From the second Variety announced that Pete Davidson and Glenn Close were going to be paired in conversation as part of their annual Actors on Actors series, you knew it was going to be good. But the final result is even better than expected. Over the course of a nearly 28-minute virtual chat, the two actors share insights into their commonalities and differences, and go deep on their most recent projects: The King of Staten Island, which Davidson co-wrote and loosely based on his own life, and Hillbilly Elegy, which starred Close as a chain-smoking Terminator aficionado named Mamaw.
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But amid the talk of craft and acting, there were the kind of amusing digressions you'd want to see from such an unusual pairing. We found out Close loves Weekend Update, which Davidson works on as part of his tenure on Saturday Night Live, and that he most definitely would have left his wife for her character in Fatal Attraction. We learned that though he is allergic to dogs, he recently adopted a poodle, and it shits everywhere. But most importantly, we have confirmation that Davidson is a fan of Cruella De Vil, arguably Close's most Oscar-worthy role. (Although, they talk about that too.)
"I have to talk about two of my favorite movies growing up, and still it’s legendary: 101 and 102 Dalmatians, he said in the interview. "There’s just so many questions, Cruella is amazing. You were scary hysterical."
Always ready to give the people what they want, Close answered that she actually made the character even more hateful than the producers originally planned, requesting that lines from the original Disney animated version like “Chloroform them! Drown them!” be added in.
"I realized the meaner she was, the better she was," she said. "I loved that character."
Davidson followed up by asking if she got to keep any of her "fabulous" costumes from the 1996 live action film. The answer, thrillingly, is yes. "I got in my contract that I got to keep all my costumes that I wore in the movie," Close said. "Then when they found out how expensive they were, they were unhappy that it was in my contract. They wanted to make another copy, another set, for me. I said no."
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Ironically, Close used a costume from another one of her movies in October when she posed as her iconic character in a viral Instagram post for Bette Midler's virtual costume gala, with instructions on how to replicate the look. "Coat = wardrobe from my movie The Wife," she wrote in the caption.
Perhaps she leant the original to Emma Stone, who will be playing a young Cruella in an upcoming origin story of the same name, directed by I, Tonya's Craig Gillespie and executive produced by Close herself.
As for Davidson, I have to hand it to him: Talking about your Cruella de Vil fandom just moments after gushing about your new puppy is a new level of dark and twisted.