Dave Franco and Alison Brie had to ‘take stock’ of co-dependent relationship for Together

Married co-stars Alison Brie and Dave Franco have admitted that making new horror film Together made them ‘take stock of our own co-dependency’.

The Hollywood duo, who married in 2017 and have worked together before on movies including The Rental and Somebody I Used to Know, are also producing their fifth collaboration together.

It’s only the second time they’ve acted opposite one another following 2017 black comedy The Little Hours.

‘It might be the first ever feel-good body horror,’ Franco suggests when I ask him to describe Together to the uninitiated – which seems increasingly unlikely given the exhausting press tour the couple have embarked upon, seemingly happy to play every quiz, take part in every social media concept built to go viral and talk to every outlet with undimmed enthusiasm.

‘Plot-wise it’s a about co-dependent couple who gets infected with something that makes it so that when they’re apart from each other they start to feel sick, so they need to be near each other at all times, but it starts escalating to the point where their bodies start fusing together,’ the 40-year-old adds, summing up the film’s beats with practiced aplomb.

To add some more colour, he plays struggling musician Tim, who reluctantly agrees to move out of the city for his long-term girlfriend Millie (Brie) to accept a teaching position in a smaller school she’s passionate about.

Their relationship is clearly in crisis after a decade together, with the pair out of step with one another – and nowhere is this more obvious than a toe-curlingly awful proposal scene.

While Together’s marketing has homed in on the gory and scary aspects of the film, hanging it off a realistically dysfunctional couple offers more nuance than just thrills and chills.

‘I like to call it a gateway horror. It’s a movie whose feet are definitively planted in the horror genre and horror fans will love it, but for people who think they don’t like horror, I think they also would really enjoy it because there’s a bit of romance, there’s a bit of comedy. At the heart of it, it’s just an entertaining movie, it’s a really fun experience in the theatre,’ explains Brie, 42.

‘So we may have created a new genre?’ she suggests as to their squishing fun vibes and gags together with genuine creepy moments and gruesome body bits.

She also admits that her and Franco’s co-dependency is ‘on the higher end, I would say’ when asked how the film saw them reframe their real-life relationship after embodying characters where it’s all going wrong (and most memorably in a painful public toilet sex scene which will have you crossing your legs).

‘More so, I think we left the set every day feeling really grateful that we are not like the couple in the movie! They don’t have great communications skills. They’ve grown apart a little bit and yet are tragically suck together emotionally,’ Brie shares.

‘So, not much about our own relationship except just reinforcing that we’re very happy!’ laughs Franco as he chimes in.

It’s not a surprise to hear that either due to the couple’s natural and relaxed rhythm with one another. It’s very unlikely that you’d sign up to put your own relationship through the stress of playing a challenged couple unless you’re feeling very secure.

The two finish each other’s sentences, developing answers and recollections between themselves as they bounce thoughts around.

This is evident when they reveal their ‘unbinding’ ritual for the end of a day during shooting, a large amount of which they spent physically stuck to each other courtesy of various prosthetics.

‘We binged the TV show One Day to kind of unwind from the day, a very sweet, romantic series,’ Franco reveals, as Brie describes it as their ‘big unwinding ritual’.

‘That was the main thing and then we were so exhausted at the end of every day that once our heads hit the pillows, we were out,’ he adds, before Brie continues: ‘But we didn’t unwind, we passed out in a full spoon.’

‘Always full spoon, sure,’ he agrees before she jokes: ‘Never a half spoon!’

As producers, Franco and Brie’s investment in Together is clear, both creatively and literally, with 21 Jump Street actor Franco revealing that one of their biggest challenges was ‘finding someone who was willing to take that risk on us and give us the money to make this wild movie’.

‘What we loved about it creatively is that it was taking swings, it was trying to being something that people have never seen before onscreen, which is potentially scary for people who are giving you the money to make a film!’

But once filming began, the couple had given themselves a daunting task in terms of physical performance; there are some very creepy body contortions in Together, for one thing.

‘We were really flinging our bodies around in wild ways, getting injured every single day. I had bruises covering me head to toe – she documented all of them. We have a nice little collage that maybe we’ll frame one day,’ Franco muses.

‘Even though it was exhausting, it was sort of exhilarating and really satisfying,’ Brie chimes in. ‘Dave and I both love to work in a really physical capacity and this certainly pushed that as far as it could!’

‘We could have had our stunt doubles come in, but we were like, “No, no, no, we want to make this look as real as possible”,’ he adds.

The pair were also impressed with their ‘incredible’ writer-director Michael Shanks, an Australian YouTuber and filmmaker making his feature-length debut with Together.

It was a ‘very ambitious’ 21-day shoot that crammed in ‘a lot of crazy things’ according to Franco, while Brie describes him as ‘the most prepared first-time director we’ve ever worked with’ meaning they had ‘a lot of trust in him’.

Shanks had every scene storyboarded before they began and also took charge of 150 VFX shots in the movie while working on the edit.

‘It gave us a vote of confidence in him,’ says Brie, which I point out was vital to Together’s success, given what the film asks of the couple.

Brie laughs. ‘There was only one day when we were standing on set together, naked all day, pressed against each other, shooting a big moment in the movie, and we looked at each other like, “If this doesn’t work out…”

‘“Our careers are over!”’ finishes Franco. ‘But it worked out!’

Together is in UK and Irish cinemas from Friday, August 15.

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