Minions & Monsters, cast interview: Jeff Bridges, Zoey Deutch and Jesse Eisenberg

The statements of Zoey Deutch

Totally. I mean, I had the time of my life doing this. It felt like winning the lottery, um, but I, honestly, didn't, as it is sometimes when you do these movies, I didn't know a ton about what it would be about or what it would look like, so getting to experience it for the first time a couple weeks ago when I, too, was at a private screening because I'm in the film. I don't have children, but I did dress up. I did dress up as a Minion alongside my friends who also dressed up as Minions, um, and the people at Universal didn't want to let us in, uh, because I don't think that they thought we were invited. But we were! Um, and I was so in awe of what they created and put together. Of course, this is just hundreds and hundreds of amazing artists who have carefully crafted every single moment and, and, and, um, character and image and joke, um, and to be like a tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny part of it, uh, and just to get to see what they do is extraordinary.

That's what, why we do it.

The hope. Yeah. That's my first sort of thing I, I talked to my agents about. Is this something people could dress up as one day?

I thought that they were just brilliantly written and, um, just, yeah, a great, a great couple. Great pair.

Me too. Definitely.

Yeah, I was just a little bit sad that I didn't get to, uh, act with Jesse because I just adore him and, and love acting with him, working with him.

I, my first reaction was like, though, of course, this is a big studio, um, movie, I was like, "This is an experimental, eccentric, kind of..." I was like, "This is unlike any animated movie I've ever seen and certainly unlike, um, of this genre," and I think the feeling I had based in absolutely zero fact or information is that these artists were given a little bit more kind of freedom to explore what's really like deep in them. There, one of their deepest core loves is, is, is cinema and to like pay homage to it in this, like I said, slightly experimental way while also still landing all these markers of what kids want to see in an animated movie, adults want to see in an animated movie, but also what's, I don't know, personal. Like it's like a, it's very different in a, in an inspiring way to me.

The statements of Jeff Bridges

Not like this. A lot of yellow, pill-shaped people walking around.

We had a great time, uh, on this one. And, uh, unfortunately, well, I, I didn't hang with many of the, uh, great actors until, um, the promotion part of this, uh, film. And so we got to hang a bit with Bobby Moynihan and, uh, uh, Allison Janney, it was great.

Hopefully it's received by a lot of the young kids who are not familiar with all these, you know, Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin and all these guys, and they'll get turned on to some of these old, old guys.

I had a great time doing it and, you know, this is a lot of fun, too, seeing all the people that worked on us. It's great.

The statements of Jesse Eisenberg

 My character's not part of the film history element of this movie, so for me a lot of it was just like seeing it for the first time as an audience member. I took my kid to the screening, we had a private screening cause I'm in the movie, and my kid was laughing at all of the great silly things and I had the kind of that pretentious adult laugh, the "ah, I see what they're doing," you know, when I saw references to Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin, etc., and kind of like, uh, appreciated them as an adult appreciating very sophisticated kind of allusions to old Hollywood.

I hope we make it to Halloween is what we're hoping. Is that people dress like us at Halloween.

That's why we're in this. Yeah, that's why. Yeah. I think when you take a role, the assumption is people will dress like you.

Of course, of course. What's the outfit? You know, like, our storyline is so great. I, I, um, especially because like, uh, you know, Im an actor and I do a lot of, you know, big, violent, silly movies, um, but my wife is like an activist, and so anytime I can go home to her and say like, "No, this one is about a suffragette that I fall in love with," she's like, "Okay, continue. You can, you can go."

Certainly for me.

That was, it was a great relief. You know, the weird thing with this kind of thing is that you, you record in a bubble. You're recording in isolated, and so, you know, you can't really have an effect on the other person because you're recording in such an isolated way. But when they told me it was Zoe, I was like, "Oh, it's amazing. It's perfect. She's so wonderful," and I could immediately imagine the storyline in my head more vividly.

I couldn't believe what I was looking at. I couldn't believe that these scenes were like so visually rich with jokes that, you know, were you to watch the movie 20 times, you'd start finding stuff. I only saw the movie once. I'm seeing it tomorrow again for the second time, but I feel like I could watch it a hundred times because like it's just one of these things, especially because you're not on set for a movie like this, that when you're watching, you're just like, "I just can't conceive of how this was made."