What do Billie Lourd, Colin Hanks, and Bette Midler all have in common? The answer: They were all rather taken with Daniel Reisinger.
The charismatic Australian director (Sideswiped, Players) spoke to The Hollywood Reporter on just how he landed such an impressive cast for what is a relatively niche British rom-com. And Mrs is one of Edinburgh Film Festival‘s world premieres in its out of competition category this year.
To describe this film, penned by Melissa Bubnic, as a rom-com feels misleading; its protagonist Gemma, played by Irish actress Aisling Bea, is left bereft and blindsided when her fiancé Nathan (Hanks) drops dead months before their wedding. In a bizarre but incredibly endearing effort to honor their love and distract herself from her own grief, she sets about trying to posthumously marry him.
Lourd, the daughter of Star Wars legend Carrie Fisher, is Nathan’s zany and heavily pregnant sister Audrey, visiting from America. While Gemma fights her loved ones, who maintain her plan is ridiculous, Audrey helps her nearly-sister-in-law to get the legal approval they need to make the one-sided nuptials happen. With top performances from its supporting cast including Elizabeth McGovern, Harriet Walter, Peter Egan and Susan Wokoma, it’s a stellar ensemble. As always, it’s a masterclass in comedy from Lourd, who dropped a bombshell on Reisinger a few months before production was set to start.
“She rings me one day and she goes, ‘Look, I’ve got great but terrible news, I’m pregnant,’” Reisinger recounts to THR. “And I was like, ‘Oh god, that’s amazing. Obviously, that’s incredible.’ And she’s like, ‘I’m going to have to drop out of the film. I don’t want to, but I just desperately want you to get your film made, and I don’t want to get in the way.’”
Billie Lourd as Audrey in And Mrs.
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Reisinger’s immediate reaction was to find a way to let Lourd stay in this project. “She was the foundation stone of our film,” he says. So they came up with the plan to make Audrey be a surrogate for a gay couple back in the U.S., and suddenly Lourd was on-set and filming while seven months pregnant. “I defy you to find me a better performance of a genuinely seven-month pregnant woman in a comedic role, ever. Was Frances McDormand pregnant in Fargo?” She was not; the star wore a pregnancy pillow. “Because that’s the only one that I could think of that I would compare it to. I’m not even sure she was pregnant in that,” Reisigner says. “If you watch the film, you will notice she is sitting in nearly every scene.”
Hanks, who predominantly appears in flashback scenes as the film documents the early days of Nathan and Gemma’s relationship, came to the film quite late. “We sat down to do one of those awkward Zoom calls where you don’t really know each other and are kind of testing each other out to see if this is a good fit,” the filmmaker admits. “I was in Paris and we started at midnight, right? So I’m like, ‘Colin, it’s midnight here mate, so I don’t want you to be offended because I know you’re in Atlanta filming, but we’ve got half an hour.’” Reisinger continues: “We got to three in the morning. We could have kept talking all night. Let me tell you, a gem of a human being, so charming, so sensitive.”
Bea he describes as “hands down the best actor I’ve ever worked with.” Funny and dramatically powerful, the Ireland-born comedian is “an absolute powerhouse of an actress.”
Reisinger, Lourd, Hanks, and Bea, share a connection that drew them to And Mrs: their own experiences of grief. Lourd’s mother Fisher and her grandmother, Debbie Reynolds, died within 48 hours of each other in December 2016. Hanks, the son of “global treasure” Tom Hanks, as Reisinger describes him, lost his mother in his late teens, and Bea her father, to suicide, when she was just three. It formed what the director called “a little tribe.”
His mother, Sarina, died of COVID in January 2022; a week later, they got the greenlight from Universal for And Mrs. “I felt like my mum was looking out for us on the film,” Reisinger says. “And we wanted to help people laugh through the tears [on And Mrs]. We shouldn’t laugh about grief, but for a lot of people, there are moments when you should.”
It’s here that Reisinger reveals one of the most heartwarming behind-the-scenes details of the making of And Mrs. His mother, an enormous Bette Middler fan, sang “The Rose” by her family just before she died. “My mum loved singing [but had] zero musical talent,” he says. “I mean, tone deaf people would be offended by my mum’s voice, and we’ve all inherited her musical ability. So we’re gathered around her, billowing out The Rose at the top of our voices. And my mum opened her eyes for the last time and looked at us all.”
The next day, she died. But Reisinger wanted “The Rose” in his film. The team went to Middler for her permission, and she quickly granted it. “If my mother knew that Bette Midler had any fucking clue who she was – excuse my French – my mum would be absolutely tickled pink.”
Those among the crew who have lost someone, as well, were given the opportunity to dedicate their work to that person in the film’s end credits, making Reisinger delighted to bring his work to Edinburgh.
“This is the opportunity of a lifetime. I’m so beyond excited,” Reisinger adds. He lauds EIFF director Paul Ridd, who had written him such a sweet letter in a bid to secure the Aussie’s film that he felt compelled to forward it to the entire crew who worked on it. Reisinger finishes by declaring rom-coms “his life’s work”. But for anyone in mourning, And Mrs is something a little different for the rom-com lovers. “Hopefully, this film puts its arm around your shoulder.”
And Mrs gets its world premiere on Aug. 19 at Edinburgh International Film Festival. It releases in the U.K. on Sept. 2 on Vertigo and in the U.S. on Sept. 30 on Vertical.
