Manifesting your dreams is real. Just ask Alison Brie, who was asked repeatedly to name her personal favorite rom-com while doing press for last year’s Prime Video movie “Somebody I Used to Know.”
“My favorite film of all time is ‘The American President’ with Annette Bening, so I was saying her name constantly,” she tells PvNew. “Then I got a phone call from my team saying, ‘This show came in; it’s starring Annette Bening.’ It honestly felt magical.”
That show was Peacock’s seven-episode drama “Apples Never Fall,” based on Liane Moriarty’s novel about the upscale (and emotionally messy) Delaney family, who grapple with the mysterious disappearance of matriarch Joy (Bening). The series also stars Sam Neill as patriarch Stan and, as the head-butting Delaney siblings, Jake Lacy (Troy), Conor Merrigan Turner (Logan), Essie Randles (Brooke) and Brie (Amy).
With such a large group, however, along came challenges. “We were so lucky on this show to be afforded a fair amount of rehearsal, and that made all the difference in terms of those big group scenes,” says Brie. “Our director, Chris Sweeney, who directed the first two and last two, suggested we start a group chain, so we had a WhatsApp chain with the Delaney siblings and one with all the Delaneys, including Annette and Sam.”
Popular on PvNew
One of the more difficult scenes came during the third episode, when the group goes to identify Joy’s body.
“The sisters have a pretty big blowout fight, and Amy reveals something about herself to the family. That scene became the touchstone for me, for everything I needed to know about Amy,” Brie recalls. “I would always just tap back into the rawness of the character in that moment.”
That episode also saw a very emotional moment during which Amy talks with Joy about the shame she feels about failing college. Despite being a huge Bening fan, Brie was able to shake those emotions “because Annette is so generous as an actor.”
She continues, “She was so gracious. I felt Annette was almost protective of me. ‘Do you have the space you need?’ Just so mindful of the mental gymnastics that actors do to get ourselves in an emotional state. That will stay with me for the rest of my life.”
Brie doesn’t judge Amy — or any character that she embodies — but instead sees some similarities between them and herself.
“In some ways, there are parts of Amy that exist inside me. I went to art school; I’ve been known to light a candle and look at the full moon. I do think of myself as a spiritual person,” she says. “But I didn’t look at the character ever in a mock-ish way, the way that the rest of the family really does treat her, like the butt of a joke.”
The actor also notes that Amy is both “well-intended” and “selfish” — but that the entire family may be selfish, too.
Says Brie: “I think they were all raised to be winners, and it’s hard to get that out of yourself.”
