Meg Ryan’s new rom-com left her sleepless for the first time ever

Hollywood star Meg Ryan’s new movie is her first in eight years (Picture: Stefania Rosini)

Meg Ryan, an icon of many a millennial’s childhood, is back on our screens – and in rom-com territory once more – after eight whole years away.

What’s even better, she’s teamed up with another legend of the 1990s in David Duchovny, 63, one of the brightest TV stars of the era thanks to The X-Files – it’s the stuff of nostalgic dreams.

Directing, adapting (it’s based on Steven Dietz’s play Shooting Star) and acting in new film What Happens Later apparently gave When Harry Met Sally star Ryan, 62, sleepless nights for the first time in her career, and I can say the same was pretty much true of me ahead of our interview.

I spoke to Ryan and Duchovny over audio-only Zoom, which, to be honest, made me feel – rather fittingly – like an old-school journalist of 30 years ago, conversing with an interviewee via a landline.

In my mind’s eye, I was there in an oversized orange turtleneck, brandishing my biro and notepad as I twirled the phone cord around my finger and settled down for a lengthy chat.

The reality was a little different, but I was certainly nervous, and not above getting a real thrill with them both calling me by my name – hey, I watched a lot of these actors’ works at a formative point in my life (including Duchovny’s criminally underrated 2001 comedy Evolution).

The queen of rom-coms is best known for gems of the genre like When Harry Met Sally (Picture: Castle Rock/Nelson/Columbia/Kobal/Rex/Shutterstock)

Her new co-star, David Duchovny, of course made a huge splash in The X-Files (Picture: 20th Century Fox/Kobal/Rex/Shutterstock)

Ryan has some stone-cold screen classics in her back catalogue – which absolutely includes 1997 animation Anastasia, as well as You’ve Got Mail, Sleepless in Seattle and City of Angels – and it appears there was a sense of trepidation for her comeback.

‘I did not sleep – I’ve never not slept a whole night in my life, ever, except for maybe jet lag at some moment. But the night before we started shooting, I didn’t get one wink of sleep,‘ she told me.

‘You never told me that!‘ co-star Duchovny interjects, a bit stunned by her confession, a sweet insight into their working – and personal – relationship.

As the co-writer and director, alongside playing the whimsical Willa to Duchovny’s more uptight and anxious Bill, a lot was riding on Ryan’s shoulders during the 21-day shoot at a working airport – but she came up with a handy technique to deal with the pressure.

‘I just felt like we can’t be precious about this, and we’ve got to use our time. So, I kept pretending there was a director who was outside of the building, who was maybe in a trailer, and we could do what we wanted and then catch him or her up on it,’ she explained.

There was also comfort for the star in playing a character like Willa, who is carefree and a little flighty – always a strength of Ryan’s on screen, although she denies being much like that in real life.

Ryan and Duchovny in their new movie, What Happens Later (Picture: Stefania Rosini)

‘At first, I was worried because the thing about being a director [is] you’re so hypervigilant, you’re [thinking about] every little thing, you’ve been in pre-production, and you’re going through the minutia – your brain gets so tired,’ she recalled. ‘And I was like, how am I going to carry that through, that part that’s organised and linear and anxious, when I’m playing somebody so different than that?

‘Then I realised when they said action, oh, I can just relax into this other part of myself.’

In fact, it helped balance Ryan out during the shoot.

‘I felt like playing her was a relief during the day from the organised person who’s going, “Did we get that, did we figure that out?”’

Duchovny and Ryan are teaming up for the first time onscreen with What Happens Later, and both were delighted with the rapport they built as Willa and Bill; their characters’ top-notch chemistry is a highlight of the film.

Despite having directed before, What Happens Later gave Ryan a sleepless ight or two (Picture: Stefania Rosini)

Ryan’s initial impression of Duchovny was that he is a ‘great tennis player’ when it comes to dialogue, ‘someone who’s hitting it back, better and in this unexpected way, and he’s acing this’. That’s high praise indeed coming from the queen of rom-coms, who’s batted back and forth with the likes of Billy Crystal and Tom Hanks (although Duchovny’s no stranger to the genre, with the likes of Return to Me on his CV).

The feeling is mutual from Duchovny, who is keen to extend the sporting analogy (for which he later sweetly apologises).

‘It’s apt because sometimes you’ll work with an actor or an actress who can hit the ball really hard and looks like a great tennis player, but they’re hitting the ball out of the stadium every time you give it to them – and it’s not mutual, it’s not a game, it’s like a solo,’ he expanded.

‘Oddly, and frustratingly, those performances can cut very well in film.’

However, with Meg, aside from praising the editing of their scenes anyway, he felt ‘supported’.

‘It was not competitive. It was completely mutual, like, let’s make this the best game we can and not focus on our – and I’m beating the tennis thing to death here – let’s not focus on our strokes, let’s just make this a beautiful exhibition.’

What Happens Later threw a few challenges Ryan and Duchovny’s way, aside from a lot of night shoots, including the fact that one of their two locations was a live airport in Arkansas.

Willa and Bill are passing the time together after meeting serendipitously there, 20 years after they broke up, during a storm that grounds their flights. While they may just be two anonymous travellers, surely Ryan and Duchovny had a few issues trying to go unrecognised while shooting a film, surrounded by members of the public?

‘The good thing about an airport is people are rushing to get to where they’re gonna go, and they can’t really loiter, so we kind of moved past’ shared Duchovny.

Ryan also claimed that people in the airport ‘don’t care as much’ – however, they still had to learn to be adaptable.

‘There were moments that were dicey with people taking pictures in frame and stuff like that,’ Duchovny revealed. ‘And we learned, or I learned, that apparently you can’t ask anybody to do anything in an airport that they don’t want to do! You can’t ask them not to stand there or not to go there or not to take a picture. I guess an airport is like the Wild West these days…’

They play ex-lovers Bill and Willa, serendipitously reunited at an airport after 20 years (Picture: Stefania Rosini)

More people should have seen Duchovny (pictured with Orlando Jones) in alien invasion comedy Evolution, to be honest (Picture: Murray Close/Columbia Pictures/THA/Rex/Shutterstock)

Aside from Bill and Willa, the only two characters to appear onscreen, the third character in the movie is provided by the airport announcer (Hal Liggett), who seems to get more and more specific with their bulletins – giving the film its magical realism that Ryan craved.

Reality, though, was a little different.

‘We were hearing an actual airport announcement saying things that were not going to be usable in our film!’ Duchovny laughed.

The airport, as a character, was something that came together in post-production, meaning Duchovny had to rely on it being as he and Ryan had planned, while he dealt with the real-life logistics of dodging the actual announcements being made.

‘I kind of liked that as a competitive person. I was like, okay, you want to f**king throw announcements at me in the middle of this eight-page scene? I’ll take it, let’s go,’ the Californication actor quipped.

Ryan added: ‘I remember one time in where he was singing or like doing a little dance, and then when that Chicago announcement was over, he was right back where he needed to be! That type of concentration – it’s so fun to be in that, and it’s really fun to watch somebody else kind of [have that] mastery.’

Two movie stars shooting a film in a working airport did present a few logistical problems (Picture: NBC via Getty Images)

A magical environment is an idea that Ryan ‘loves’ in movies, ‘where they pique that experience and seem feasible too’, so she knew they had to measure it carefully with the airport’s character.

‘It’s subtle in the movie, but when I think back, in the script, it was either more or less intrusive,’ Duchovny recalled.

‘I remember talking with Meg about it, and we were saying, is it going to be heavy-handed magical realism, or is it going to be subtle here? Where are you going to cross the line into too cute, or not cute enough? It was always something that was really, really technically fragile’.

However, he’s delighted that she struck a ‘a beautiful balance in the end’.

Before we part, I can’t resist asking a little about the rarity of seeing a more mature love story on screen, with older lead stars, remarking that it’s taken the industry a while to get here.

However, neither of them will be drawn on speaking about any lingering ageism in the industry – or in rom-coms.

‘These two people have matured, but they also have some arrested development, and they have this idea of rediscovering one another, this mystery of what happened before, the idea that the perspective that they have – or that they’re trying to understand – a life not lived together, and the regret… all those things are not the usual stomping ground of a romantic comedy,’ weighs in Ryan.

Ryan with Tom Hanks in You’ve Got Mail (Picture: Getty)

What Happens Later includes a spot of magical realism, for fans of whimsy (Picture: Stefania Rosini)

‘So, in my mind, it’s really a love story, and love stories are only as good as their obstacles. In this case, it’s agreeing on the facts and their individual natures [that] are obstacles to each other, and the fact [of] time going by.

 ‘It’s very rich, actually, to tell a love story from a mature perspective like this – there’s a lot of different opportunities there.’

Duchovny says that there was ‘no agenda’ and nor did they speak about this during preparation for the film.

‘I think, ultimately, it doesn’t matter, the age of the actors – the material matters. And I think that that’s why it works in this case.

‘But on the other hand, the material is very much defined by the fact that a lot of years have passed, so it wouldn’t make sense any other way.’

What Happens Later is in cinemas from Friday, December 15.

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She stars opposite David Duchovny in What Happens Later, her first film in eight years.