-Our first guest tonight is an Emmy Award-winning actor,
screenwriter, and producer you know
from shows like "Six Feet Under" and "The Leftovers."
He stars in "The Mosquito Coast,"
which premieres on Apple TV+,
with the first two episodes this Friday.
Let's take a look.
[ Up-tempo music plays ]
[ Door bursts open ] -[ Gasps ]
[ Music continues playing ]
-Where is it? -Where's what?
-Dina?
-[ Scoffs ]
-Is he gone?
-Oh, no, he's still here, Josh.
How you doin'?
Please welcome back to the show Justin Theroux.
How are you, Justin? -Hey, man, how are ya?
-It is really genuinely nice to see you.
We have not seen each other for a long time,
which is very strange.
We are neighbors. We live very close.
My wife and I famously saw you about an hour
before she gave birth to a child in the lobby.
-You and Alexi were walking in the park.
I know. -[ Chuckles ]
-I'm part of your birth story.
-You are very much a part of our birth story.
But I have not seen you at all. How have you been?
-I've been good. I've been really good.
I've been here most of the time. You know, the whole thing.
Even oftentimes I would look into your windows,
thinking you were there, and --
I wasn't looking into your windows like a creep.
-No, like a cool guy. -And then I would see you --
Yeah, like a cool guys looks in the window.
And they would be darkened, and I would be sad.
And I would be upset about that.
But I miss you in the neighborhood.
And I would love to see you.
-I actually have had this happen.
Look, you and I, we are in show business,
and we know that sometimes you will have something going on
where a car will be sent to pick you up.
-Yes. -And I was walking by
your building, and I saw one of those cars.
And I thought, "Oh, I bet this is for Justin.
And maybe I'll wait and say hi."
But then I realized I was the creep,
'cause the driver was just looking at me.
And I'm a guy in a mask who just stopped.
And I said, "You know what? I'm gonna..."
-And your Sharpie. -"I'm gonna keep walking."
This was something, the timing obviously was not ideal,
but you managed to make it through.
You opened a bar in the city in 2019.
How did you manage through not, obviously, a great year
for a bar?
-Well, no, it was not a great year.
Well, you know, it's -- Look, we were fine
with not turning a profit last year.
Obviously, like everybody,
it was more about just sort of making sure
that everyone got to keep their job.
We shut down only for a couple months, actually.
And then Mr. de Blasio was doing a bang-up job
by opening up the city.
Let us open again and serve booze outside,
which also is not ideal in the cold winter months.
But, yeah, everyone
was basically able to sort of maintain.
We were able to keep the bar open.
So, now, it's wildly open, and we've almost kind of doubled
the outdoor space now, which is really fun.
We've kind of -- We're quickly making our way back.
But, you know, it was that thing --
It was actually kind of cool, all the restaurants and bars
all kind of started doing, like -- you know,
sort of, I guess, collabs, for lack of a better word,
where we'd serve burgers or pizzas from --
you know, a Brooklyn pizza place.
Or we'd have, you know -- Yeah, we just -- we would do,
like, food and drinks and stuff.
We were able to keep the whole thing afloat.
-I will say, yesterday was a very warm night
in New York City, and as I was leaving the show,
a day after the CDC basically said
you don't have to wear a mask outside,
New York felt 100% back, last night.
-I know, and especially over where we live,
where there's also a lot of the U's,
the park started to just look like a Berlin summer festival
or something. [ Both laugh ]
It was so schizophrenic. People, like, skateboarding
and doing wheelies and light sticks
and all the rest of it. -I felt like an old man,
where I was like, "I miss the old days,
when the kids had to stay inside."
-"Kids!" [ Laughs ] -Hey, you let your dog
come to the bar. -All the time, yeah.
-And we have very different dogs,
but very similar colorings on our dogs.
-I've only heard about your dog. -Yeah.
-What's your dog's name again? -Frisbee.
And Frisbee doesn't go out much,
because she gets cold right away.
But I feel like our dogs are, like, the same color
but very different. [ Laughter ]
-Your dog looks like the dehydrated version of my dog.
[ Laughter ]
-If you made -- Yeah, that's like --
If you made dog jerky out of that,
it would look like that. [ Laughter ]
-Your dog looks like taxidermy with a broken ear.
[ Laughter ]
-How dare you! -I kid with Frisbee.
-Of course. Hey, so, this is really cool.
"The Mosquito Coast," it's great.
I did not know that your uncle was Paul Theroux,
who wrote this book 40 years ago
and is a wonderful author, who I love a great deal.
And one of the reasons I think
it never occurred to me he was your uncle
is that you say your last names differently.
-This is a whole thing.
I mean, it's not a whole thing, but it's a thing.
You know, he says -- It's a French name.
And originally, when I check into a hotel in France,
they say, "Oh, bonjour, Monsieur 'Teroo.'"
So it's got a hard "T" sound on it.
Then, I guess, when he came over,
to be easier, made it "Ther-oo."
And then, I guess, growing up,
no one really got my name correctly.
Sort of, the neighborhood chose my name.
And I'm not gonna go up against the whole neighborhood,
so they would just say "Thoreau,"
or teachers would mispronounce it.
You know, "Where is Justin Therux," or whatever.
So, wherever it landed, that's kind of what I stuck with.
And then it was too late. And only now
that we're doing a show together has this resurfaced
as creating a schism in our family.
-Did he know this was happening behind the scenes?
I know sometimes, as an author, you're not familiar
or up-to-date with what's happening.
-No. It looks like
it's something we cooked up together,
but it was one of those things that one of my managers said,
"You know, they're doing 'The Mosquito Coast'?
It just popped up on our radar."
And I thought, "Oh, that's interesting,
I'd like to read that script."
And then I read it, and then I said,
"It's a really good script. I'd like to do this."
So I met with Neil Cross, and then I met with Apple.
And then -- And then I sort of --
We went down the road, and I ended up signing up for it.
And then I just called -- I got to call him and say,
"Guess what? Guess what I'm doing with you."
And it was just sort of a happy accident.
You know, it wasn't planned in that way.
-That's just wonderful. This had been a film
almost, I guess, like 30 or 40 years ago,
as well, starring Harrison Ford.
This is even maybe a bigger shock to me
than the fact that Paul is your uncle.
While you were filming this,
you randomly met Harrison Ford for the first time.
-Yes, totally. I was in Mexico City
and staying at a hotel, and he happened to come in
to do something else, and a friend of ours
notified us, "Hey, you know Harrison Ford's --"
or a mutual friend -- that he's in the hotel.
And I thought, "Oh, can we have dinner or something,
or a cup of coffee?"
They said, "Let me put it together."
And they put it together. And we had this --
you know, one of those private dining room situations
where we just had a ton of tacos and tequila
and just sat and gabbed and had, like,
a really long, great, slightly drunken night together.
And it was fabulous. It's exactly what you would want
a long dinner with Harrison Ford to be like.
It's like -- It was just -- He's such a charmer.
He's a lovely man. -That is fantastic.
And it is very cool that you are playing the same part as him.
And it's always great to see you, buddy.
I hope it happens on the street soon.
-I hope so, too, man. -Alright, all the best.
"The Mosquito Coast" premieres globally on Apple TV+,
with the first two episodes tomorrow,
followed by new episodes every Friday.