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Zach Braff at the premiere of "The Last Kiss" held at the Directors Guild of America in West Hollywood, Calif. on September 13, 2006. |
Looking to make the successful transition from television to film, both Scrubs star Zach Braff and The O.C.’s Rachel Bilson chose the new Paramount Pictures film The Last Kiss as their next vehicle. In the contemporary romantic comedy-drama, Braff plays Michael, a 29-year-old architect who has a good job, a nice home and a beautiful, pregnant girlfriend (Jacinda Barrett). Already having doubts about the prospect of settling down, Michael meets a flirty college student (Bilson), who shows him what else could still be out there.
Adapted by Academy Award-winning writer Paul Haggis (Crash) from Gabriele Mucino’s celebrated Italian film L'Ultimo Bacio, Bilson says that it was the opportunity to work with Braff that drew her to The Last Kiss. “I had seen Garden State and was such a fan of his,” the 25-year-old Los Angeles native tells MediaBlvd Magazine. “I just think he has a lot of talent. So, knowing that he was attached, really drew me to the project. And then, finding out that Tony Goldwyn was directing, and the other names that were behind it, it was like a dream project for me.”
Braff admits that going from writing, directing and starring in the critically acclaimed Garden State to being a hired actor for The Last Kiss took some adjustment. “Inherent in being a director is having strong opinions about things, and those opinions aren’t always right,” the 31-year-old New Jersey native Braff tells MediaBlvd. “In fact, they’re mostly wrong. It is hard to come into someone else’s set and not be a final decision maker. But, that having been said, Tony was so collaborative and so open to my two cents. When my gut was really saying, ‘Why aren’t we doing it this way?,’ I didn’t have to have the fear of, ‘Oh, I don’t want to upset him.’ He didn’t have an ego about it. He was interested in being a partner with me.”
Early on in the process, Braff says he was approached to be the music supervisor because of the success he had with the Garden State soundtrack. “When I signed on to do the movie, they asked me if I’d be interested in supervising the soundtrack, and I really wanted to do it. I love music, and sharing music. It’s a little different, when you’re not directing the movie ‘cause the director places the songs, but I worked with Tony and provided him with tons of mix CDs. From there, he would pull the songs he liked and place them in different scenes.”
{quote_top}Part of what attracted Braff to the role of Michael was the fact that, even though he makes mistakes and uses bad judgement, he is a very real character. “You’ve got to give the movie props for having balls,” he says. “It really goes for it. Michael does a stupid ass thing, but don’t we all, at times in our lives? The film doesn’t wimp out, in being honest. Women, and some men, hate my character, but also empathize with him. He’s human. I’m so sick of movies where the protagonist only has bad things happen to him because of negative outside forces. That’s such bullshit. We all do dumb things in our lives, and we all do things where we wake up the next morning and go, ‘Oh, I wish I had a fucking time machine!’ That’s real, and I could relate to that.”
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Rachel Bilson at the premiere of "The Last Kiss" held at the Directors Guild of America in West Hollywood, Calif. on September 13, 2006. |
Braff also believes that audiences will be able to relate to the choices that his character is faced with. “I think it’s great that things aren’t all wrapped up and solved because then people would be like, ‘Oh, come on, it doesn’t fix that quickly.’ He needed to do this thing. If he didn’t do it now, he was going to do it at some point in his life. He needed to have this experience where he realized, ‘Wow, that was hollow, and nothing compared to what I feel when I’m having sex and being with the woman I love.’ He may have lost the greatest love of his life, as a result of it, but maybe he doesn’t. We don’t know what’s going to happen. But, I think audiences will understand that he needed to have that life experience. I can guarantee you that he won’t do it again.”
Playing the temptress, Bilson says that women have always deluded themselves, when it comes to men. “It’s been that way since the beginning of time and it will probably never change. Kim is 19 and, at that age, you don’t really know the difference between sex and love. You don’t really even know love. You know infatuation, maybe. She just enthralls him and is attracted by the whole aspect of an older man.”
“Men get all the crap for being commitment phobes, but I know plenty of girls that are with a guy, who are wondering, ‘I think he’s the one, but I still have that question about that guy from high school, and I just don’t know,’” adds Braff. “Women do have their maternal clock, so they’re a little more ready to say, ‘Alright, I’m in love. This is the one. I want to have kids. Let’s do it.’ But, I do think women are exactly the same, in terms of being afraid to know that this is the one. They have the same people they’re looking to who haven’t made it or stayed together.”
“With Rachel’s character, it’s different because she’s very young and the character is very innocent,” he continues. “She’s deluded herself into thinking that she’s fallen in love for the first time, but she’s just a baby. One of the things I think is great about this script is that it doesn’t take the easy way out and just make her some ditz who is an unlikable, shallow person. Paul Haggis really made her charming and likable, which makes it more challenging.”
{quote_middle}For her first major studio film, Bilson had to do a sex scene, which is embarrassing for any actor, let alone one making their big screen debut. “It’s definitely weird. It’s not normal to make out with a guy in front of 10 other guys on camera. But, it’s not really that bad. You just do it. You can’t really think about it too much, or you might get a little too nervous.”
Bilson admits that having Braff as her co-star really helped her to get through the more awkward moments. “It was really nice for me to have Zach because he was so supportive and so sweet. He made me laugh, which made it easier. He made it more comfortable and light on set. He is hysterical. He is, honestly, one of the funniest people I’ve ever met. You can’t go two seconds without bursting out into laughter.”
And, Braff had equally kind things to say about Bilson. “Rachel is so sweet and young and charming. We read everyone available in town for that part, and she brought such a likability to it. So many girls came in, just trying to play the sex and the sultry seduction of it, and we didn’t want it to be that. We wanted to go with someone who uses her charm more than her sexuality. Even though she’s sexy as hell, she uses her charm to seduce him, more than anything else.”
At 31, Braff says that, although he does believe in marriage, he doesn’t feel he’s ready to get married quite yet. “I want to get married and have kids, as I think my character does, but I think it’s scary. It’s terrifying. Like with the title of the movie, the idea that this is the last person you’re ever going to kiss is so hard to wrap your head around, but I think we all want it. I’m not going to get married anytime soon, but I definitely think, if you want to have kids, you have to start thinking about it sometime in your 30's. I want to be a dad, and I don’t want to be an old dad, so I have started to think about it.”
With the fall television season well underway, both Braff and Bilson have returned to their day jobs. Things on Fox’s The O.C. will be quite different this season, now that the kids have to deal with the death of Marissa Cooper (Mischa Barton), and going off to college.
{quote_bottom}“We’re not exactly sure what’s going to happen,” says Bilson. “Everyone is dealing with Marissa’s death for the first few episodes. But, I don’t know what they’re going to do with us after that. We call Willa Holland (who plays Marissa’s sister Kaitlin) mini-Misch because she’s a Mischa in training, and comes off like a 19-year-old. But, she’s been around the business for a really long time. Her step-dad is Brian De Palma. She’s no rookie.”
As for Braff’s series, NBC’s Scrubs, fans of the show have an upcoming musical episode to look forward to. “There’s a patient with dementia and anytime that anyone’s in the ICU, we see the ICU through this patient’s eyes, and everyone is singing as though they’re in a musical. Last year, we got really silly and random, and fans loved it. We had our best ratings ever. The feeling is that this will probably be the last year, so we’re all just going for it. The writing is so surreal and bizarre and wacky, and we’re going to give the fans what they want this year.”
