{"id":28621,"date":"2025-08-28T11:44:07","date_gmt":"2025-08-28T11:44:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/28621\/"},"modified":"2025-08-28T11:44:07","modified_gmt":"2025-08-28T11:44:07","slug":"aubrey-plaza-margaret-qualley-on-crafting-honey-dont-characters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/28621\/","title":{"rendered":"Aubrey Plaza, Margaret Qualley on Crafting ‘Honey Don’t!’ Characters"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tWriter-director Ethan Coen<\/a> has a reputation for not wanting actors to change the dialogue in his films.<\/p>\n

\n\tBut that doesn\u2019t mean he wasn\u2019t open to collaborating with the stars in his latest movie with wife and co-writer Tricia Cooke<\/a>. Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter at a New York screening of Honey Dont!<\/a> earlier this month, Aubrey Plaza<\/a>, Margaret Qualley<\/a> and Charlie Day<\/a> all detailed how they helped shape their distinctive characters in the neo-noir dark comedy detective movie.<\/p>\n

\n\tPlaza, who plays Qualley\u2019s character\u2019s love interest MG Falcone, praised Coen and Cooke for being \u201cvery collaborative\u201d and said that though she\u2019d heard of Coen not wanting to alter lines, \u201cHe did a little bit on this one, which I thought was cool because he wanted to be open to all ideas.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tOnce Plaza was cast, her character changed in a \u201csubtle\u201d way, she recalled.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI think once Margaret and I started rehearsing and got into a rhythm there were just certain power dynamics that we wanted to address and make sure to dial them in \u2014\u00a0make sure the nuance and tiny changes along the way all made sense,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd I think Margaret and I are really open and willing to play around.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tQualley, meanwhile, said she was eager to work with Coen and Cooke again after starring in the first film in their self-proclaimed lesbian B-movie trilogy, Drive-Away Dolls, because of her experience working with them on their \u201cfun set.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI love learning from them and collaborating with them,\u201d she said. And on this project, Qualley, who plays the film\u2019s eponymous small-town private investigator, Honey O\u2019Donahue, and studied classic noir films and books, indicated she played around with altering her voice to make it sound more like honey.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI tried to sound a little bit like Lauren Bacall or Humphrey Bogart,\u201d Qualley said. \u201cI read Lauren Bacall\u2019s autobiography and she talked about lowering her voice. And she said that she would climb a mountain and just scream until she lost her voice. I didn\u2019t exactly do that but I tried it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tCoen, it seems, has been influenced by both Qualley and Plaza, with the filmmaker saying meeting Qualley on Drive-Away Dolls was key for this film.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cShe was so right for this,\u201d he said. \u201cThe obvious way that [Drive-Away Dolls] informed this one and the big way that it informed this one is Margaret.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAnd Plaza recalls Coen saying, when she wrapped Honey Don\u2019t!, that he wrote the off-Broadway play she\u2019s set to star in<\/a> with her in mind.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWhen I wrapped Honey Don\u2019t, Ethan came into my trailer and said, \u2018I wrote this play and I think I wrote it for you and I didn\u2019t even realize it. Would you do it?\u2019 I said, \u2018I\u2019ll do anything you ask me to do, basically.\u2019 I loved working with him. So I\u2019d like to continue that creative collaboration,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\n\tAnd Day, who was eager to learn from Coen and Cooke, maintained that he \u201cdidn\u2019t change a comma\u201d but appreciated the \u201cloose\u201d vibe on set.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThey really know what they want so it\u2019s just a matter of feeling that as long as I deliver what was scripted, we\u2019ll be in good shape,\u201d he said. \u201cBut it\u2019s a loose set; it\u2019s very happy-go-lucky and a lot of good energy.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tCoen and Cooke previously said they weren\u2019t sure if there would indeed be a third film<\/a> in their genre trilogy, and they remained noncommittal at the Honey Don\u2019t! screening.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI don\u2019t know. There may well be. Actually, we\u2019re working on a couple of things, the third one being one of them. You work on movies and see what happens next,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\n\tCooke joked that she has an easy way to complete the trilogy.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe\u2019ll just call whatever movie comes next the third one,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\n\tFocus Features\u2019 Honey Don\u2019t!, also starring Chris Evans and Billy Eichner, is now in theaters.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Writer-director Ethan Coen has a reputation for not wanting actors to change the dialogue in his films. But…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":28622,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[268],"tags":[11145,434,15331,18,117,12714,3124,19,17,10151,11774,15545],"class_list":{"0":"post-28621","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebrities","8":"tag-aubrey-plaza","9":"tag-celebrities","10":"tag-charlie-day","11":"tag-eire","12":"tag-entertainment","13":"tag-ethan-coen","14":"tag-events","15":"tag-ie","16":"tag-ireland","17":"tag-margaret-qualley","18":"tag-red-carpet","19":"tag-tricia-cooke"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28621","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28621"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28621\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28622"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28621"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28621"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28621"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}