- I'm sorry.
- Everything that she brought
to that moment is something that I feel
like so many women can relate to.
- Did he try anything? - No.
- Hi, I am Chloe Domont, director of Fair Play.
I'm gonna watch the key scene in the film
and break it down shot by shot.
- So, what'd Rory want?
- He wasn't there.
- So this was actually the first scene that came to me
when I sat down to write the script.
This was a scene that really felt like, okay,
I have a movie here and something that needs to be put
on screen, which is the idea that Emily gets the promotion
and her first feeling isn't excitement, it's fear.
Because she doesn't know how her male partner's gonna react
and what this is going to cost her
in terms of her relationship.
It's that feeling that I really wanted to put on screen
and kind of shine a light on
the emotional terror of that situation.
- I met Campbell.
- You met Campbell?
At two in the morning?
- When we were shooting this scene,
the framing of it, everything,
I wanted it to reflect the emotional state that she's in.
When she finally walks through the door
and sees Luke on the couch,
the way that we wanted to frame her behind his shoulder,
I wanted her to, again, feel very small in the frame.
So the shots that are over Luke's shoulder
as she's hesitating and she doesn't know how to tell him,
he's very big in the frame.
He's very dominant and she's very small and looking away
and she doesn't even want to make eye contact.
And I felt like the film language of that really spoke
to what she was feeling inside.
- Emily.
Did he try anything?
- No.
- And then in terms of the sound design,
I wanted the apartment to be like,
almost like uncomfortably quiet, except for low tones
that would come in and out.
So like the subway, like when he stands up
and he doesn't know,
'cause she's being cagey in terms of his perspective.
So he starts to put all these ideas together
in his head of what he thinks happened.
And in that moment we had the subway come in.
It fills that silence in a really uncomfortable way,
and you feel it more in your stomach
almost before you even hear it.
- He's promoting me to PM.
I'm,
I'm taking over for Quinn.
- And then I told my sound designers to use
some of like horror tropes, adding in the floor creeks
as he's coming towards her.
It escalates the tension in that moment.
- That's amazing.
- I'm sorry.
- Come on.
I'm so happy for you.
- And in terms of the performance, I just feel like, I mean,
Phoebe just captured how I've personally felt
in dynamics like this.
The fact that also she first apologizes for her success.
She apologizes for something that she should be celebrating.
I think that just shows us, you know,
where we're at in terms of gender dynamics.
And I just feel like everything that she brought
to that moment is something that I feel
like so many women can relate to,
you know, this feeling of having to kind of undermine
themselves to protect their relationship.
- Come here.
(Luke kisses her)
I was scared.
(Luke chuckles)
(Luke kisses her)
- This scene is exactly what I set out to explore
in terms of Luke's character.
That Luke's character, you know,
represents a certain generation of men caught in the middle
between wanting to adhere to a modern feminist society
but still having been raised
on traditional ideas of masculinity.
And his reaction in that moment, it's exactly,
it encompasses that struggle and that, you know,
of those two opposing things.
Going into it, I thought it was gonna be
one of the hardest things to get,
but Alden, I mean he just fucking nailed it,
and you know, in I think the first or second take.
This scene is the reason I made this film,
you know, and what I wanted to explore
in terms of these dynamics and where we're at.
There's just still this feeling out there
that a woman's accomplishment can sometimes feel
like a poor reflection of a man's self worth.
That those two things are so linked in a way.
And I just feel like it's not anything
that any of us talk about.
We just feel and we push down and we normalize it.
Be sure to watch Fair Play, only on Netflix.