ComingSoon spoke with Ticket to Paradise director Ol Parker about working with George Clooney and Julia Roberts and about the film’s longevity in cinemas. Ticket to Paradise is now playing in theaters and is out on digital this Friday.
“A man and his ex-wife race to Bali, Indonesia, to stop their daughter from marrying a seaweed farmer,” reads the film’s synopsis. “As they desperately try to sabotage the wedding, the bickering duo soon find themselves rekindling old feelings that once made them happy together.”
Spencer Legacy: You have two amazing leads with George Clooney and Julia Roberts, but the other love story Lily is just as important. How was balancing those two romances and making sure that they’re both distinct and have the time to blossom individually?
Ol Parker: That’s a lovely question, thank you. Yeah, it’s interesting because every time you go away from George and Julia, you’re aware that George and Julia aren’t on screen, you know what I mean? And that in itself is a challenge since they’re the money, and that’s what everyone’s there for, on the other hand, it helps when you have the, you know, the glorious Kaitlyn Dever, for whom I wrote the movie anyway. She was a friend of mine anyway, and I actually bumped into her a few months before at a party and said, “I’m writing a film for you,” and normally that’s a really crap chat-up line — a relic of an older time, a worse time. And she was like, “Oh, are you?” I said, “No, no, I promise. I really am.” So it was really nice, a few months later, to send her the script.
But she’s wonderful. Then the search for Max[ime Bouttier] was important because, obviously, you’ve got to believe the decision she’s taken, and he’s got to be a genuine reason to change her life to that degree. So it was a tremendous relief when we found him, because he’s gorgeous and warm and talented and incredibly handsome. So it was lovely. Julia and George were really chuffed when I cast Kaitlyn — they were really delighted. They already knew her work and thought she was wonderful. So it was an intensely happy time. Nice to hang with all of them.
George and Julia already have really great chemistry from working together before. How much of an advantage was it that you could hit the ground running?
Amazing. We shot the kiss scene on day two, I think, which you would never do if they hadn’t. It was going to be a beautiful day and there weren’t going to be other beautiful days for a while, and a beautiful dawn. So I was like, “great, let’s do it.” But also, that’s why I sent it to them. I mean, in the first place, I sent it to both of them at the same time. I wrote it for them like completely and then sent it to each of them going, “I’ve sent this to you and the other one and it only works if you both do it,” because apart from being manifestly brilliant and gorgeous and all the other things that they obviously are and enormous movie stars, it was also … if you’re writing about a divorced couple, you want to believe that they were married and you want to see them get back together again.
George and Julia’s friendship, on-screen and off, has been so great over the years that we kind of feel like we’ve grown up with them. When I pitched the movie to them, I said I wanted it to feel like the sequel to a movie no one had ever seen. They give you that authenticity, you know what I mean? You always hope that friendship’s real because you want to buy it. You see them on Kimmel or whatever, but they just adore each other. Julia was at the Kennedy Center Honors last night, where George was being honored, and she wore a dress covered in pictures of George. I mean they’re just really, really close and their families are close. For me, it’s just a gift. Yeah. I get to eat biscuits at the monitor and watch them.
Ticket to Paradise has also had longevity at the box office and has been very successful in bringing adults back to theaters. Why do you think that is?
It was a scary thing. We were all very determined. We had the chance to make the movie for streamers who would, frankly, have paid everybody more for it. But we all felt strongly that if this isn’t a movie than what is? We all believe very much in trying to get people back to the cinematic experience, particularly for comedy, to give people a chance to be in a room laughing is a real treat and something that we’ve all, you know, among the many other things we’ve missed, something we’ve very badly missed. So it was always the plan. As for the longevity, yes, it’s incredibly flattering and gratifying. I think, partly, a slightly older crowd don’t rush out on the first weekend. It’s not as front-loaded, is the word that they use.
People don’t have to see it immediately and they see it during the week as well, rather than just at weekend. And so they just, and you know, I wrote The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel and we had a theory with that that people went again and again because they’d forgotten the jokes because it was quite an old audience, so like goldfish, they would just go again and again and laugh for the first time. This I don’t think is that, but it’s been really lovely. It was still in the top 10, I think, this weekend, and that’s amazing. So yeah, it’s been really lovely.
You filmed in Queensland, Australia, and it looks really gorgeous. What were some of the highlights of filming there?
Oh, endless. I lived on a beach, had a house on the beach. One day, I walked down to the beach, turned right, walked for half an hour, and found my film set. It was just the nicest commute to work you could ever have. It was lovely. Australians were lovely. It was tough. We had two weeks quarantine as they had severe Covid restrictions, which was amazing. They made a real sacrifice for that country. But once there, you could take off your mask, and life was free and it’s just a gift. I mean it was an interesting challenge, not to be able to go to Bali because the borders were closed, so we had a crew there shooting backdrops, and we’d CGI them in. It was a technical challenge but brilliant to be honest. Have you ever been to Australia?
I haven’t, no. I have family there, but I’ve never been.
Go, Spencer! Not to be reductive, the whole country’s amazing, but I loved it, loved it! I’d work there again in the heartbeat.
Yeah, it’d be a nice contrast to the snow too.
Go see your family! It’s roasting there at the moment. Go see your family.
I will have to! Billie Lourd steals so many scenes throughout the film. How was it, working with her? She definitely seems like she kind of has her mother’s sense of humor.
Oh, she’s a genius and she’s lovely and, for me, that was another gift. She’s really close friends with Kaitlyn anyway, from Booksmart, so they were just really happy and just giggled together. She knew George and Julia, because her dad represents them, so she’s grown up in that world and around movie stars like that. And also she’s hilariously funny. One of my umpteen regrets about the movie is that I didn’t give her enough to do. So I intend to write a whole movie for her, but yeah, it was nothing but a pleasure and a gift. She was there with her kid, who’s gorgeous and just a brilliant person.
It’s also a real credit to Julia and George and the writing that their characters remain so likable despite all the meddling they’re doing. Was it difficult to find that balance between having them be sort of antagonists while also having the audience still like them?
That’s another lovely question, Spencer. No, I think they bring that with them. I mean, if you’ve seen My Best Friend’s Wedding, Julia behaves far worse than that. I mean, she’s just psychically appalling, and yet somehow, because she’s Julia, she just takes you with her, you know what I mean? It is something that you think about in the writing, “Let’s make sure we’re not losing them.” There’s a point where George is mean to Max, and you kind of go, “Is that too mean?” But they both have a really fine sense of performance and calibrating their performance and what the audience wants at any given point without sacrificing what they want to do to an imaginary audience. But you’re kind of trying to weigh it out. In the end, I think, they love their daughter so much that … if you chose something where they come to learn the error of their ways, then I think you can get away with some fairly bad behavior before the error is revealed. If they were unrepentant, I think even with George and Julia’s magnificent charm, you’d probably like them a little bit less by the end of the movie, but they repent so they win you around.
You also wrote the film. I was curious if your own fatherhood had an impact on the script?
Yes, exactly. That was literally my way into the movie. The movie came out of a conversation I was having about Ripley, who was 18, I think, at the time and starting to make her own decisions — all of which are clearly brilliant and not necessarily the ones I’d have made for her — so it was just that thing, how much do you nudge along? How much do you try and be wise and say what you absolutely know and how much do you just lean back and give it up to them and watch the next generation rule? That was the genesis of the movie, how that came about.
What lessons did you learn from Mama Mia: Here We Go Again that you were able to apply here?
That was an enormous surprise to get. I wrote Mamma Mia, I got the gig as a writer and thought that’s all I was going to do. I directed two movies before — the combined budget of which wouldn’t pay for lunch on one day of Mamma Mia. So I just got the gig as a writer and merrily wrote dance sequences on 15 boats, just going, “it’s going to be someone else’s problem.” So to get offered the gig and to do the gig was unbelievably terrifying. I think it worked out okay. Then you just … it gives you a sense of like, “oh, okay, maybe I can.” I’d never have written this, I’d never have thought I could direct this, I’d never have approached George and Julia without Mamma Mia having happened. So confidence, I guess, rather than any specific lesson. Not overconfidence, but some confidence, a degree.
