Ashton Kutcher and Reese Witherspoon return to the cozy rom-com genre this weekend with Netflix’s Your Place Or Mine. The new Netflix movie follows two best friends living on two different sides of the United States who realize they may have a longtime and unexplored attraction when they trade houses for a week. The premise posed two issues right away for the actors: How does one build on-screen chemistry without sharing their scenes and How can two people realistically be best friends when they barely spend time together?
Thankfully, we’re talking about two actors who very much know their way around making these sorts of roles great. Although it’d been 12 years away from rom-coms for Kutcher, the actor has starred in six over the years, including Valentine’s Day No Strings Attached. Plus, Witherspoon has been in nearly ten, including Sweet Home Alabama. The Your Place Or Mine actors opened up about how they made their latest characters believable:
- Witherspoon: "Every day we would send back and forth videos of how's your day going? What's going on? What's happening with you? What are you afraid of? Like what, hold on, what kind of pancakes [do you like]? If you had pancakes, what would it be syrup? All of it. And we're supposed to be best friends for 20 years. So we started sending each other videos every day."
- Kutcher: "Every day we would send back and forth videos of how's your day going? What's going on? What's happening with you? What are you afraid of? Like what, hold on, what kind of pancakes [do you like]? If you had pancakes, what would it be syrup? All of it."
- Witherspoon: "And, it was good. It was really actually kind of fun. And then our kids would get in the videos and our dogs. You met my dad on my video… We hung on my porch."
Starring: Ashton Kutcher, Reese Witherspoon, Jesse Williams, Steve Zahn, Rachel Bloom, Wesley Kimmel
Directed By: Aline Brosh McKenne
Streaming with a Netflix subscription on February 10, 2023.
The actors shared how they got to know each other during Your Place Or Mine’s press conference, which CinemaBlend attended. As they explained, they decided to talk to each other over video every day before getting to work on the movie and got really close that way. They also told us there were "tricky" moments though, with Ashton Kutcher noting:
Then, by the time we started shooting it, we were sort of used to communicating this way. Yeah. And so it felt really natural to communicate that way… They could get real personal. Although, the tricky part about shooting it was we're both, when we're in a scene together and we're both there, we're very improv-y with one another. But, given the way that this was done, one side of the coverage was done before the other person even began to shoot their side of the coverage. And so that you had, we were acting against a video of the other person.
As the Your Place Or Mine trailer teases, Reese Witherspoon’s Debbie is a single mother living in Los Angeles while Ashton Kutcher’s Peter lives a rather lonely existence in New York City. When the pair initially met, sparks flew between them and they slept together, but then decided on being besties and remained that way for 20 years. However, when Debbie gets a work opportunity in NYC, Peter volunteers to watch her son in LA while she temporarily uses his home in the Big Apple.
Ahead of the movie’s release, Witherspoon has been hyping up the rom-com on her social media, showing the actress has good faith in the movie’s ability to sweep us off our feet. Plus, the movie was written and directed by other rom-com alum Aline Brosh McKenna, who also penned The Devil Wears Prada, 27 Dresses, Morning Glory, We Bought A Zoo and co-created Crazy Ex-Girlfriend.
The movie has the makings of joining the list of best friends-to-lovers romantic comedies, but as both actors shared during the press conference, telling this long distance story was not without its obstacles from the typical formula.
