Scarlett Johansson, Adam Driver and Noah Baumbach Discuss ‘Marriage Story’: “No One Had Any Ego About It”

Adam Driver and Noah Baumbach fans rejoice: the actor and director have teamed up again, this time brought along Scarlett Johansson for the upcoming Netflix film Marriage Story. At the 57th New York Film Festival on Friday, Baumbach, Johansson, and Driver took the stage for a post-screening press conference, joined by fellow cast members Laura Dern, Ray Liotta, and Alan Alda, and producer David Heyman.

Baumbach, who also wrote the script for Marriage Story, based the story partially on his own experience with divorce, both as a child of divorced parents and as a husband who went through a divorce himself (with actor Jennifer Jason Leigh, who filed in 2011). In Marriage Story, Charlie (Driver) and Nicole (Johansson) are a married couple with a young child going through a brutal legal divorce process. Charlie is a stage director, Nicole is an actress, and they live on opposite coasts. Both want to maintain a relationship with their son, and with each other, but the emotional and physical distance wears them down.

Despite the semi-autobiographical nature, during the press conference, Baumbach pushed back on the idea that the film was fully “his.” “It’s about them,” he said, gesturing to Driver and Johansson, who were sitting to his left. “I find I’m watching their movie, and not mine.”

That said, he later stated that when Driver and Johansson were filming their character’s big fight scene, “It was the first time in my career as a director that I felt affected by what was going on in ways that I hadn’t anticipated.” The director explained that they rehearsed the scene heavily before filming, and took breaks while shooting in order to get through it. “We do a lot of takes. It was exhausting. Much more so for them. We would have to take breaks, walk around the block.” He said he then went through the entire exhausting process again in the edit of the film. “When [Baumbach’s long-time editor] Jennifer Lame and I did it all again, it was the same thing. We had to take breaks and work on other scenes because it was so intense.”

This is Baumbach’s fourth film working with the Star Wars actor, but his first time directing Johansson. At the press conference on Friday, the Avengers actress arrived late due to traffic. After she arrived, she said she knew she was in the second Baumbach sent her a scene with her character. (Baumbach also said he wrote the roles with Driver and Johansson in mind.) “”I said, ‘I’ll see you on set, I guess!” she joked. She also spoke to the way Baumbach and the crew gave her the space to deliver the emotional performances that she and Driver delivered. “No one had any ego about it. You have to be in a safe, comfortable space to be embarrassing and ugly, and that’s how you discover what you see on the screen. Working with Noah, it feels like you can do no wrong, and it feels like there is a fluidity in the film. ”

The actress went on to speak about finding the comedy in the film that is ultimately about divorce. “Life is so dynamic. A lot of sad things are also hilarious. To me anyway!”

Alda, the 83-year-old actor best known for his role on M.A.S.H. who plays one of Charlie’s lawyers in the film, spoke to the performances from the two leads. “There is a moment near the end where Scarlett and Adam don’t say anything, but just look at each other, and I swear to god, I could read their thoughts.”

And fans of Driver and Johansson can look forward to watching the two actors flex their singing muscles in Marriage Story, as both sing a song from the musical Company. “I kind of half-joked that I reverse engineered the movie so that the two of them could sing those songs,” said Baumbach with a laugh.

Marriage Story will open in select theaters on November 6, before hitting Netflix globally on December 6.

Stream Marriage Story on Netflix