A visit to The Perfect Guy set, featuring interview with Sanaa Lathan, Morris Chestnut and Michael Ealy
Poor, poor Sanaa Lathan. What a horrible plight. In The Perfect Guy, due in theaters on September 11th, Lathan plays a successful, attractive lobbyist with a lot of money, and an attractive, attractive boyfriend, played by Morris Chestnut. And yet, she finds herself unexpectedly receiving romantic attention from the rich and attractive Carter Duncan played by the attractive Michael Ealy. Michael Ealy is, as we all know, currently in the running for “Most Attractive Human Being on Planet Earth,” so we can see how hard life can be for poor Lathan, torn as she is between Attractive Man and Super-Attractive Man.
Of course, in The Perfect Guy, we learn in appropriate Fatal Attraction-style that Ealy might be less of a perfect guy and more of a raving overprotective psychopath. But if you were to ask us, maybe a little bit of murderous psychopathic behavior would be tolerable for the privilege of being near Ealy for a few minutes.
Of course, we didn’t have to deal with any psychopathic behavior. Last September, ComingSoon.net got to visit the set of The Perfect Guy, and had a few words with Lathan, Ealy, and director David M. Rosenthal, to talk about what working on the film was like, and to get some info as to what we might expect.
Ealy was gregarious and relieved that he had made something of a break from the romantic comedies that he had starred in previously.
Ealy: “We’re having a good time making this one, that’s for sure. The film is completely different; There’s no real rom-com sensibilities. Which, in my opinion, is a little more interesting in a way. [Fatal Attraction] was definitely a model we tried to follow. Carter is just not who you think he is. He seems like he’s Mr. Right, and he’s definitely not. There’s a point in the script when everything turns. And the reason it turns is… well very interesting. It’s a classic case of a guy who’s not who he says he is.”
On his reputation for “good guy” roles, and his deliberate eschewing of them:
Ealy: “There’s nothing wrong with being a good guy, but I’ve always wanted to play evil personified. And I think this one is a step in that direction. I think with Carter, though, I think it’s more complex. He’s a sociopath in the clinical sense. So it’s not just a “bad guy,” per se, but he’s not well. You can’t just walk onto a set and call your character a sociopath. You have to understand what a sociopath is. Working with David [Rosenthal] was all about “hey, look what I found in this book about sociopaths, let’s incorporate that into the script.”
Any special prep?
Ealy: “Well, I didn’t run down the street naked with a gun in my hand. It was mostly about reading clinical studies.”
As he was walking away, I was able to get one last off-mic question about the fate of his short-lived sci-fi TV show “Almost Human,” which ran on Fox last year for a single season. He revealed that it crashed and burned merely because it was way too expensive. Viewership was merely decent, and the studio needed “NCIS”-sized numbers to keep the show around. The further adventures of Michael Ealy, robot cop will have to remain a mystery for the ages.
Sanaa Lathan, lead actress and executive producer, seemed to be having as much fun as Ealy and was happy to make a few somewhat suggestive comments about her handsome co-stars (which I will not repeat here). But the lovely and fragrant actress gave us a few more hints as to the tone of The Perfect Guy.
Lathan: “For me, it’s about a modern, everyday woman. Like so many women we know, she has a career, and is really passionate about her career, but they also want a family. The film is about her journey through life, meeting these guys. And one guy in particular seems perfect. Everything is perfect. But eventually the veil is lifted… I don’t know how I can tell the story without giving it away! I can say that there’s a lot of frustration with the legal system. And how the laws that are in place aren’t very protective.”
What she thinks about the notion of a “perfect guy”:
Lathan: “What I’ve learned in my life is that it takes a long time to get to know people. To really know them. I think that we tend to jump to conclusions. I’ve learned to take more time. I’m sure that Michael is the perfect guy… for his wife. And Morris is the perfect guy for his wife. I believe in the soulmate kind of idea. But I don’t think anyone’s perfect.
“It’s big fun to play opposite Michael Ealy and Morris Chestnut, and it been a challenge because they’re both so unattractive. They’re great guys. Morris and I did ‘The Best Man’ together, and we’ve known each other forever. Odd thing: Morris and I did ‘The Best Man’ and ‘The Best Man Holiday’ together, but we didn’t have any scenes together, except for the group dinner scenes. We never had any one-on-one scenes. So this is a new experience for me to, you know, do a scene with him.”
Lathan served as executive producer on the film and expressed a joy to be finally in control. She was also relieved to be shooting in her hometown of L.A., as she would be allowed to go home at night.
Director David M. Rosenthal, who has done four previous feature films, talked the most in-depth about The Perfect Guy, and about the story. He revealed a lot about the plot, which he asked that we tactfully omit from out reportage, but he was insightful about the overall tone of the film, and where he got his inspiration, and what he thinks of people comparing his film to Fatal Attraction:
Rosenthal: “Well, it is what it is. It’s not an unfair comparison. With the exception of the gender-flip, it’s similar. But I watched ‘Fatal Attraction’ right when I took the meeting for this film, I watched it again, and it’s a film that really stands the test of time. The filmmaking is excellent. Particularly the first act. There’s a little bit of an ’80s vibe to the photography at times. And the hair. But it’s really great, and the performances carry the day.”
On the characters, and the character of Hollywood:
Rosenthal: “One of the things about Leah (Lathan’s character) is that she’s at a point in her life that she wants to be married so bad, she wants the perfect relationship so much, that she missed a lot of the flags. She’s encouraged by her friends to go. When she finally closes the door on the perfect guy, that’s when things go weird.”
“In the film business, I think we always want something so bad. I’ve talked to some of my actor friends who go into auditions, they get close to a part, they want it so bad. And that’s the last thing you want to do at an audition: Show how much you want it.”
“First of all, when you’re desperate, people can smell it. Even if they don’t actually see it, there’s, like a pheromone. When you don’t want something – when you’re like ‘I’ll take it or leave it, I don’t care’– when you meet someone and you don’t care, that’s when they’re like “I love you!” Hollywood is so like that. Hollywood loves “no” more than anything. If you’re like “No you can’t have that,” they come back with “I have to have that! It sounds amazing!” I think we all seek the perfect job, or something. And there’s no such thing as the perfect job, of course. When you get to do something creative, sometimes it’s just not to work. It doesn’t have to be perfect.”
“When ‘The Perfect Guy’ came along, it was not the kind of movie I thought that I would be doing, but I was able to get in and rewrite the script a bit, and work with the actors. And it became an exciting thing!”
What did he add to the script?
Rosenthal: “I got to shed some of the more conventional tropes in the movie. Some of the clichés, and things that tend to find their way into genre pictures, and tend to bring them down to a base level. I got to bring something more specific, or something more odd, and put my take on it.”
“It’s not re-inventing the wheel. But that’s not a bad thing. Most genre movies aren’t. Most thrillers, it’s hard to recreate or to reinvent this type of erotic thriller. And sometimes, you can see something coming. Sometimes a film can be predictable, but there’s so much joy in the execution, that you love it. You can see a horror movie and you can know exactly what’s going to happen, and it’s the execution that becomes unexpected. The performances are what you’re magnetically drawn to. We all want to be original in what we do, but sometimes you can’t get hung up on that. And it’s fun to call back the style things, symbolically, or photographically.”
“You go into one of these movies, and you know what you’re seeing. You see the poster, you’ve seen the trailer. You know. The joy is watching how it unfolds. Like in Fatal Attraction, the first time you see [Glenn Close’s character], you see that wild hair and that kabuki makeup, and you know something’s off. It’s subconscious. And when the protagonist goes there, you know he’s making a mistake.”
The Perfect Guy opens in theaters on September 11.
