Paul Feig describes 2018’s A Simple Favor and its sequel, this month’s Another Simple Favor, as “the most personal films that I’ve made.” If you’re familiar with the franchise, that may come as a surprise: The first film is a pulpy suburban noir that features incest, murder, infidelity, and an increasingly deranged set of wigs and disguises worn by Blake Lively—all seen through the lens of a mommy vlogger named Stephanie, played by Anna Kendrick. The second film, set in Capri, features less infidelity, but more murder and about the same amount of incest. Feig clarifies: “There’s martinis everywhere, and Blake’s inspiration for her costume in the first one was me, basically,” he says, referring to Lively’s character Emily and her proclivity for three-piece suits. “We had all these different ideas and looks and she was like, ‘Well, I’m gonna dress like you.’”
Meeting Feig at London’s Ham Yard Hotel, it’s easy to understand how his own sense of personal style might have leached into A Simple Favor: the 62-year-old is dressed to the nines, wearing a crisp three-piece pinstripe suit from Isaia, with an orange rosette affixed to the extraordinarily wide lapel. Although he’s best-known for screwball comedies like Bridesmaids and Spy—which are fondly remembered for their bawdy, and/or disgusting, setpieces and foul-mouthed main characters, as opposed to their visuals—Feig says he feels very strongly about aesthetics, and wishes that others would take more care in how they dress, as he does. “When I talk to guys, it’s like, ‘Don’t just dress to not get arrested.’ Figure out what your style is,” he says. “Your style could be a suit and tie, it could be Hawaiian shirts, but it’s your calling card — when I meet you for the first time, I’m judging you no matter what, no matter how much I don’t want to, I’m forming an opinion of you. So what are your clothes saying to people? What do you want me to think about you?”
Hence the Simple Favor movies, which use endearingly over-the-top outfits to convey tone and personality: in the new film, Lively’s Emily, a sexy bisexual scammer whose only two modes are ‘alluring’ and ‘terrifying’, announces her release from prison with a ridiculous couture prison suit and gets married in a white latex bodysuit with a veil that looks like it’s been dipped in blood; Kendrick’s Stephanie, a woefully out-of-her-depth soccer mum, wears ill-fitting suits reminiscent of Emily’s in the first film. Feig has worn suits since he was a child—inspired by Cary Grant in His Girl Friday, he asked his mother to buy him a three-piece Pierre Cardin suit at the tender age of nine, and wore suits throughout his teen years. He started to dress more casually in his 20s, when he was doing stand-up, because “comedy was getting a little more grungy” in the 80s and 90s, and he wanted to look “a little less buttoned-up.”
In his mid-30s, as he started looking for projects to work on after Freaks and Geeks, his seminal but under-loved teen comedy that launched the careers of Linda Cardellini, Seth Rogen, James Franco and Jason Segel, among others, Feig began wearing suits again, in part to avoid feeling like “a kid in the principal’s office” when he was meeting with suit-wearing studio executives. Ironically, “as soon as I started doing it, the suits started wearing t-shirts and jeans, because they didn’t like being called the suits.” He quickly realised that his childhood uniform was his natural mode, and kept wearing suits even as the world started to dress more casually. Now, Feig has transitioned away from the “American mall men’s store, three suits for $500” deals of his teenage years and gets his suits made around Savile Row—by Anderson & Sheppard, or Terry Haste of Kent & Haste—or buys made-to-measure from Isaia. Although he prefers loose, Italian-style tailoring, Feig also gravitates towards Americana—he mostly wears Cowboy boots—and classic American brands like Ralph Lauren. “[A lot of] suits, you can’t wear with cowboy boots, because they’re so tapered at the bottom,” he says. At the end of the day, “I just like to not be predictable with what I wear.”
Another Simple Favor adopts that mishmash of Italian luxury and American sensibilities: the action in this film is moved to Capri—which speaks to Feig’s own love affair with the lush Italian island. “I love Capri – my wife and I have been going there for 30 years now. It’s such a cinematic place that, forever, I was like ‘I gotta shoot something here’,” he says. “I’ve avoided sequels in the past because I feel like when a movie works, it’s the discovery of those characters for the first time that makes it successful. You really have to put them in a whole new place [for the sequel] and so we were like ‘Well, wait, Capri!’ Anna’s character thinks she’s finally mastered seeing everything weird and challenging in the US, and then you put her in a completely foreign land with ultra rich people and the mob – it felt like a good way to go.”
Lorenzo Sisti
Amazon Content Services
Feig broke his no-sequels rule—which has remained steadfast, despite the scores of fans clamoring for Spy 2—for Another Simple Favor because he “just had this feeling of like, ‘I think there’s more we can do with these characters’”. The original film was released in 2018 and was a box office success, but found a new life on streaming during the pandemic; Another Simple Favor will be released on Amazon Prime Video, despite Feig’s very public love of the cinema experience. “Would I love to be in theatres? Sure. But I’m really happy that it’s gonna be on Prime Video, because the amount of audience we get exposed to is so much bigger,” he says, although he admits it’s frustrating that comedy, his primary genre, is now seen as a ‘streaming genre’. “We engineer our movies for audiences – we’ll do anywhere from three to nine test screenings and adjust based on what the audience is laughing at … [But] you can’t fight [streaming]. It’s not the 1940s anymore.”
Either way, the cinemas vs streaming debate is hardly the water-cooler topic hanging over Another Simple Favor. That would be the reports of Lively and Kendrick feuding on-set, spurred on by Lively’s legal complaint against Justin Baldoni, the director of her romantic drama hit It Ends With Us, which have metastasized into a messy, complicated public feud. In December, Feig commented on the lawsuit, describing Lively as “one of the most professional, creative, collaborative, talented and kind people I’ve ever worked with”; since then, he has dispelled rumours that Lively and Kendrick are fighting, because his experiences working with her differ so greatly from the tabloid narrative. “Blake is an amazing collaborator, so when I read people’s misconceptions about how movies are made, it’s just frustrating for me,” he says. “Every star I’ve worked with works this way. The idea that a star just shows up and you go ‘Here’s the script’ – please point me to one movie star who works that way. So when the gang on the internet get [up in arms] about something, it’s just like, guys, you don’t know what you’re talking about. I love working with Blake – she’s just the best.”
“Outrage is the most boring emotion humans have these days – when it’s towards something meaningful, that’s great. But people get outraged at everything,” he says. “It’s like, this is what you’re angry about? There’s other things to be outraged about – please, go and help make the world a better place.”
