Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Seth Rogen, Abbi Jacobson, Samira Wiley and writer-director Leah Nelson touched down in Cannes this week with their upcoming animated feature Tangles, which premiered as a Special Screening at the festival.
The story, which is based on Sarah Leavitt’s graphic novel memoir, follows Sarah, who has to leave her exciting life as an activist and artist in 1990s San Francisco to return to her eccentric family in the conservative small town she recently fled when she learns that Alzheimer’s is beginning to erase her mother Midge’s vibrant personality.
Louis-Dreyfus, who voices Midge, said she approached the role as “a human being who is honestly in denial and terrified and is tender and kind-hearted all at once.”
“I have Alzheimer’s on both sides of my family,” said Louis-Dreyfus. “My grandmother and then I’m living with it now because my mother-in-law is fairly far along with her decline in dementia and Alzheimer’s, so my husband and I are caretakers. So, we’re in the thick of it. So, it was very familiar. I’m the mother of a couple young adults so I can only imagine what that experience must have been like for Lauren [Miller Rogen] and so many others and I did imagine it.”
Rogen and his wife Lauren Miller Rogen, who are both producers on the film, have been incredibly active in the Alzheimer’s space and founded Hilarity for Charity in 2012, a nonprofit that cares for families impacted by Alzheimer’s. Miller Rogen’s mother was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s at just 55 years old.
“A lot of Alzheimer’s stuff was coming our way because of the charity and because Lauren had been very open about her own experiences, but this was really the first thing where we were like, ‘Oh this would make a really great film we think,” said Rogen. “So, we both came on as producers and Lauren with her personal experience was really able to help.”
Director Nelson noted that having all the voice actors do their lines together for the film at the same time, was very impactful for creating the film. “I remember one moment with Sarah Silverman when she was singing, and I was standing beside her with my arm around her while she was singing this really emotional song and to get to do that was really incredible.”
Jacobson, who voices Sarah, said that Tangles was the first project in the animated space she had worked on that had “such an incredible balance of emotion and hard comedy.” She also praised the film for being “a queer film” as Sarah is also struggling to balance the care for her mother while entering a relationship a woman called Donimo (voiced by Samira Wiley).
“It’s such a queer film and that’s awesome – it’s also this other thing that is so cool, especially in the animated space,” said Jacobson. “It’s like a really hot movie too. There’s a lot going on.”
Wiley touched on her character’s ability enter into a new relationship with someone who is a caretaker for someone with Alzheimer’s.
“To have to jump into something with that kind of depth is something that people might not say yes to,” said Wiley. “It’s scary and for Donimo, who says the line ‘It’s weird but I’m going to say yes’ in the film, which is like a tagline for the whole film. I think it takes a very specific type of person to say yes to something like this.”
Check out the video above.
The Deadline Studio at Cannes is sponsored by SCAD.
