'Palm Springs’ star Camila Mendes gushes about working with Andy Samberg: 'He’s a legend'
Produced by ‘The Lonely Island’ trio of Andy Samberg, Akiva Schaffer, and Jorma Taccone, ‘Palm Springs’ that stars Samberg, ‘How I Met Your Mother’ actor Cristin Milioti, and ‘Riverdale’ actor Camila Mendes has received rave reviews. The comedy is said to be full of delightful twists, intelligent writing, and of course, good acting.
According to IMDb’s description, “When carefree Nyles (Samberg) and reluctant maid of honor Sarah (Milioti) have a chance encounter at a Palm Springs wedding, things get complicated as they are unable to escape the venue, themselves, or each other.”
At the Sundance Film Festival 2020, the cast and crew of the comedy spoke to MEA WorldWide (MEAWW) about the film, working with each other, and why the audience will love it.
Speaking about why he ended up casting Milioti, Samberg said at the event, “When we first decided to take on the script, Becky Sloviter, who is head producer at our company, and I sat down to say, ‘Who would it be?’ and she was the first name we said.”
Milioti spoke about returning to the world of romcoms and said, “This doesn’t feel quite like a romcom. This, to me, is tonally so different than other things I’ve done maybe in that genre, because of the sort of existential and surreal elements of it.”
Samberg interjected, “It’s almost like a hybrid of things you’ve done,” to which Milioti agreed. Samberg added that the film was somewhere between ‘How I Met Your Mother’ and ‘Black Mirror’.
Of course, Milioti let us in on a little scoop. She said of her working relationship with Samberg: “We did not get along, until this festival.” As Samberg laughed, Milioti continued, “We finally had a heart to heart that was necessary.” Samberg added, “The greatest role we ever played was pretending to be friends here… It is what it is.”
Mendes, who plays the role of Tala in ‘Palm Springs’ also spoke to MEAWW. Talking about being a fan of Samberg, Mendes said, “He’s a legend. He’s been around for so long. I have seen him do things since I was a kid… It’s like a huge thing to work with an ‘SNL’ actor. It was really cool and I loved ‘Brooklyn Nine-Nine’. So I was like very excited to meet him. And he’s so sweet.”
Andy Siara And Max Barbakow, the film’s writers too shared how they came about the idea for ‘Palm Springs’. Barbakow, talking about how they came up with the idea for the film, said, “It is based on my experience as a single person, struggling in my own relationship, at Andy’s wedding at Palm Springs.”
He added, “The whole thing kinda sprung from us two guys contemplating relationships and ourselves and life within that context.”
'Palm Springs' premiered at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival.