

right there behind Mandy.

They came to set that day, and I was like, "I'm gonna put you in a shot

"that's uncuttable."

[CHUCKLES]

Unfortunately, Jeremy Latcham's daughter was in a shot

that was cuttable at Walmart. I thought it was uncuttable,

so apologize to, uh, Isabella for getting cut out of the movie.

KATIE: I could not have done any of this without you.

But yeah, we did so much prep with this... this roof.

And the roof was actually... with all the stuff on top of it,

was built on the backlot at Trilith Studios.

And we built that on stage, and we had to photograph that

from a bunch of different angles, and then comp that onto the house

that we were at in McDonough, Georgia,

which is like 45 minutes away from where we were shooting.

KEEGAN: You thought you could get what you wanted.

APPEL: And the collapse was like such a... You know, it was like a Rube Goldberg

and... and all these bungees that Keegan was using

to tie everything together, they snapped in a specific order.

And this knocked into that.

I mean, it was very detailed.

It happens very fast in the movie, but it was so planned out.

This knocks into that, which knocks into that, and it's like dominoes going down.

And these things roll down and knock out the support beam.

And then Keegan's little, like, apartment

that he built on top goes crashing through.

And the first time that we did it, there was a malfunction.

And the whole roof caved in before the top thing fell.

So we had to rebuild it all and go back and shoot it again.

So I hope you enjoyed the roof falling,

because it was... it was... That was a real barn burner.

Getting that thing to...

Getting that thing to work properly in comping and...

[SENTIMENTAL MUSIC PLAYING]

Keegan originally had a richer speech to Nate,

where he talked about how Nate's kids don't care

about seeing him on the Jumbotron, but we cut it to make room

about seeing him on the Jumbotron, but we cut it to make room

for this scene with the campout with the girls, which ended up being

one of my favorite scenes in the movie.

This we got in additional photography.

There was a different apology that he gave to the girls

after, uh, the following two scenes,

once we're at Conor's house,

but, uh, we wanted... we wanted it to just be a...

a bigger, richer apology, and just hammer,

this is where Nate sort of learns...

He... He's starting to show real growth, right?

He... He spent this alone time with the girls for the first time.

And, you know, it has taught Nate what's really important,

that it's not about winning trophies at work, it's about...

spending time with the ones you love.

And that requires you to do a lot more work,

but it's richer and... and more rewarding at the end of the day.

...sitting in the living room.

And they look out the window and they see a bear.

Just a cute bear.

APPEL: This bear story, uh, came from Nate.

Nate wrote this bear story.

...the bear gets bigger.

APPEL: Which we just really liked.

I mean, we never... we never got that deep about it in discussing it with Nate.

I don't know if you want to think of the bear story as some sort of metaphor.

Maybe...

Is Nate the bear?

Maybe the bear is Nate's responsibilities?

Uh, and they just keep getting bigger and bigger or, you know, it's...

it's something that I thought was small but turned out being real big.

It's funny that we never discussed, we just liked the way that it sounded.

And we liked the way that it got the kids laughing.

Really, that was the purpose of the speech, was to, uh, kind of...

The girls are still mad at him and he needs to disarm them.

And just see a little bit of a... a chuckle from them.

And then he could segue into this part of it, where he's talking about...

how sorry he is to each one of them for his shortcomings.

Talk about personal space and bubbles.

What?

Yeah, we got to figure that out.

Hadley...

APPEL: And Nate... I mean, I think Nate's best acting in the movie is this scene.

And it makes sense,

because it was six months after we shot the rest of the movie,

and it's like the last thing that we did with Nate.

Are you trying to spell "inexcusable"?

Yeah. Ah, you're so smart.

And Gracie, I can't even be mad at you for throwing that party.

APPEL: And Hadley looking...

Hadley being three inches taller. [CHUCKLES]

This is one... This is one of those scenes.

...that I was setting.

[PENSIVE MUSIC PLAYING]

I'm not the dad I want to be. All right?

And the truth is it's because I've never worked at it.

Loving you three came just so easily, you know?

And I thought that was enough.

But it's not.

APPEL: I also like the idea here that Nate...

that Sam doesn't even know what the... what the bubble talk is

when Nate's like, "I should have talked to you about bubbles." She's like, "What?"

[CHUCKLES] It's like he hasn't even tried.

He hasn't even attempted...

to give her that talk, even though he has now, at this point,

seen her kissing other, uh, kids at school.

I'm a salesman.

APPEL. It was also nice going back and shooting this scene,

it afforded us the opportunity to tie Nate's job into the third act.

This was a new idea that...

I was like, "Oh, I want to see that he's using his skills

"as a salesman to convince Peyton, and then, ultimately, Conor

"to lend him a house that they could shoot at."

So... So Katie's live stream ends up going okay.

We were scrambling to shoot this scene, because the position of the sun...

We didn't want it to be dark out yet.

We wanted it to be dark at Conor's house, but the sun is setting here,

and because we're shooting this at a real house,

the sun had to actually be setting, which gives us, like, one hour

to shoot this whole scene. And of course, we have two comedians

who are, like, trying to make each other laugh and breaking and...

PEYTON: Wow.

Honestly, I never thought...

APPEL: It was... [CHUCKLES]

There was so much improv.

Kumail had come back to town for this scene,

'cause we only had him for two days at the very beginning

of our schedule for the Toyota stuff, and then he came back for this.

And there was so much improv in this scene

that did not at all feel appropriate to put in the movie,

that I think was just Kumail trying to get Nate to break.

[LAUGHING] But there's takes where Nate's like,

[IN NORMAL VOICE] "I know that, you know,

"we haven't always gotten along well at work,"

and, uh, Kumail is like, "For two years, you called me Osama."

[LAUGHS]

And Nate's like, "Yeah, yeah..."

Well, you know, there was, the whole thing was going on,

that was like... that whole thing had just kind of happened.

I'm like, "We can't... We're never gonna be able to put 9/11 jokes

"into our, like, sweet family movie." [LAUGHS]

[CHUCKLES]

But that's what happens. You know, you... There's so much stuff

that ends up on the floor that, uh... that's just inappropriate.

You're making yourselves laugh.

And we're a bunch of comedians who, you know, will... will say anything.

But we definitely cannot present all of that to an audience.

But it made the crew laugh. I'll say that.

This was also shot extremely quickly.

This, uh...

And by the way, this is a very funny outfit that Conor's wearing.

There was a version of this where Nate was gonna go to the window

and see Conor inside, like, dancing to some weird music and vacuuming.

But we ended up, uh...

Really, we were just out of time.

This, uh...

This... This was shot...

You know, we did all this stuff at Conor and Angela's house

on week two of... of shooting.

I love that, Shary Shirazi, who's... who's, um, one of the execs at TriStar.

Big shout-out to Shary, we put it in and it crushed,

and, uh... and so it... it stayed in and... and we love it.

and, uh... and so it... it stayed in and... and we love it.

...look like our house

so Mom's live stream goes off without a hitch.

- Dad! Wake up. - [GASPS]

I was listening. I just had my eyes closed.

Why are you here? I texted Mom to come.

Well, she sent me. Said maybe I'd learn something.

Whatever that means. [CHUCKLES]

Okay.

My plan is five simple steps that require perfect cooperation.

- Step one, interception. - [ROUSING MUSIC PLAYING]

We have to make sure

the car that picks up Mom and Lori from the airport

is a car that we control.

Would either of you ladies care for a pistachio?

NATE: Step two...

APPEL: This heist stuff was all really fun to shoot too and figure out...

You know, things like this require a lot... a lot of planning

'cause you have to figure out, like...

You know, you're... you're shooting these things

all across the entire schedule that you're shooting the movie.

But you have to know, like, your ins and out... If you're gonna do whip pans,

everything has to be meticulously planned out,

with, like, wooshes in and out.

So, the first thing that we shot here at the Ashford House,

because again, this was all week two, when we were on location,

um, I had to shoot this part of Nate's speech.

So, you know, I had this mapped out, and I had to explain it

to the camera that it's like, and to Nate, why exactly after

every one of his lines we're, like, whipping in a different direction.

But it's like, you say this, we whip left to right, so then,

when we shoot that scene, we'll come into it left to right,

but we'll go out of it from down to up. And then we've got to go back into Nate

from down to up for his next line as we're pushing in.

And then go from right to left when we go out of it

to get into the next thing. Anyway.

Very complex.

- ...text the driver and let him know. - Great.

APPEL: That was Evan Henke as the voice of the captain.

That's our editor. Uh...

And his voice was in there in the very first assembly of the movie that I saw.

And that... And we never changed it.

And it made it all the way through.

Congratulations, Evan Henke. [LAUGHS]

Does it look too nice in here?

I mean, for you.

Uh, you know what? You're right.

Hey, Conor, you got any dry spaghetti we can throw on the floor?

APPEL: This was tough, too.

This... This we shot a million times trying to get the timing right.

It looks pretty simple.

That shot of... just that shot that moved,

that Steadicam shot that moves around as they're all, um...

getting the house ready.

It's not that big and crazy of a move, but it's just...

These things are just kind of tricky to pull off

and have land exactly the way you want to land.

And it's not like we had a lot of rehearsal time,

because we're in this... we're at a location.

We weren't on stage, so we couldn't go in one night

and figure it out or, like, on a lunch break.

I didn't even see that house fully dressed

until the day that we got there to film it.

So we kind of had to figure all that out on the, uh...

on the fly,

and then just rehearse it as we were shooting it.

So I don't know, that's probably, like,

the 10th or 11th take that we end up using.

If this goes wrong...

- I love you, son. - You love me?

APPEL: And the fun thing about the third act of this movie

is we get to dip into all of these different genres,

which is super fun to me,

which, if any of you listening to this have seen my Weird: Al Yankovic movie,

there's a lot of, like, genre jumping we do.

l... I like putting in moments that feel like moments

from other types of movies that I love, so...

I... I don't even...

- You know this man? - Yeah, this is my...

APPEL: You get Nate planning.

You get your whole heist sequence

when Nate's planning what they're gonna do.

It turns into, like, a little bit of an action movie there,

where Nate's dad's driving.

Yeah, we were on our way to the house now, and...

APPEL: And then... And Lori's, uh...

I love Lori's... [CHUCKLES]

That line from Lori really makes me laugh.

"You know this man?"

My car is just fine.

APPEL. Lori was really great.

We shot this before we went to Shark Tank.

So I guess that was one nice thing when I went to Shark Tank,

I already knew Lori from shooting with her, so...

I was... I was hoping... I'm like,

"Tell the other sharks that I'm... that I'm an all right guy..." [CHUCKLES]

"cause I have to direct them."

But it was wild having Lori in... in Georgia with us.

In this, again, I will say, second week of shooting the movie.

We're shooting the whole third act of the movie in the second week.

And on day two of that week, being at this house,

I got strep throat.

So, on day one of shooting at the house, shooting this big ending sequence...

Or maybe it's... We shot the Conor and Angela outdoor scene

was the first thing we shot.

Of course, there was a thunderstorm

and there was lightning, and we all had to go to lunch,

and then we had to stop down because of thunder and lightning,

and I just started feeling really under the weather.

And they ended up calling the day

because we were gonna have thunderstorms for the rest of the day.

I went home, took some NyQuil, thought I was gonna sleep it off,

woke up the next day feeling even worse, and they sent a doctor over to my house.

And it turns out that I had strep throat, so we lost a day of shooting.

So this whole third act of the movie, it's like...

This is with a lost day of shooting,

and there's so much to do here, and it's all so complicated,

and it involves the entire cast and a horse...

and a shark, not a real shark, but a TV one. And, uh...

And it was just a lot, it was... it was a lot.

We were all really thrown into it.

Nate's... Nate's first experience on a movie set was really...

Started out just shot out of a cannon.

And there was a scene... There was a scene that we cut, I should mention, too,

where Nate gives the horse a pep talk, which was really funny,

like before, when he... After he sees it, before he's riding it.

It's a better cut going straight to him riding it.

NATE: Whoa! Whoa! Coming in hot!

APPEL: And also, it was very hard for him to, uh...

The horse wouldn't really look him in the eyes,

because it just wanted to eat horse food out of the trash can.

So it's a lot of horse...

Nate trying to, like, redirect the horse's face as he's talking.

He keeps having to stop to go, "Shh. Shh."

"It's okay, just here. Look at me right here."

I had to make a deal with him.

Let's just say our house isn't exactly camera-ready.

Oh, no, no, no, no.

APPEL: And another thing I should say too, is, uh,

when Nate was searching the house before,

we actually just hid the Star Minder in the house,

and that's Nate actually searching for it.

And I ended up having to tell him where it was,

'cause I hid it in a place where we had never filmed.

It was just, like, at the end of a hallway that was just background

when he finds the Star Minders.

This scene too.

What's the most complicated about this, where Nate's in the bushes,

is this is shot over the course of three different days.

So the car pulling up to the house,

and the stuntman, Ben, flying off the horse,

that is one day where it is beautiful and sunny,

clear blue skies.

Lori walking into the house

and her coming back out to talk to Katie,

that's a different day when she's exiting the car.

Her inside the car talking to Mandy

is a different day

as is when Mandy is going up to Nate at the bushes,

and the weather is different every single day.

So you can see how it's grey.

It is, like, straight-up raining this day when Mandy is talking to him.

But then, like, in wider shots, we did some sky replacement.

We're all... [SIGHS]

Just a... Just a real nightmare having to deal with the weather.

And... And, of course, it's all because we were on location

for the first four weeks of shooting this movie,

and the weather was just totally unpredictable.

And then once we got onto the stage where we shot all the interiors,

beautiful and sunny outside every single day, no rain at all.

That's probably an exaggeration, but...

[CINNAMON WHINNIES]

You look really familiar. Where, uh... Where do I know you from?

I'm on Shark Tank.

No...

APPEL: I love this joke where he recognizes her,

but not from Shark Tank.

[CHUCKLING] Like, where else would he know Lori from?

I missed you guys. Hi.

[PLEASANT MUSIC PLAYING]

APPEL: We played a lot with, uh, Katie's anger level outside the house.

We couldn't make her too, too furious just because she has to soften

when she walks inside and see. It's anger, it's confusion,

it's... There's a little bit of betrayal,

but then she comes in and is genuinely impressed.

Now, if we remember way back to the start of this film,

Nate was a guy who could not even get the trash out onto the curb on time,

and now he has, like, completely redecorated

the interior of Conor and Angela's house

to make it feel like home and make it feel like it's all of...

It has Katie's warm, feminine touch. It's got...

All of her favorite stuff is there.

The kids' artwork, like, her crafting table.

So, uh, she's... She is truly touched at that moment where she walks in,

and it's... Really, it's the effort that, uh... that surprises her.

So good! Three poised daughters,

and a husband who, I have to say, is incredibly good at...

Maintaining comfortable eye contact?

- Exactly. - NATE: Yes.

APPEL: And again, the footage for the live stream is shot on, like,

the tiniest, crappiest camera that, like, a background actor is holding. [LAUGHS]

That we're just like, "We're just gonna roll on this."

She's going to kill me.

Why did she say this is her house?

Because this is my house, dollface. This is my house.

What is happening?

Listen, delay the live stream!

- Nate... - HADLEY: Dad...

APPEL: Kate Berlant, who I love so much and I wish was in more of the movie,

her saying "dollface" really cracks me up.

"This is my house, dollface."

That was her just improvising, and we cracked up on set.

No, no. It's done.

It's over. It's...

All right.

APPEL: Yeah. So this right here, so Nate gives this speech here.

And... Nate had been... This is the big... It's act three.

It's Nate giving his big, "Let me sum it all up for you,

"here's the moral of the story,

"here's what I've learned" speech.

...unlivable mess right now.

I thought I could do what you do.

APPEL: And I think he's great.

We did... We did many takes of this, because I have to say,

one more time, Nate, at this point, has been an actor for maybe eight days

of his life, okay? [LAUGHS]

He is 46 years old.

He's been an actor for the last eight days.

And actually, in between, I think those...

It was maybe, like, five days from the first week,

then Nate went and did stand-up in some other city

'cause he was touring while we were shooting.

Nate went and did stand-up and then he came back to us

and had to get back into, like, "I'm an actor" mode.

But he is such a natural and... and that's... that's why

when, you know, I was originally approached with this,

I was a fan of his stand-up, and, uh...

coming into this, I was like,

"I... I think Nate is really going to be able to pull this off."

Even though he hasn't acted before,

you know, a lot of it is based on his stand-up

and, uh, his... his persona that he's cultivated.

But he's got such a natural, breezy way of talking

and what people love about Nate, it's his cadence, is like...

the way he says things.

And I was like, "All right, if I can just get Nate to not be in his own head

"and to just speak naturally and talk the way that he does

"and act the way that he does on stage,

"I think that we're gonna end up with a really great performance."

And Nate gave me... It was everything that I could have hoped for and more.

I think Nate did a really great job playing a, you know, sort of,

alternate universe version of Nate Bargatze...

[CHUCKLES] ...in... in Nate Wilcox.

That... That shot of Nate hugging the kids and... and picking up Charlotte,

that we did when we did additional photography.

We rebuilt that wall from the... the Ashfords' house.

The original hug is something...

When he originally hugged the kids, we got only one take of it,

and we thought of it at the last minute when we were shooting,

we were like, "We should get a shot of Nate hugging the kids."

And Nate, at this point, barely knows the girls.

His hug felt a little like,

I don't know. It just wasn't... It wasn't like a real fatherly hug.

And then I'm like, "Let's see if we could redo this hug,"

you know, when we go back to shoot these additional scenes, and, uh...

it's like Little Women, all of a sudden,

that day when he's picking the girls up at the end of this.

My little breadwinners. [LAUGHS]

Candy! Give me! Give me! Give me!

NATE: Please make it last past the second quarter.

Hadley, vegetables.

APPEL: And then, yeah, here we are. Here we are at the end.

Nate is now...

Him and... and Katie have found the right work-life balance.

Nate now works as the salesman.

Uh, he's the head of sales for Katie's Star Minder company.

They both... They are both able to work from home,

and they're able to split their parenting duties.

And in a perfect world, we would all be doing this, right?

We'd all be working, uh... We'd all... We'd all be working from home.

Someday, when robots are doing everything for us,

maybe we'll all be able to just stay at home

and spend time with our families. [LAUGHS]

But these two are really living the dream.

And we got all of these shots, all of these stadium shots,

a couple of months after we finished shooting.

We went to Nissan Stadium,

and along with NFL Films,

who helped us shoot this footage at the stadium.

We got all these shots at an actual Titans game.

They were playing the Rams, if you look real closely,

you could see a bunch of people wearing Rams jerseys.

[ALL CHEERING]

And I had, like, an all... Oh, and that's my voice, by the way.

I am the announcer.

You might recognize the voice of the announcer.

That's me. That's my big cameo in this movie.

Not just my hands or my scream.

I'm also the voice of the announcer,

which I did on set and then, uh, redid for the movie.

But when we were at this Titans game,

I had... I had, like, an all-access pass

to be on the field.

I've been to football games before, but never that close.

And there was actually a moment where I was on the sideline

when the game started. We were just getting all this footage.

And the NFL Films guys have done this a million times.

They know what they're doing.

But I'm standing on the sideline and, like, kickoff is happening,

and I'm like literally on the line.

Like, I'm standing on the sideline, the... the cheerleaders are behind me.

That's how close I am to the game, and I'm wondering,

am I suppo... Like, is someone going to tell me to move?

And they did just to make way for, like, the camera.

You know, there's, like, a camera truck that drives around on the field.

But it was insane having that kind of access

and being that close to an NFL game.

I'm like, "If I trip and fall, I'm literally on the field."

I'm like, "I could streak right now."

I could... My lifelong dream of streaking at a football game.

I've never been in better position to do it,

but, uh... but I ended up bailing 'cause I like my life.

And I don't... [LAUGHS] I don't want to ruin it.

...one of the days. I don't know the day, but it's a day.

Wait, it's trash day!

APPEL: And... And then here we are.

Here we are. We are in our, uh... This is our gag reel. Thank you.

For those who have stuck around with me all the way until the end credits,

thank you very much.

"Put your trash in your pockets, take it to your homes."

APPEL: I gave a shout-out to a friend of mine, Colin Mulligan,

a friend of mine from high school who loves watching commentaries.

He watches every single...

He texts me almost every day about something he has learned

from another DVD or Blu-ray commentary that he's watched.

The man loves commentary tracks.

And I told him for... "For as long as we keep making them..."

We love physical media, everyone.

"As long as we keep making these commentary tracks,

"and I keep doing them, I will shout you out at the end of every commentary track."

So, Colin Mulligan, this is for you, buddy. [CHUCKLES]

NATE: You don't think about that when you buy a horse.

That's a huge thing dying in your yard.

You can't just scoot it off into the woods...

APPEL: So yeah, the idea here at the end of the movie,

uh, for this gag reel was to let...

We wanted audiences to know that a lot of this,

a lot of the ideas in this movie came from Nate's stand-up.

You know, this all started with Nate and Dan Lagana

figuring out a theatrical feature for Nate that would...

much like a... you would base a sitcom.

Everybody Loves Raymond is based off the comedy of Ray Romano.

The Breadwinner is based off the comedy of, uh... of Nate Bargatze.

[ALL LAUGHING]

[ALL SLURPING]

We were the breadwinners.

APPEL: So we sort of... You know, we used gags.

It works as a gag reel, and it's also, you know,

all these funny jokes from... from years of Nate doing stand-up.

And we even snuck in that "whipped cream, with cream" joke,

even though it's not really... [LAUGHS]

It doesn't... I mean, they do use whipped cream

in the movie, so it ties, but we love that joke so much.

Nicole Brown, president of TriStar, huge fan of that joke of Nate's,

and was like, "We have to figure out a way to work in

"that 'whipped cream with cream' joke, which we all love,"

and, uh, we found a way to work it in, which is great, and then here we are.

We're looking at credits now.

We're looking at credits, we're listening to the, uh, score suite by Zach and Leo,

and, uh...

I'm gonna keep talking all the way to the bitter end, folks.

Company 3, I see Company 3 in here.

We did, uh... They did our color.

Love Company... Love Company 3.

Jill, our colorist, also colored Wicked.

She colored Joker.

I mean, a lot of very beautiful, very colorful movies.

Her first... Here's a fun fact about... Here's a fun fact about Jill.

Jill's first movie working in the color department was

O Brother, Where Art Thou?

Which, uh, was like the first movie to use that digital coloring.

And we talked about it while we were, uh, doing the color, and I'm like,

"Oh, wow, I know all about... I remember watching

"those DVD special features on... on the coloring in that movie."

And she's like, "Well, that's me as, like, a 20-year-old.

"Like, I'm in there.

"You see a lot of me."

And I have not gone back and watched it again, but... but I'll have to do that.

Signed, Sealed, Delivered. Stevie Wonder.

We love Stevie Wonder.

I put that Stevie Wonder... That's another, uh...

Not the cheapest song to put in your movie.

And I put it at the end of the movie just 'cause I love the song

and I'm like, "This feels really great."

This is a really happy song to sort of go out on,

and it gives you a really good feeling, and, uh...

Nicole Brown watched it at our first screening,

and she was like, "I love this Stevie...

"We have to keep this song, at least through all the testing.

"We'll figure it out at the end."

And, um... And then we ended up getting it.

Thank you to Tom Rothman, the chairman here at Sony Pictures,

for getting us this Stevie Wonder song.

This was our gift from Tom

at the end of the, uh... of the shoot.

And, um... And I'm very thankful that we got it,

'cause it's such a fantastic track to put at the end of the movie.

And, um... And sustainability makes a difference, folks.

I want to leave you with that.

If there's one thing I want to leave you with,

it's that sustainability... [CHUCKLES] ...truly does make a difference.

We want a greener Earth here.

Nate's got some very funny jokes...

[CHUCKLING] about recycling and, like, Earth Day

that are... that kind of run counter to what I just said,

but, everyone, recycle!

This has been... I hope you enjoyed The Breadwinner.

Until next time.