Updated with some more Love and Other Drugs interviews. Click the thumbnails to go watch the videos.
Videos: More LAOD Interviews
Gyllenhaal, Hathaway's bond made 'Drugs' easy to swallow
In their latest project, Jake Gyllenhaal and Anne Hathaway embrace their right to bare arms. And legs. And shoulders. And backs. And, um, assorted other body parts.
The Brokeback Mountain stars team again for Love & Other Drugs, one of director Edward Zwick’s rare big-screen forays into the world of relationships and romance that date to 1986’s About Last Night with Rob Lowe and Demi Moore.
The 58-year-old producer/director has also explored these themes as the creator of the TV shows thirtysomething (1987-91) and Once and Again (1999-2002).
In Zwick’s new dramedy, opening Wednesday, Gyllenhaal, 29, plays Jamie Randall, a slick pharmaceutical salesman peddling the likes of Zoloft and Viagra, who spurns his womanizing ways when he falls for Maggie (Hathaway), a young artist with early-onset Parkinson’s as well as major commitment issues.
“It was an intimate movie, obviously, and one that really depended on getting to know each other,” Zwick says. However, the two performers came in with a connection both personal and professional.
Gyllenhaal and Hathaway worked only eight days together on 2005’s Brokeback Mountain, which cast the two performers as a married couple, but they had the luxury of a long rehearsal period to perfect some of the key sequences with Zwick, from the heartfelt finale to Jamie’s first panic-inducing moment of saying “I love you” to Maggie.
“The first thing (Zwick) said to me was, ‘I’ve seen you be vulnerable in movies, but can you not be vulnerable?’ I was like, ‘Yeah! I can not be vulnerable!’ That was a big thing,” Gyllenhaal says. “Real actors respond to someone saying, ‘Trust your instinct.’ ”
Avoiding cliché was key for Hathaway, 28. “We were sitting there doing the scene, and we just started to improv. I was asking him if he was OK and if he wanted a glass of water and he did, and I tried to rub his shoulders and that’s when he’s like, ‘Don’t touch me!’ And I was like, ‘All right!’ And that made it into the movie, his reaction and my yelp and the whole thing.”
There was also a lot of collaboration in the film’s frequent love scenes and sequences with the two stars in various states of partial and total undress. Gyllenhaal admits Love & Other Drugs is definitely a racy film, but in a different way from Brokeback Mountain, which featured an on-screen romance between him and Heath Ledger.
“It’s sexy, but in a really good way,” Gyllenhaal says. “When two people are in love, they’re comfortable with each other — naked physically, literally and figuratively — and we wanted to portray that.”
Hathaway says that figuring out how they were going to do “this nudity thing” was one of the first conversations they had with Zwick. “We’ve pretty much seen each other partially naked before. It removed any kind of shyness and modesty about it. It made it very practical, like, ‘Oh, we’ve done this!’ There are no surprises there, nothing to be embarrassed about, so I think we were able to launch into it with confidence.”
Mapping Jamie and Maggie’s sexual relationship was a particularly big part of the movie as they became closer and more intimate, according to Gyllenhaal. “The sex they literally have is primal, the positions and everything. That’s Annie’s idea.”
He laughs. “It’s funny that I never think about these things. When you make a movie, it’s just this thing you’re doing among a very small group of people, and then you’re talking to people about how you were naked.”
Hathaway says that Gyllenhaal went out of his way to make sure she always felt comfortable on the set. “He’s a very strong person, so he likes to give a lot to people, and sometimes I do worry about him giving too much.
“I want to say, ‘I’m good, dude. Take care of yourself. Don’t worry about it.’ That protective instinct is really, really strong within him.”
Zwick sees a competitive streak between them, but in the very best way. “They’re both determined to bring their best game to every scene and every moment. They push each other to do the same,” he says.
Gyllenhaal, however, finds the secret of their chemistry in the sense of shared rhythm between himself and Hathaway. “We’re both incredibly musical, so all the rhythms in the movie — be they comedic, dramatic, sexual, whatever — we really feed off of each other really well,” he says.
“I don’t think another two people could have had the same thing, or me with someone else or her with someone else. We have something very special, I think, and I cherish that.”
Videos: Recent LAOD Interviews
All them videos with recent LAOD interviews have also been added now. Click the thumbnails to go watch the videos.
Jake Gyllenhaal LAOD Interview
As Anne Hathaway tells Jake Gyllenhaal in “Love & Other Drugs” after he rebounds from a thrashing with an invite for coffee: “Oh, you’re good.” And he is.
When the actor gets on the phone from New York at nearly 6 p.m. on a recent Saturday he reveals, “I just want you to know you’re the last interview of the day. We saved the best for last.”
If he’s exhausted from answering the same half-dozen questions on a loop for the past eight hours, he doesn’t betray it. Besides, who else would inquire about the ink?
Asked about the fake Steelers tattoo he unveiled on “Jimmy Kimmel Live” in December, he says, “You know my devotion then. You know my deep devotion to Pittsburgh.”
As for that team logo on his lower back, he playfully asks, “What do you mean? That’s a real tattoo,” but of course it will be covered up in any future movies. And then he lets the cheeky ruse drop and volunteers, “I really legitimately had a wonderful time when I was in Pittsburgh.”
Pressed about some favorite haunts, he says, “Oh, gosh. Let’s see, I went to so many places. I like to eat. I ate my way around. I ate everywhere. I wish I could remember the names of everything.”
Without any prompting, he recalls, “I loved Dish — the restaurant Dish. I did love the pancakes at Pamela’s, I’d have to say, which is probably the go-to. 21st Street Coffee. There was a Greek place that was right where I lived [in Squirrel Hill], I don’t remember the name.”
Mr. Gyllenhaal, who shot the Ed Zwick film from mid-September to late November 2009, says, “I was surprised at how much I loved all the food and actually how much I loved Pittsburgh. … I loved the change of seasons there, and I loved the people there and I had a great time. I would love to make another movie in Pittsburgh.”
Jake Gyllenhaal: Brokeback Was Just Acting!
Jake Gyllenhaal and Anne Hathaway team up—and majorly get it on—for the first time since Brokeback Mountain in their new rom-com Love and Other Drugs (which we can’t stop raving about).
“It’s different because this story is about us,” Jake told us on the carpet for his premiere at the AFI Fest presented by Audi. “The other story was about how we were not into each other.”
And Gyllenhaal is hoping his chemistry with Hathaway in this flick will set the horny record straight. Way straight:
“I would hope that this could clear the air that it was acting,” J.G. said referring to his homolicious role in Brokeback with late BFF Heath Ledger.
“[Anne and I] have sex like 16 or 17 times in this one,” laughed Jake to reporters about his and “Annie’s” chemistry (which is real good).
“To be making a movie also that can be easily cliché and work with someone that talented just ups the game,” Gyllenhaal told us about why he had so much fun on this par-tick flick.
“Maybe it’s our experience in movies past or our love for each other as friends, but there’s real stuff going on. That makes it more special than any romantic comedy I’ve seen lately.”
Oh yeah, and the fact that Jake’s hot tush, abs and invitation muscles are on display totally doesn’t hurt either.
Once we saw the flick for a second time and could pay attention to the acting instead of bod, we think J.G. could get his name thrown around the mix during awards season. At least for a Globe!
BTW, we are also way prepared after you guys check this movie out to answer your “can Anne and Jake please be together in real life?” questions in the Bitch-Backs.
Sorry—strictly plutonic there folks.
But, Jake, don’t totally distance yourself from Brokeback. That role and this one equally showcase your amazing talent and yumness.
We’ll take ya either way!
