With director Charlie McDowell’s Windfall now streaming on Netflix, I recently spoke with Jason Segel about making the Hitchcockian thriller. Written by McDowell's frequent collaborator Justin Lader as well as Seven scribe Andrew Kevin Walker, the film is about a wealthy couple (Lily Collins and Jesse Plemons) who arrive at their vacation home only to find it's being robbed by Segel.
Unlike many films that explain every character’s motivation and feature people making decisions dictated by studio notes and test screening audiences, Windfall takes the opposite approach. In the film, Segel is known as Nobody, while Plemons is simply called CEO, and Collins is credited as Wife. And while you’ll learn a lot about each character, not everything is explained, and it’s refreshing. McDowell and his screenwriting team let the viewer decide why certain things are happening and between that and the three great performances by Segel, Collins, and Plemons, Windfall is worth your time.
During the interview, Segel talked about the unusual way they made the film, why they used a clip from Three Amigos!, how the film happened, if he came up with a backstory for Nobody, why he’s happy he made The End of the Tour, and what someone should watch if they’ve never seen his work. In addition, Segel said he starts filming Shrinking in a few weeks, where he plays a grieving therapist who is done treating his patients by the ethical code of conduct and starts to tell them how he really feels about them. Segel will serve as writer and executive producer, and the Apple TV+ series was created by Ted Lasso co-creator Bill Lawrence and Roy Kent himself, Brett Goldstein.
Watch what Jason Segel had to say in the player above, and below is exactly what we talked about.
- If someone has never seen anything he’s done before what is the first thing they should watch and why?
- Why he’s happy he took on The End of the Tour when he didn’t think he was good enough to play the role.
- How did Windfall happen?
- Segel talks about the unusual way they made the movie.
- How they made the movie in the heart of COVID when people were wiping down their bags to be safe.
- How the crew was small and what they did to stay safe.
- Why they used a clip from Three Amigos! in the film.
- Did he come up with a backstory for his character since it’s not in the film?
- What’s the status of his upcoming series Shrinking which was created by Ted Lasso co-creator Bill Lawrence and Brett Goldstein?
