Daniel Levy stars in his directorial debut, which he also wrote. Take a look at the first Good Grief trailer here.
2023 has proved to be a big year for actors turned directors. We’ve had directorial debuts from actors such as Patrick Wilson, Chris Pine, Anna Kendrick and Michael B. Jordan. Joining that roster of talent is Daniel Levy.
If that name doesn’t ring a bell, let’s shorten it a bit. Does Dan Levy ring a bell? The actor is best known for his role in Schitt’s Creek alongside his father, Eugene Levy, but Levy Jr. is now moving to directing with his Netflix feature film, Good Grief.
Take a look at the first Good Grief trailer.
It’s safe to say, we’re going to need a lot of tissues for this one. Levy plays a man who has recently lost his husband (Luke Evans) and escapes to Paris to deal with the aftermath with two of his friends. With Levy’s comedic background, we’re willing to bet there will also be moments of levity and humour.
Ruth Negga, Himesh Patel, Emma Corrin, Kaitlyn Dever and Celia Imrie star alongside Levy and Evans. Levy began to develop the project during the global COVID-19 pandemic and recently told Entertainment Weekly about his own sense of loss that inspired the film.
“I lost my grandmother toward the tail end of the pandemic, and I was in a very strange headspace in terms of feeling the weight and the profound sense of tragedy of what the COVID pandemic had done for all of us, while at the same time trying to honour the passing of someone who meant so much to me,” Levy said.
“It was hard for me to feel the specificity of loss when all I was feeling was grief for so long. It was that conversation that really expedited the concept of the movie.”
The film is an ode to friendship, something we don’t necessarily see very often in Hollywood. Levy conceived the film as a romantic comedy but it ended up becoming a film about friends instead.
“I feel like the older we get, the more profound our relationships are with our friends and the more complicated they get,” the actor-turned-director told EW. “Sometimes the people that are closest to us, we excuse the most in terms of having those hard conversations about life and bad habits and patterns of behaviour that could be slightly course corrected. It’s an uncomfortable conversation to have, and yet that intimacy exists within these friendships.”
Here’s the official synopsis: “Marc (Daniel Levy) was content living in the shadow of his larger-than-life husband, Oliver (Luke Evans). But when Oliver unexpectedly dies, Marc’s world shatters, sending him and his two best friends, Sophie (Ruth Negga) and Thomas (Himesh Patel), on a soul-searching trip to Paris that reveals some hard truths they each needed to face. Good Grief marks Levy’s debut as a feature-film writer and director. He also produced as part of Not a Real Production Company, alongside Sister Pictures.”
Good Grief will be in cinemas 29 December in the US and will hit Netflix worldwide 5 January 2025.
