In Amy Landecker’s For Worse, Lauren (Landecker) tries something new after her divorce: an acting class. When one of her fellow students gets married, she attends the wedding with a much younger group of people. As she feels more and more out of place, she meets another wedding guest at a different stage of his life, father of the bride Dave (Bradley Whitford).
Awards Buzz spoke with real-life married couple Landecker and Whitford about whether they like to watch romantic comedies together. Landecker laughed and shared:
“I mean, he does it for me. I wouldn’t say it’s his genre. I made him watch Pretty Woman on a Valentine’s Day. Usually, I’ll pick a Valentine’s Day to force something. This year we watched Heated Rivalry. But, yeah, for me, it is my favorite genre. I’ve often said to him I think it’s misogyny to bash a rom-com because it’s a predominantly female art form. I happen to love sports, but men spend thousands of hours watching ESPN, but if you watch a rom-com, somehow it’s beneath you. That makes no sense to me. The emotional satisfaction is quite similar in that you have a lot of drama and hopefully a happy ending. On Valentine’s this year, we went to see Send Help, and he did not know Rachel McAdams as well as I did because he’d never seen The Notebook. I was like, ‘Oh, we should watch that tonight.’ He’s like, ‘No.’ And I was like, ‘Why?’ ‘I’ve never seen The Notebook. Isn’t it sappy?’ I’m like, ‘Yes, but in the best way.’ It’s one of the great romance movies.”
As Whitford chimed in with humorous commentary, Landecker clarified that this is definitely a film that leans into rather than against genre tropes:
“Oh, it’s absolutely with the genre. I think the only thing that’s not rom-com language is maybe the level of cringe at times and the level of emotional turmoil might be a little bit more fraught than in your typical rom-com. But definitely, I’m trying to tick every box.”
Watch the video above to hear what they relate to most about their characters, the experience of working together, and what they’ve watched recently that they’ve loved.
For Worse is now playing in theaters in New York and Los Angeles.
