'Brothers' Interview: Josh Brolin and Peter Dinklage

Moviefone speaks with Josh Brolin and Peter Dinklage about 'Brothers'. "Josh and I wanted to make a comedy and we wanted to play brothers," Dinklage said.

Opening in select theaters on October 10th before premiering on Prime Video October 17th is the new comedy ‘Brothers’, which was directed by Max Barbakow (‘Palm Springs’).

The new film stars Josh Brolin (‘Avengers: Endgame’, ‘Deadpool 2’), Peter Dinklage (‘Game of Thrones’, ‘X-Men: Days of Future Past’), Taylour Paige (‘Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F’), Glenn Close (‘Fatal Attraction’), and Oscar-winners Brendan Fraser (‘The Whale’) and Marisa Tomei (‘My Cousin Vinny’).

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(L to R) Josh Brolin and Peter Dinklage star in 'Brothers'.

Moviefone recently had the pleasure of speaking with Josh Brolin and Peter Dinklage about their work on ‘Brothers’, how the project came together, playing brothers, their relationship with their mother, working with the rest of the cast, and Brolin’s intimate scene with an Orangutan.

You can read the full interview below or click on the video player above to watch our interview.

(L to R) Jady (Peter Dinklage), Cath (Glenn Close), and Moke (Josh Brolin) in 'Brothers'. Photo Credit: Courtesy of Prime © Amazon Content Services LLC.

Moviefone: To begin with, Peter, can you talk about how this project came together and what it was like playing Josh Brolin’s brother?

Peter Dinklage: Well, we all created this mad world together. I mean, (screenwriter) Macon Blair, executed it, as in his brilliant way as he does, so it never felt like, you're up for this next movie and here's the screenplay. It was more organic than that, with Josh and me and Macon. So, I don't remember sitting down and reading the screenplay for the first time. In a way, it just seeped into my DNA. So, Josh and I wanted to make a comedy, we wanted to play brothers, and we just had this somewhat flimsy idea of wanting to make this. Everything followed suit, which we were really shocked and surprised that people fell for it. Suddenly we have Glenn Close playing our mom. It was incredible. But I just loved making this movie. Let us entertain you and whatever madcap way it comes about, here we go. I love just breaking the rules of that normal, traditional process, what people think you need to do, the steps you need to take to make a movie. It's not necessarily true. That's how you get Glenn Close.

MF: Josh, can you talk about the dynamic between these two brothers and what was it like working on that relationship with Peter?

Josh Brolin: I mean, I think when we pitched this idea, we pitched it to several different places. Because Peter and I didn't really know each other before, that dynamic and that volley started to surface while we were doing that. I think we were figuring out the movie as we were pitching the movie, even though we had a general base idea. I mean, it all came out of people saying, "God, you and Dinklage look alike. You guys should do a movie together. Look at how big your heads are." Then, me calling Peter and saying, "Hey, do you want to do this thing?" He was like, "Yeah," immediately. Then you go, "Okay. So, we have this blank canvas. What do we do?" You bring in Macon Blair and you start throwing around ideas and sitting around breakfast tables and saying, "What if it was this? What happened in your family that's interesting?" What Macon was so good at is just there's this umbrella of absurdity over it all. How absurd it is in the family dynamic. The family dynamic is absurd anyway, so what about those movies that used to really exploit that and that we grew up on? ‘Cannonball Run’, Peter mentioned earlier, or ‘48 HRS', or ‘Midnight Run’. Whether it's family members or not, what is the absurdity of how we behave toward each other? I think that that's what this spring-boarded from.

(L to R) Jady (Peter Dinklage) and Cath (Glenn Close) in 'Brothers'. Photo Credit: Courtesy of Prime © Amazon Content Services LLC.

MF: Peter, can you talk about how the dynamic between these two brothers changes when their mother arrives and what it was like having Glenn Close play your mom?

PD: Glenn Close is a monster. I highly advise not getting anywhere within 20 yards of her. She's one of the greats. It was insane to be finally working with her. I never knew it would happen, but I was kicking myself every day. I like the idea that Macon had of, I'm grifting Josh's character just to get the family back together. I'm conning him. I'm pretending we're going one direction, but it's to get back to our mother, who we both love, but it's a complicated relationship, as it is with most of our moms. But really, my character is sort of the glue that's trying to put the family back together, which is lovely and sweet. But at the end of the day, he also wants to get something out of it. Get the riches. He's got dollar signs in his eyes. He can't help that. But it was so much fun making this movie. We were down in Atlanta for a couple of months during COVID, where everybody was masked except for the actors, so you play a game of, what does the lower half of people's face look like? It's like Bizarro when you finally see them without the mask. We all lived through that, and it was just fun in that time to make a comedy as zany as this with these incredible people. I think it was just such a soothing bomb to what we were all going through. You don't want to make a movie about COVID during COVID. You want to make a movie like this.

MF: Josh, can you talk about your character’s relationship with his wife, and how his brother’s return and the journey they go on together jeopardizes his marriage?

JB: What it does is it challenges his loyalty to his family, which always comes up. In my own family, I think you spend time with your family and there's irritations and you leave, and you go, "Okay. We had dinner together. I'm not going to do that again for two years if I can help it." Yet two weeks later you're back. You know what I mean? You can't say no. There's just something that is enmeshed that you can't break. I think Jady knows that. When he comes and he has this manipulation with his mom and they get together to get Moke back on the team, because he's the guy who's the great safe-cracker, and it's just once that innate thing happens, you can't let go of it. It's almost like an addiction. It's a weird addiction factor with your family. I love watching that dynamic, especially between Peter and me.

(L to R) Moke (Josh Brolin) and Jady (Peter Dinklage) in 'Brothers'. Photo Credit: Courtesy of Prime © Amazon Content Services LLC.

MF Josh, there was one scene in this movie that I thought was one of the funniest scenes I’ve seen in a film in a longtime, and that was the scene where you appear with an Orangutan. Can you talk about shooting that sequence, and did you know right away that it would be so hilarious?

JB: I knew it was a winner when everybody read it. I know that everybody who read the script mentioned that scene. Again, it was the first scene that they all mentioned. It's one of those things that you start to get nervous about doing it because if they love reading it so much, is this going to translate? But listen, we had fun with it and whatever it ended up being, it was 1000% conviction. For better or worse, we lent ourselves to what was written.

MF: Peter, you also have a very funny scene where you “rage dance” with Marisa Tomei. Was that scene improvised or in the script?

PD: The tone of this movie, it's so crazy, that to have a traditional sex scene just seemed like to fly in the face of the rest of the movie. So, to have these oddball people, these prison pen-pals, dance to hardcore speed metal, that's their most intimate moment. That's their most intimate thing they can think of, it's so Macon Blair, our writer, and me and Marisa, it's just such in the spirit of the film to have that juxtaposed with the sexier scene of Josh and the Orangutan. Literally Marisa and I didn't need an intimacy coordinator, they did, Josh and the Orangutan. You know what I'm saying? So, that's the fun part of it.

(L to R) Jady (Peter Dinklage) and Farful (Brendan Fraser) in 'Brothers'. Photo Credit: Courtesy of Prime © Amazon Content Services LLC.

MF: Finally, Peter, can you talk about the personal rivalry between Jady and Farful, and what was it like working with Brendan Fraser?

PD: One of the nicest human beings on this planet is Brendan Fraser. He had just come from the movie, ‘The Whale’, so I think he had to get something out of his system. He had to get off that couch and run around in Atlanta with us. You need a bad guy, and nothing better than a bad guy than a crooked cop trying to grift me, the anti-hero that is Jady. I think he screamed all his dialogue. I sort of was in scenes with him and he was so pitched at 11, there were times where I was like, "Is this going to work? Is this too much?" But that's the genius of Brendan Fraser because it worked perfectly. He knew that, as an actor, and it's always difficult to tell if it's going to match the rest of the tone of the movie. Our movie is so all over the place tonally, that Max (Barbakow), our director, just made it all work. It was incredible. But Brendan is incredible. He's so much fun to work with and he made it so much more fun, those scenes of torture and humiliation.

Brothers

"Family is a life sentence."

R1 hr 28 minOct 17th, 2024

Showtimes & Tickets

Watch Brothers Online

What is the plot of ‘Brothers’?

A reformed criminal's (Josh Brolin) attempt at going straight is derailed when he reunites with his sanity-testing twin brother (Peter Dinklage) on a road trip for the score of a lifetime. Dodging bullets, the law, and an overbearing mother (Glenn Close) along the way, they must heal their severed family bond before they end up killing each other.

Who is in the cast of ‘Brothers’?

Josh Brolin as Moke Munger
Peter Dinklage as Jady Munger
Glenn Close as Cath Munger
Brendan Fraser as Farful
Taylour Paige as Abby Munger-Jacobson
M. Emmet Walsh as Judge Farful
Jennifer Landon as Young Cath
Marisa Tomei

(L to R) Cath (Glenn Close), Moke (Josh Brolin), and Jady (Peter Dinklage) in 'Brothers'. Photo Credit: Courtesy of Prime © Amazon Content Services LLC.