'Ex-Husbands' Exclusive Interview: Griffin Dunne

Moviefone speaks with Griffin Dunne about 'Ex-Husbands', 'Practical Magic 2' and more. "There's no director yet, but they're focused on hiring a woman."

Griffin Dunne in Greenwich Entertainment's 'Ex-Husbands'. Credit: Wyatt Angelo, Courtesy of Greenwich Entertainment.

Opening in New York theaters on February 20th before expanding to additional markets is the new dramatic comedy ‘Ex-Husbands’, which was written and directed by Noah Pritzker.

The film stars Griffin Dunne (‘After Hours’ and 'Dallas Buyers Club'), Rosanna Arquette (‘Pulp Fiction’), Richard Benjamin (‘Westworld’), Miles Heizer (‘Love, Simon’), and James Norton (‘Bob Marley: One Love’).

Moviefone recently had the pleasure of speaking with actor and director Griffin Dunne about his work on ‘Ex-Husbands’, his first reaction to the screenplay, why his character crashes his son’s bachelor party, working with legendary actor and director Richard Benjamin, how Benjamin almost cast him in ‘My Favorite Year’, reuniting on screen with his friend Rosanna Arquette, the legacy of their classic movie ‘After Hours’, hosting 'Saturday Night Live' in the 80s, and the status of ‘Practical Magic 2’ and why he’s not returning to direct the sequel.

Related Article: Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman Ready to Return for ‘Practical Magic’ Sequel

Griffin Dunne in Greenwich Entertainment's 'Ex-Husbands'. Credit: Wyatt Angelo, Courtesy of Greenwich Entertainment.

Moviefone: To begin with, can you talk about your first reaction to Noah Pritzker’s screenplay and your initial approach to playing this character?

Griffin Dunne: Well, my first reaction was, "I can't believe there's a script out there for a guy my age to carry a whole movie." That it speaks to the things I like doing, my talents of being funny, sad, tragic, and comic. The circumstance was funny, but also, it's got a kind of great setup of a divorced father who crashes his son's bachelor party, but then it becomes so much more complex and touching. I thought, "Well, this is really rare for a movie being made about this circumstance and how fortunate to get a part like this."

Griffin Dunne in Greenwich Entertainment's 'Ex-Husbands'. Credit: Wyatt Angelo, Courtesy of Greenwich Entertainment.

MF: As a director yourself, what are you looking for from another director when you are acting on set and what was it like collaborating with Noah on this film?

GD: I guess just support, someone who's secure in what they're doing and not insecure. The first sign of that is a director who's telling you what to do or what they think before you even started working on the set and that gets in your head. But just (someone who) lets you kind of play and believes in you and doesn't have buyer's remorse when you're showing up to work. They just want to see what you're going to do and hopefully like it and add to it and make it better and just have an open dialogue. But mainly I just like a director who is secure and wants to be where they are and feels good about the choices they've made, always, from day one. We knew each other. Noah came to me with this script at least a year or so before we went because we were going to go ahead and then COVID put us back. During all that time, we really got to know each other during all that downtime. So, there were no sort of surprises, and I didn't find out that he had a vicious, awful temper that I never knew. I knew him, he was funny, and he remains a great friend of mine.

James Norton in Greenwich Entertainment's 'Ex-Husbands'. Credit: Wyatt Angelo, Courtesy of Greenwich Entertainment.

MF: Can you talk about Peter’s relationship with his sons and why he decides to crash their bachelor party?

GD: Yeah, that was the endless question that we talked about on set all the time. I think he does know (that he was not invited), and he was told, but he's at an age, and I remember I had seen it in my own father, where you convince yourself, you didn't know. You hear what you want to hear. I have a daughter who's an adult, and we'll argue about something, and she will say, "What? I told you this. I mean, how can you not remember this? I told you." I'll say, "No, I don't think you did. I'm telling you, you didn't." Then about two weeks later, I'll remember we were in a restaurant, and we had an entire discussion about it, whatever the thing was, it was important to me, and I just blocked it. We're messed up, complex people.

(L to R) Griffin Dunne, James Norton and Miles Heizer in Greenwich Entertainment's 'Ex-Husbands'. Credit: Wyatt Angelo, Courtesy of Greenwich Entertainment.

MF: What was it like working with Miles Heizer and James Norton to create those father and son relationships?

GD: It was so easy. We just sort of fell into it. I was not aware of Miles's work. I knew he was in the Netflix series (’13 Reasons Why’). I knew he was a big deal because we'd be in Mexico City, and girls would just squeal like I was with Justin Timberlake or something. But the one I really did know that I was a big fan of, that was James Norton, who I had never met until we worked together. But his work had blown me away in so many things, in English series and movies. He has a huge breadth of work. Of course, no one knew who James, or I were in Mexico City. I go, "Wait, yes. Miles is great, but do you know who this guy is?" They had no idea. Anyway, we had an easy chemistry on camera and hung out a lot off camera. We even vacationed when we had a break from shooting, so we could move locations in Mexico. We all took a trip and went to an island off somewhere in the Pacific and vacationed together. It was like family. We each gave each other COVID too which really brings people together. Now we're really family.

(L to R) Griffin Dunne, Rosanna Arquette, Richard Benjamin and Marcia Jean Kurtz in Greenwich Entertainment's 'Ex-Husbands'. Credit: Wyatt Angelo, Courtesy of Greenwich Entertainment.

MF: Can you talk about Peter’s relationship with his own father and your experience working with legendary actor and director Richard Benjamin on that dynamic? Did your own life experience with your father help inform those scenes for you?

GD: Well, first there were so many parallels to my life and who I played having lost my father and mother, who I was very close with, and having been married and divorced and a father of an adult child, so I had a lot of personal things to draw from. I also have been a lover of movies from the earliest of age and grew up on Richard Benjamin. He was one of those actors, he and Dustin Hoffman, when I saw as a kid, were I go, "Hey, they're kind of weird looking, and they're really funny. I think I can do that. I think I can be one of those guys." It was one of my earliest, “I want to be an actor feeling” was seeing Richard Benjamin. I think he was in ‘Goodbye, Columbus’ and both movies, ‘The Graduate’ and ‘Goodbye, Columbus’, I was too young to even be allowed in the theater but got in anyway. So, working with Richard was really like an honor. He was so patient with me because I just had so many things to talk to him about, so many questions and wanting to go over different things from his different movies, not only as an actor but as a director as well. I reminded him of maybe a delusion I've had for many years that it came down to me and Mark Linn-Baker to be the kid in ‘My Favorite Year’. I don't know where I got that idea. I did audition for Richard, and I wanted that part so badly. I think every actor remembers the one they didn't get. This is the one that's haunted me for decades. So, when I meet Richard, one of the earliest things I said was, "You almost cast me in ‘My Favorite Year’." He had absolutely no recollection of me. But it just shows you the things that we carry around that we believe at the time are part of my DNA. I know Mark was lovely but you always remember the one that got away.

(L to R) Griffin Dunne, Rosanna Arquette and Adam Heller in Greenwich Entertainment's 'Ex-Husbands'. Credit: Wyatt Angelo, Courtesy of Greenwich Entertainment.

MF: Your ‘After Hours’ co-star Rosanna Arquette plays your ex-wife in the film. What was it like reuniting with her after all these years, and did your past experiences working together help you both slip into these characters and their relationship rather effortlessly?

GD: Yeah, it was an interesting experience in mortality and a life experience because Rosanna and I first worked together, we met in Poland in 1980, which led to me casting her, with director John Sayles, in ‘Baby It's You’, which she starred in and so many things since then. So, we’ve always stayed friends, but imagine how much aging takes place from 1980 to us working together as a couple with grown children. So, it really was like we spent a lifetime together as soon as we were working. Our backstory was already written.

(L to R) Griffin Dunne and Martin Scorsese on the set of 'After Hours'. Photo: Warner Bros.

MF: Speaking of ‘After Hours’, the film has had an incredible renaissance in recent years inspiring an album by The Weeknd and an episode of ‘Ted Lasso’. What are your memories of making that movie with Martin Scorsese and are you surprised by the legacy of the film?

GD: Yes, I guess I am. What surprises me, when it came out, I think it invented a genre of humor, which is anxiety humor. I don't think there were movies, and people have done them since, ‘After Hours’ has become almost an adjective for a kind of genre. But at the time, in the States it was not hugely received. I remember (film critic) Pauline Kael kind of dismissed it, called me a second-rate Dudley Moore, by the way, but it was not a big box office extravaganza. It was also very much outside of the box of what people expected a Martin Scorsese film to do. So, there was a cultural adjustment and you had to let things settle. I didn't know at what point it happened, but it was after VHSs and once HBO was pretty much well established, it started to really pick up steam. By the time it really did, the film was filled with anachronisms like there are no cell phones, and its subway fares, and Soho being a wasteland of an empty neighborhood, which by the time the popularity picked up, it was basically a mall shopping district. So, the world had changed so much, but the kind of sensibility of life going sideways, that sort of (Franz) Kafka meets ‘Alice in Wonderland’ sensibility never changed. I think people really embraced it and saw how exciting and how unique it was that Scorsese made a movie at this point about that, and that he was funny. Who thought he was funny? He made a movie called ‘The King of Comedy’, which didn't do very well, which now is also embraced as brilliant, as it is. So, I find that that happens quite a lot to tell you the truth. That's why we have the Criterion Channel. They remind us how great the movie was that we didn't quite get at the time. But look, it was right there, and it's still here, and you can go back and look at it anytime you want.

'Saturday Night Live' celebrates its 50th anniversary. Photo: NBCUniversal.

MF: ‘Saturday Night Live’ recently celebrated its 50th anniversary and you hosted the show back in the 80s. What are your memories of that experience?

GD: Yeah, it was a season, the first season that Lorne (Michaels) came back after being away. I was a huge fan of the show, of course, like anyone from the very beginning, and I remember how nervous I was. I remember how terrible the dress rehearsal went, and I remember my friend, Mitch, who was with me, came to my dressing room with a look of like, "Are you really going to go out there again?" I thought, "Well, this is never going to work. I've never seen such a catastrophe." Once 11:30 pm hit, and the moment I went out on stage, it just worked. Everything just flowed. Everything was where it was supposed to be. It was like a miracle, and that miracle happened every Saturday night at 11:30pm before and since. The dress rehearsal was hardly the first disastrous dress rehearsal. They were completely used to it, just the hosts weren't. So, it was exhilarating, and it was the rushing and getting into different costumes and wigs and everything during a commercial break and being shoved back up on stage. It was a rush. The whole thing was a rush.

MF: You appeared in the infamous sketch where cast member Damon Wayans went off script and was immediately fired by Lorne Michaels. What are your memories of that?

GD: Yeah, he didn't so much go off script, but I think it was, I was a Tony Montana kind of drug dealer, and it was an interrogation room with cops. So, he was doing a tough cop in the dress, and I think he just suddenly lisped during the show, which I don't know where that came from, but I really didn't, it didn't register. I'm not on live TV going, "Well wait a minute, what's he doing?" I'm just like, "I got my own problems." So, I wasn't aware of any of that, but I've read about it since, and apparently, he was dismissed as soon as he walked off the set, but I was the last one to know. I ended up reading about the incident years later.

(L to R) Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman in 'Practical Magic'. Photo: Warner Bros.

MF: Finally, there has been a lot of talk in the trades recently about a possible sequel to ‘Practical Magic’, which you directed. Reports have said that ‘Bird Box’ filmmaker Susanne Bier will direct the sequel. Is that true? Are you still involved with that project as a producer, and why have you decided not to return as director?

GD: Well, I think rightly so. I think we should see what a woman would bring to that magic. It was an extraordinary experience to be asked to direct a movie that was so driven with female characters as a man. At the time it was something I could anchor onto much more than the magic and spell books and everything, but it was family. Having had a very formidable grandmother and a mother and then sister, I grew up around strong, interesting women, and I understood the generational, but I think so much has happened in the world. It's funny, I had a reputation at that time of being a woman's director, like George Cukor or something. I think that there's no such thing as a man being a woman's director anymore, there's a woman director. So anyway, there's no director hired or anything yet, but I'm sure that they're mainly focused on hiring a woman. I’m included as executive producer, but not involved in a day-to-day or any of that.

Ex-Husbands

NR1 hr 38 minFeb 19th, 2025

Showtimes & Tickets

Watch Ex-Husbands Online

What is the plot of ‘Ex’Husbands’?

Manhattan dentist Peter Pearce (Griffin Dunne) is facing a midlife crisis after his wife (Rosanna Arquette) of 35 years leaves him. On the spur of the moment, he books a trip to Tulum, Mexico, only to crash his son’s (James Norton) bachelor party.

Who is in the cast of ‘Ex’Husbands’?

Griffin Dunne as Peter Pearce
Rosanna Arquette as Maria Pearce
Richard Benjamin as Simon Pearce
Miles Heizer as Mickey Pearce
James Norton as Nick Pearce
Eisa Davis as Eileen Link
Marcia Jean Kurtz as Eunice Pearce
John Ventimiglia as Sipple
Lou Taylor Pucci as Aaron
Echo Kellum as Chris

(L to R) Griffin Dunne, James Norton and Miles Heizer in Greenwich Entertainment's 'Ex-Husbands'. Credit: Wyatt Angelo, Courtesy of Greenwich Entertainment.