Lionsgate/Peter Lovino(NEW YORK) — Two of Hollywood’s coolest leading ladies — Anna Kendrick and Blake Lively — are facing off as frenemies in the new dark comedy A Simple Favor, from director Paul Feig.
“What Paul does in his films in general is he creates two strong female characters who are polar opposite, who are often going head to head. Yet, there is no pettiness. They’re trying to take each other down. They’re also in complete awe of the other person,” Lively told ABC News’ Nightline co-anchor Juju Chang.
The new film taps into the often explored lives of women caught up in a genre-bending love triangle and features the break-out Crazy Rich Asians star of the summer Henry Golding.
Feig said that A Simple Favor is both a comedy and a thriller. “Paul describes it as a ‘friller,'” Golding says.
The movie centers around a friendship between two mommy rivals, both with big secrets of their own. Kendrick plays Stephanie, a widowed homemaker and upbeat mommy vlogger alongside Lively as Emily, a glamorous wife and mother with a big-time fashion job and seemingly perfect life masking a hidden, provocative past.
“I think, you know, there’s different versions of trying to pretend that you have the perfect life,” Kendrick said.
“My character is a complete psychopath,” Lively adds.
Feig has long championed diverse casts in other films he’s directed including Bridesmaids and the remake of Ghostbusters, so adding Golding as Lively’s character’s husband Sean was an easy fit.
“I really wanted to make sure we had a very inclusive cast and I also really wanted to find somebody new who could be like my Cary Grant,” Feig said. “So when I saw Henry for the first time [I thought] ‘that’s him.'”
A Simple Favor opens Friday.
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