Olivia Wilde, Seth Rogen, Edward Norton and Penélope Cruz star in The Invite.
A24
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A24
The brand new comedy movie The Invite facilities on an sad married couple who host one other couple — they dwell upstairs — for an uncomfortable, and revelatory, night of dinner and charcuterie. The movie’s screenwriters, Rashida Jones and Will McCormack, are actors who’re additionally longtime writing and producing companions.
Jones and McCormack met a long time in the past, when McCormack’s sister (actor Mary McCormack) set them up on a date. It did not work out as a romantic pairing. As a substitute, it was the beginning of a long-running artistic partnership.
“We’re actually like brother and sister who dated briefly, which isn’t bizarre,” McCormack jokes. “I believe we each knew proper from the very starting that we have been linked and that we needed to be in one another’s lives. And it took us a minute to sit down down to jot down, however lastly we did, and I am so glad we did.”
Jones says she and McCormack share a voice: “The 2 of us have the identical clip, the identical rhythm, and we’re so completely different in so some ways, however we simply type of like match like puzzle items conversationally in a short time, which is a superb factor to have with a writing companion.”
Impressed by the 2020 Spanish movie The Folks Upstairs, The Invite takes place over the course of 1 night time in a chicly appointed condo in San Francisco. Two {couples} collect for dinner, and because the night unfolds, the tales they have been telling themselves about their relationships and about themselves crumble.
McCormack describes the movie as a intercourse comedy that is probably not about intercourse. “It is about eager to be seen and heard and valued,” he says. “You reside with somebody for thus lengthy and it is actually exhausting.”
Jones says it is no accident that their work tends to give attention to relationships and center age: “Selfishly, it is nice that we will channel the factor we’re most involved in, which is relationships, residing with different folks, being dad and mom, shedding dad and mom, being alive, getting older, being middle-aged, trying straight down the barrel of the again half of life. All these items we obtained to deliver to this script.”
Interview highlights
Will McCormack and Rashida Jones attend the Los Angeles premiere of The Invite on June 23, 2026.
Valerie Macon/AFP by way of Getty Photos
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Valerie Macon/AFP by way of Getty Photos
On their working relationship
Jones: We write individually. We write collectively. We’re in an open relationship as writers, a really wholesome, open relationship. However once we come collectively, there is a factor that occurs.
McCormack: I believe we all the time discovered the identical issues humorous. … And I believe additionally the identical issues kind of broke our hearts, and I believe that we needed to attempt to say one thing collectively. There have been motion pictures that appealed to us each, and there was a voice that we shared from the start. There was simply a simple rapport.
On performing out the dialogue collectively as they’re writing it
Jones: Properly, we act whereas we’re writing, however that is our discovery technique of dialogue as a result of we’re fortunate, we each began as actors and might do a great job with that. So usually we act out the scenes and if it isn’t working, it does not really feel proper … that is straightforward to repair.
On why they’re drawn to tales about heartache
McCormack: Life is basically only a sequence of losses. It is one loss and one heartbreak after one other. When your little summer season ends and you don’t need it to finish, and then you definitely get your coronary heart damaged, after which you’ve children, and so they’re gonna break your coronary heart, after which your dad and mom die after which [you] begin to lose bone density. …
These moments can really be the funniest as a result of they’re so uncooked. And it is once we really feel linked, proper? Like, heartbreak is the factor that binds us. Like, irrespective of who you’re or irrespective of the place you’re or no quantity of how previous you’re, such as you’re gonna undergo heartache. … And to have the ability to dig into a few of these moments with Rashida has simply been such a present, and I do not take that with no consideration to have the ability to do this for a residing.
On Quincy, her documentary about her dad, Quincy Jones, and experiencing anticipatory grief
Jones: I filmed for six years, and the second to final 12 months of filming, he went right into a diabetic coma, and we stopped filming, and fortuitously my brother filmed a bit bit within the hospital as a result of we have been going to type of present him what he had been via if and when he got here out and we have been so fortunate he did come out at 82. … However having that second the place he was that near demise, after which deciding to place that within the movie and present him overcoming that, I believe was my means of kind of getting ready for the inevitable, ? And I used to be so fortunate to have him for one more 9 years after that, however in the end, I knew what was coming, and it was actually a love letter to my dad, but additionally a method to hopefully attain out to different folks and say, hear, we’re all going to undergo this and we need to be sincere about what it is like for our household to come back to the opposite aspect of this.
My dad is clearly an icon and a tradition shifter, and he had been documented quite a bit earlier than. And what I felt like folks missed, as a result of he is so profitable at what he did, was they missed his persona. They missed the private aspect of him, which is a vital half to why he was profitable. It isn’t simply his expertise and his exhausting work, however he had this reward with folks. And he had a means of relating and being sincere and attending to the center and the honesty of one thing and the intimacy of one thing so quick with a stranger, together with his children, with the individuals who beloved him, the folks did not know him. And I actually needed that to be on display.
On what they carry out in one another
Jones: Will is like my closest chosen household in a means. … I do not wanna get emotional, however I really feel like Will, and I see the kid variations of ourselves and might actually handle that little child in one another, as a result of we’re each very exhausting on ourselves. … We kind of like, very type of gently, love and respect one another and provides one another the good thing about the doubt that we would not give ourselves. After which, I believe, born of that’s this kind of factor that lives within the intersection between ache and humor, and perhaps hopefully one thing divine, like hopefully we depart some room, as my dad all the time mentioned, “for God to stroll within the door,” as a result of that is actually our job in the end is to channel. And so hopefully there’s one thing about us coming collectively that permits that to occur.
McCormack: I do not need to get emotional both, however what she mentioned.
Ann Marie Baldonado and Susan Nyakundi produced and edited this interview for broadcast. Bridget Bentz, Molly Seavy-Nesper and Meghan Sullivan tailored it for the net.
