VENICE- When Noah Baumbach asked Scarlett Johansson to meet with him about a new film he was going to write about a divorce, he didn’t know she was going through one in real life.
Marriage Story stars the actress as Nicole in the film, opposite Adam Driver who plays her on-screen husband, Charlie.
Directed by Noah Baumbach, the film explores the concept of both marriage and divorce and will feature some tear-jerking, powerful meltdown scenes between the leading pair.
When she met with the director to discuss working together, “I was actually going through a divorce,” Johansson recounted Thursday in Venice, where the Netflix title is set to world-premiere in the evening. “I didn’t know what we were going to talk about….I just kind of blew into the room, ordered a glass of white wine and started complaining” about the relationship she was in.
“And he was just listening and very attentive,” she said. “And then he kind of cut it short and said, ‘Funny you should mention it.’”
Baumbach then warned her: “This is probably a project..that you are either going to really want to do or not.”
And she did. “It felt sort of fated in a way,” Johansson said. “It was an experience to share with him and have him share with me. And it somehow came at just the right time.”
Having separated from Ryan Reynolds in 2011 and Romain Dauriac in 2017, Scarlett said ‘there’s so much of all of us in this film that’s out there for everyone to see’.
The film will make stops at the Telluride and Toronto Film Festivals before premiering on Nov. 6. It will debut on Netflix on Dec. 6.
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