Community's Gillian Jacobs sparkled at the premiere of Life Partners, where she told The Hollywood Reporter that she related to her character, even though she "wasn't necessarily proud" of that.
Andy Kropa/Invision/APIn the indie comedy Life Partners, Community‘s Gillian Jacobs plays one half of a long-term female friendship, opposite Gossip Girl alum Leighton Meester, who finds that their relationship starts to change after she gets engaged to Adam Brody‘s character.
It was a role that Jacobs said she related to — even some of its embarrassing parts — as she admitted to The Hollywood Reporter at the film’s Tribeca Film Festival premiere Friday.
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“I wasn’t necessarily proud of the fact that I related to the movie, but … I thought it said something really real and specific about female friendships,” Jacobs told THR, mentioning that she had similar arguments to the ones in the movie with people in her life.
Jacobs, along with co-stars Gabourey Sidibe and Abby Elliott, said because it was a rare female-driven comedy, it appealed to them as well. The movie was written and directed by Susanna Fogel in her feature-film debut.
“As a woman, you’re always looking for opportunities to work with female writer-directors, and how often do you get a movie where the two leads are both women and the men are really secondary? Adam [Brody]’s got the supporting part, which is normally the girl part,” Jacobs said.
The film’s female-centric nature was also something that interested executive producer Anne O’Shea when she first heard about the project in the script phase.
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After she and her Minerva Productions partner, Brian Quattrini, read the script, they were convinced they should sign on.
“Brian read [the script] before I did, and he was like, ‘Oh my God, you gotta read this script right now! Drop everything and read this script!’ So I did, and I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, we have to do this,’ ” O’Shea said.
The film, which was also produced by Red Crown Productions, is still looking for a distributor, but O’Shea said they’re probably going to push for a multiplatform release, which she thinks will be most effective for the movie.
Jacobs, who has the comedy Walk of Shame coming out on May 2 as a dual theatrical and VOD release, told THR that she’s a fan of that strategy.
“That seems to be the way a lot of releases are going,” she said. “And you feel like you can spread the word fast with on-demand now. And a lot of films have done really well.”
