hi my name is greg and i'm john and we are with the real rejects hi guys hi zach um this is
truly an honor i grew up on um i watched all the scrubs watched guard and stayed a bunch thanks man
yeah we're just going to read your items
you're going in style we're doing this man um yeah and uh we're telling gail this like we're
we're obviously not the typical target demographic for this movie but then we found ourselves we were
like really hesitant to watch it and then we found ourselves both really charmed by it and
found it really sweet and funny so it is it's heartwarming and you know i i think it's cool
that disney's putting it out it's such it's such a you know it doesn't shy away from what
it's like to be a blended family in 2022 and all the different things that could come up and yeah
i mean i mean it's amazing how much kenya packs into the screenplay and the kids are hilarious and
you know mostly for parents it's just it's the ultimate example of something like you
are you're gonna laugh you're not gonna sit there and roll your eyes at oh my goodness i have to
watch this with my kid you're gonna laugh your butt off i think absolutely and i was wondering
like i feel like a role like yours in a film like this it could easily feel perfunctory
but between the writing and your performance i thought you struck a great balance of fun and
relatability while also supporting the ensemble so how did you go about building a uh uniquely
blended family dynamic with gabrielle and the rest of your coaches well gab and i quit right
off the bat she's just cool and she's fun and she's you know she's just you can't say anything
that'll shock her in fact she'll say something that'll shock you and i love kids i don't have
any of my own but i was like you know uncle zack and she really has kids so she was more like the
mom she's the one who had to be like zach you're getting them all riled up come on come on come on
but um you know we we just we had a great balance it was the pandemic we were so thrilled to be able
to make something you know uh as performers as someone who attempts to make people laugh
to finally be on a set again and doing that with little kids and they were so cute
and what's great about kids is you can give them a joke that comes to your mind and sound like an
insult as you would never go to a fellow actor like say they say that say this i just came up
with back to me with a little kid you can be like say this and then i'm gonna say this and they
would do it and it would be hilarious and you'd get all this like there's a moment when the kid
i'm like how did you get down here and he goes the laundry shoot i go we have a laundry shoot like me
and that kid just improv that together well and probably together oh that's great i told him to
say he took the laundry shoot yeah i was gonna say then with you being a director yourself did
you ever find that you wanted to slip into that role i was very careful my nightmare is whenever
i'm an actor that a director will feel like i'm gonna step on their toes at all so so gail and i
had a great synergy occasionally i would whisper in her ear like you should have so-and-so do that
it'd be hilarious or there's a really cool camera position over here for that joke and you know but
but never never overstep my my my my bounds with it yeah that's fun you know you actually had
he had a question in mind that i thought was really fun yeah okay so your character obviously
is a chef and a sauce connoisseur so i am curious do you have a sauce recipe of your own or just a
favorite sauce and when will we expect to see you on hot ones um i don't think i could hail hot ones
yeah i've been getting a lot of requests to go on hot ones and i look at it it looks so painful
um you know we watched watching watch you suffer zach when can we see you suffer um sauce-wise
i'm not really you know i'm i'm a big sweet guy i have a sweet tooth so and i love peanut
butter and chocolate so it's probably already invented reese's peanut butter cup sauce but
that's what i would do i would just drench like a sundae with peanut butter and chocolate sauce
my last question is is like with with the kids that you were working with in particular i know
like a common trait is like ah you know you don't have a favorite here but was there a kid here in
particular that you felt like we really clicked them up yeah leo he played he played uh uh luca
he just he's just the sweetest kid i've ever met in my life he's an incredible dancer and he's so
smart and he he's the kind of kid we would sit and just have like a very grown-up chat about things
and then and then they'd call us to our marks and we'd go over and he goes that was a nice chat zach
he's like nine going on 40. you're gonna have like a monthly call when we do we hung out you know i
mean he's got a um you know he had never been to disneyland so i took him and his mom at disneyland
with my friends and uh i just love him he's the sweetest kid i ever met
uh yeah this this movie was fun and uh even though you're not a dad yourself you sure as hell play a
great one you're like man it seems like i could be a hell of a dad i would be happy to get your son
yeah so thank you you guys should check out uh our me and donald's podcast uh fake doctor's real
friends we we we uh watch old school episodes i've heard all about that yeah absolutely
i grew up down the street from the hospital so i'm gonna finish all of those tonight check it out it
all right thank you zach for your time and thank you congrats on the movie this is thanks
thank you hi i'm greg and i'm john and we are the real rejects uh gail gail thank you uh for taking
the time to speak with us um i think i can speak for both of us on this end uh we'll be honest
when we were walking into this we were like i don't know about this
we are not the target audience we're not talking right so i don't know by the time
it's sort of why i laughed when i first saw you guys i was like oh boy
either or i am in for a roasting so thank you will there be more action in the second one
well no i mean like one of the main things i really loved about this movie was
i would say the level of support that was demonstrated throughout the film
like even at times where one would expect a like generic conflict to come up it would
sort of divert and it was refreshing to like flip the script on showing love in a tough situation
instead of a generic conflict so it did make me curious with the amount of heart in this movie
what were some of the main messages you intentionally wanted to convey to the audience
or wanted them to take away well the biggest one is i think it's really tempting to think that we
need to have more and give our families more like more money a bigger house more sneakers
you know just more success and i think that really what the movie comes down to saying is
kids want more time they want more attention they want more you and we didn't set out to make
like a cats in the cradle movie where everyone's crying and saying i wish i were a better parent
but just that at the end of the movie you want to spend more time with your kids is really our
goal and then one thing that was really important to me and i think it gets slept on a little bit
because we do a lot of really interesting social commentary i love the scene with the two dads
talking about the true limitations of a white dad trying to parent a black son that no matter how
aware you are no matter how much love and focus you give it no matter how educated you are about
it you just lack that lived experience so like that's a wonderful scene i feel like
a lot of people will talk about that scene but a scene that i just adore is the character of dom
you know he has these natural natural connections to his daughter who's this amazing athlete
and his son who's like a comic book nerd he just doesn't really know what to do about him
and partially because he's just on the road and not around and also because he can't relate to d
d and comic books that they've just sort of kept their distance but the actor andre who plays dj
was so vulnerable and tree who plays dom is so warm originally their reconciliation scene was
much shorter and i was like these guys need more you know when we expanded the scene and made it
bigger and i'm like oh you are really going out on a lid we're gonna go to comic-con that is as far
out of your comfort zone as imaginable and i just love that scene so much i think that was excellent
i i mean one of the things i loved was how it didn't actually shy away from like the racial
discussions i thought it might have just been like oh maybe just a casting thing but then you're like
oh no it's integrated within the story which made it that much more nuanced i would say absolutely
and uh you know kind of piggybacking off of that you know you have a lot of things to balance you
know obviously you have all the different kids and the personalities and the energy they bring and
that's part of the charm so what was your approach to balancing that with like the the you know zach
and gabrielle's story is to me kind of like a through line that anchors everything together so
what was the approach to balancing all of those personalities and keeping it you know succinct
i think there were a couple things we really had to help the kids learn the importance of like
staying focused because we have such limited hours with them yeah and also you know they tend to just
go into like play mode goof around mode and i don't know about you guys but when i was a kid
when someone said be quiet it would just wind me up more to want to act out more but i really
found that when i explained to them why they had to be quiet because it helped their scene partner
it freed up their brain to think about funny things to do they really got it and it was amazing
because they learned from zach and gab who are such great veterans at that and they really were
like oh we want to be on a team you know we want to get in on the fun and not just be told like
quiet yeah absolutely and that was great and there was just one thing i'll say about a challenge of
working with kids is that they say you know every actor needs a different director and it's your job
to be every single different director that they need and there was one child actor who i will
not name he was usually so focused and a great listener and there was a thing that i thought
was simple and he just could not do it he was unfocused at points i would even tell him try
saying it like this and he just could not and i was like what's going on this is not like him
and then i thought of it and i went up and i was like honey do you have to use the bathroom
and he said yes miss gail i do and he's like but i know there's no time and i said there's always
time for you to be a person go take care of it and he came back and he nailed it and i just thought
this might be my proudest moment as a director i saw what my actor needed he needed to pee
you're talking about zach braf aren't you
oh no yeah this film uh surprised us and i mean it sincerely it was it was actually
really delightful and i laughed quite a bit throughout as well so
that's so nice tell your friends tell your audience absolutely for the nephews i will
tell most i will most definitely be doing that thank you gail for your time and uh thank you for
delivering on this movie and uh enjoy the rest of the the junket you have today you too guys
thank you so much so fun to talk to you it's time for photography too thank you take care