LOS ANGELES — It can take time for a pair of actors portraying a romantic couple to find the right connection to make their onscreen performance come across as real. When actors can’t find it, romantic comedies are neither full of love nor laughs.
There was no such problem with Jennifer Aniston and Adam Sandler playing a married couple pulled into an international tale of murder and misunderstandings with the new Netflix film “Murder Mystery.” That they felt so comfortable working with each other isn’t just because they costarred in the 2011 feature film “Just Go with It.”
“It was actually like no time had passed because we would see each other over the years,” Aniston said. “It was something that came as extremely natural because we have known each other for so long.”
The comfort the actors feel comes across even when doing interviews. Often, they both finish each other’s sentences and good-natured jabs are taken. Aniston jokes the only thing different about working with Sandler on “Murder Mystery” than on “Just Go with It” is that he’s much older now.
Director Kyle Newacheck (“Workaholics”) saw the connection between Sandler and Aniston immediately. He directed the movie but feels more like an editor, which meant shooting a lot of different angles to be put together to create a scene. Once he saw his lead actors on screen, Newacheck knew the smartest thing was to just keep the camera pointed at them and they would provide the laughs and chemistry.
In “Murder Mystery,” Nick (Sandler) is a New York City police officer who has been lying to his wife, Audrey (Aniston), about taking the exam to become a detective. He’s also not followed up on a promise when they were married years ago to take a trip to Europe. The pair finally take the trip but on the way, they meet a mysterious stranger (Luke Evans) who invites them to join him on a superyacht owned by his elderly billionaire uncle. Nick and Audrey become prime suspects when a murder is committed.
Writer James Vanderbilt (“The Amazing Spider-Man”) wanted to give the actors a rarely used scenario in a romantic comedy. The conventional approach in the genre is to have the couple meeting and falling in love or at the end of a long relationship that’s beginning to unravel. Nick and Audrey are a happily married couple dealing with complacency.
That was the starting spot, but both Sandler and Aniston worked every night on ways to improve the script. Sandler stresses Aniston worked a lot more than he did and that has to do with Aniston’s approach to comedy.
“It’s really important that it’s grounded,” Aniston said. “When comedy is this broad there has to be some level of truth in it in order to find the organic laugh as opposed to the bud-um-bum laugh. Doing that kind of work as we went along was fun and we made it better.”
The commitment is one thing Sandler admires about Aniston. He finds her to be incredibly funny and she has a way of making him feel relaxed when they are on set. Aniston adds she and Sandler have a kind of weird language they share where even the most abstract joke doesn’t go over Sandler’s head. Aniston knows if she can make Sandler laugh, then she’s scored a win.
“Murder Mystery” is the latest project that has given Aniston a chance to show off her comedy skills, and she will always be linked to one of top TV comedies of all time with “Friends.” But Aniston also has dramatic work such as in “Marley & Me,” “The Good Girl” and streaming series “The Morning Show.” Whether she’s doing comedy or drama, they both come with challenges.
“I wouldn’t say one is easier than the other. I always like to breathe reality into my comedy so I feel like it’s just a different form of behaving and existing,” Aniston said. “One makes you laugh and the other doesn’t. There is something about having the ability to dip your feet in both pools.
“It’s extremely hard for strictly dramatic actors. I remember when we were doing ‘Friends,’ we brought in some actors from film and they were terrified. They thought they had to do something different. Which I think is the biggest misconception.”
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