ComingSoon Senior Editor Brandon Schreur spoke to Paul Reiser and Colm Meaney about starring in The Problem with People. Reiser and Meaney discussed playing characters who don’t get along in the Ireland-set movie, working with sheep while filming scenes, and more.
“Two distant cousins who’ve never met – one in NYC, the other in the smallest town there is in Ireland – come together to finally put an end to a generations-long family feud. It doesn’t go well,” the logline for the movie reads. “The Problem with People, set in beautifully lush Irish countryside, is a heartwarming comedy about family, world peace…and sheep.”
Directed by Chris Cottam, The Problem With People releases on October 4, 2024, from Quiver Distribution.
To start, my first question is for both of you. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m pretty sure you guys have been friends for a long time, right?
Meaney: No!
Reiser: All that friendliness was faked! No, I was a great admirer and fan of Colm’s for years. I always thought he’d be perfect, literally perfect, for the script. But we’d never met. After he said, ‘Yes, I’d love to do it,’ we spoke on the phone, but we never met. It took a couple of years between COVID and scheduling conflicts. When we finally met, we had a pint of Guinness and I went, ‘Okay, now it’s real. I can see Colm Meaney and I can see the Guinness.’
Then we did a stage reading. We just read through a table read, and it went swimmingly. Several people came over and said, ‘Oh, so you guys have obviously worked together a lot.’ I went, ‘First time I met the man.’ But we hit it off and the characters were so fun to play together. I think, like the characters, we can both be lovely and charming, we can both be pretty bristly and fall to our worst instincts without too much provocation.
I love that dynamic in the movie, too, because it’s so fun when you guys are at each other’s throats. But then there are the moments where, you know, it’s almost working and you think you guys could get somewhere. Then it falls back apart. I loved the back-and-forth there. I’m curious, from your guys’ point of view, what was the more fun part? Was it when you were trying to one-up each other or was it when you guys were friends?
Meaney: I think it was the backside, I think it was when the bad stuff came in. You know, there were so many moments that were just, ‘Wait a minute, wait just a minute. Hold on. I’m not falling for that.’ Those moments are so much fun to play.
Reiser: The movie really sits on the edge of those two instincts. There’s a scene where they attempt one of their reconciliations and Colm’s character makes this lovely gesture, he comes to my hotel room in peace and I don’t believe it. There’s a line where he goes, ‘Can I come in?’ And I go, ‘No, of course you can’t come in.’ Then I just look at his pathetic face, his hangdog face, and I go, ‘All right, come in.’ And it’s like, there it is — ‘No! Well, okay, maybe.’
That’s where we all stand, in the world. We all would kind of like, theoretically, to get along. We’d all like to not be fighting, but how do we do it? Who is going to make the first move? If there’s a bigger picture to this movie, it’s that. How do we resolve conflict? I don’t know how to do it for the world, so let’s take a look at a family. Everybody has some family dynamic where you go, ‘I don’t even know why they aren’t talking to each other, but it’s been 11 years now.’ To me, that was the fun. Being on the edge of going back and forth from ‘I don’t trust you’ to ‘I’m going to try to trust you.’
It looked like a lot of fun, to act that way. The way that scene continues to play, your line with the towels, that made me laugh really hard, too. I had to mention that.
Reiser: Jane Levy and myself were the only Americans. The rest of the cast, and the entire crew, were British. I mean, Irish. Sorry.
Meaney: Ooh!
Reiser: Ooh! I forget. I’m just thinking colonial because that’s how I was raised — no. The woman who plays the innkeeper, Sheila Flitton, she’s 89 years old and lovely. She was just the light of the set. She was in Banshees of Inisherin and she was fantastic in that.
I thought I recognized her, yeah.
Reiser: She just has this very unique look and you fall in love with her. On the set, you think, ‘Be careful, she’s 89.’ She would put on Elvis and she would dance to Elvis in-between takes. Like, what is she eating? I got to get me some of that. She was just lovely, funny, delightful, and so surprising. She never did a line reading twice the same way. It’s all great, it’s all great.
I love it. Paul, you were obviously a co-writer on this. When you were working on this project, did you ever — I mean, like you said, every family has problems with feuds. But was this based on anything at all? Have you heard of anything like this happening?
Reiser: No, I sort of started backward. I didn’t have a story, I just knew that I wanted to make a movie in Ireland. I really wanted to go to a pretty countryside and make a movie. Which is a silly way to start, I guess. Then I thought, ‘Why is this New Yorker going to Ireland?’ I played with it for a couple of years by myself and didn’t get anywhere, so I thought, ‘Let me write it with somebody.’ Somebody introduced me to my co-writer, Wally [Marzano-Lesnevich]. I’d never met him, either. We just hit it off and we started brainstorming, like, ‘What if it’s a family thing?’ Then the idea of it being a long, generational feud that these two endeavor to put an end to. We were like, ‘That’s funny.’ I can see why these two well-intended guys can’t get over themselves.
Certainly, I have, in my immediate family and my extended family, I can think of any number of feuds that I know have been there for generations. I remember my mother once said something dismissive about an aunt of mine, my father’s sister. This was like 1992. She said, ‘I’m still upset about what she said.’ I said, ‘When did she say that?’ 1947. 1947? Let it go! Oh, my god. But she couldn’t let it go. She was like, ‘I didn’t care for what she said,’ and it was so nothing. But it was enough for her to hold onto for years.
Yeah. Like you said, I guess some people hang on to that kind of thing.
Reiser: For some reason, it gives them a reason to live.
But it’s a good movie about how to resolve that and what that looks like. I thought you really got at something, here. Colm, there is — forgive me, I’m probably going to pronounce this wrong — but a scene toward the end of the movie where you’re playing Gaelic football.
Meaney: That’s right. Dead on, yeah.
I know that it’s a real thing because I looked it up. But the movie sent me down a Wikipedia rabbit hole when I was watching it. I was like, ‘Oh, I’ve never heard of this.’ I was the Paul character, the American, who had no idea.
Reiser: I’d never heard of it, either.
Meaney: It is the biggest sport in Ireland. It’s the equivalent of the Super Bowl, the All-Ireland Final. There are 85,000 people at the stadium, it’s huge. It’s an amateur sport, but they work and train, now, like professionals. There are clubs that play on a lower level, but the top level of the game is actually between the counties. Each county in Ireland has a football team and a hurling team. They compete — there’s both a league and a knock-out championship, which is the big one.
Reiser: One of the great Sundays we had there is that Colm arranged for us, and we all went, to a Gaelic football game. It was Cork against I forget who. But it was great. What’s the name of the arena?
Meaney: Croke Park.
Reiser: Croke Park, which is where Springsteen played. It’s a huge stadium. The scale is different. It’s a much wider field than American football, and I think a little bit longer. It was great. I’m not really sharp and was thinking I wasn’t going to understand this; you can understand it pretty readily. It was great fun. Then you have a couple of Guinness while you’re watching.
But, originally, I had written soccer. I was speaking to an Irish woman and she goes, ‘You know, you might want to change it to Gaelic football.’ And as you did, Brandon, I went, ‘What is that? Oh, that looks great!’ And then we put in a line where he explains it, so he’s like, ‘It’s like football with basketball and a little wrestling.’
Yeah, the way you explained it in the movie was perfect, and then I was looking it up for like 30 minutes online after that. Like, oh, wow, this does go deep, this is cool. Another part I’m curious about is during all the shenanigans in the movie, one of the things that your character, Paul, does to Colm involves some sheep.
Reiser: You make it sound dirty, the way you say it, Brandon. It sounds a little dirty.
I was curious, were those real sheep? And were they dirty to work with?
Meaney: Yes. Yes and yes.
Reiser: They were real, those were union sheep. They were SAG-AFTRA sheep. You know what, by the way, that’s another cliche where you go, ‘There can’t quite be that many sheep.’ Then everywhere you go in Ireland, they’re just all over. They’re just walking across the streets. I mean, there were like three or four lines about sheep that I had to take out because I was like, ‘You know what, I think this is just my obsession.’ There was a discussion at the football scene, Colm, where I was like, ‘What do they do? On a Tuesday, a sheep?’ You say, ‘They just walk around, they eat, and they shit.’ I go, ‘My nephew basically does the same thing.’ But there were too many sheep jokes.
They’re colored, they’re like painted. Some have big red dots, others have big blue dots. I said, ‘Is that a Republican and a Democratic?’ No, it’s because that one is neutered and that one is pregnant. They’re marked for breeding. I’ll tell you, when you eat a lamb chop there, you feel a little bit self-conscious.
I think I would, too, if there are really sheep walking around everywhere like that.
Reiser: Like, I saw this [sheep] this afternoon walking.
