[music]

Alison Stewart: This is all of it on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. In the new film, Biosphere, two best friends, groanish men, are sealed in a doomsday dome and possibly, probably the last two people alive. It's a comedy and it's a little bit of a drama, and a lot of layered takes on friendship, masculinity, and hope. It stars my next two guests, Sterling K. Brown and Mark Duplass. Mark plays Billy, an affable but dim fellow who was once the President of the United States of America.

Sterling plays Ray, Billy's BFS since childhood and the brains behind the operation. He's the one who built the self-sustaining biosphere in case his best friend, Potus, should accidentally cause the end of the world, which it turns out he did. Billy and Ray have been living in relative harmony for a while in this bunker. They grow their own food, they watch movies, they play Super Mario Brothers, they jog in circles around the room, and try not to think about how different their lives have become. That's all disrupted when Billy and Ray look in the fish tank and realize that their main food source died.

They are stuck with only male fish, clown fish to be specific. Before things get really dire, one of the fish, they've named him Woody, goes through an evolutionary change and evolves into a female. This is something clownfish do by the way. The change sets off a chain reaction that could alter the future of these two men and maybe all of humanity forever. The movie is titled Biosphere and it was written by Mark Duplass and Mel Eslyn and directed by Mel. Hope I got her last name right.

?Mark Duplass: That's it.

Alison Stewart: [chuckles] It's out in theaters. The New York Times said, "I can say without hyperbole that there are conversations in this movie that I have never heard before."

[laughter]

Alison Stewart: Mark and Sterling, welcome to the studio.

Sterling K. Brown: What's up, Alison?

Mark Duplass: Thank you for having-- We got to take you on tour with us-

Sterling K. Brown: Yes, [unintelligible 00:01:54].

Mark Duplass: -and have you introduce our film.

Alison Stewart: [laughs]

Mark Duplass: You're just really good at that.

Sterling K. Brown: Yes, stop.

Alison Stewart: Thank you, thank you. How much research did you do into Biosphere?

Mark Duplass: I started writing this script on my own, and it was this vision of these two gentlemen stuck inside of this biosphere, and they're arguing furiously about Super Mario Brothers with more importance than they should. We sense there's a lot of time on their hands. I didn't exactly know where it was going to go, but I felt that I was unpacking something in my Southern male upbringing that told me that I should be a leader.

Everybody wants to hear from me. Regardless of what I do, I'll probably be able to fail upwards into a position of power. Then I ran out of road. I brought in Mel, my partner in this, and she also runs our company. She brought this wonderful perspective of being a queer female and her takes on masculinity and her feelings about these two guys and whether they do deserve our attention and another chance. Then we brought in a collaborator of ours named Zachary Drucker, who is a trans woman, one of the foremost thinkers on gender and complexity that I know.

Then we brought in Sterling, and he had his own ideas about what it means to be a Black man from St. Louis and the homophobia he might have encountered there in the Church in that area. It was this big soup of people bringing their experiences and the narrative and all the twists and turns that it takes, which I appreciate you holding the spoilers on. It all evolved out of that group.

Alison Stewart: This is, you know, really takes place in one location, Sterling?

Sterling K. Brown: Yes.

Alison Stewart: What does being limited basically by a single set piece offer you creatively?

Sterling K. Brown: That's interesting. You get a chance to make the film for less money.

[laughter]

Mark Duplass: Yes, you do.

Sterling K. Brown: You have a multitude of sets. Who's our production coordinator? Who came up with the design?

Mark Duplass: Oh, well, there was-- Oh God. I'm not blanking.

Sterling K. Brown: It'll come to you. We have several different spaces. Even though it's in one set, there's several different spaces within the biosphere, so you feel like you have some degree of variety even within this one homogeneous space. Then you have a really great castmate that you get a chance to get up close and personal with, with Mr. MD, the script doctor, Mark Duplass. Then we have to get sealed inside of it so you can't see any cracks.

We're literally, once we go in there, we're usually in there for a couple of hours at a time, knocking some scenes out, and then they'll unzip us. Then we get to go out and use the bathroom, and then we come back and do it again.

Alison Stewart: Was this written pre-pandemic, post-pandemic, during pandemic?

Mark Duplass: Yes, it was both. It started about five or six years ago. It actually wasn't designed as a pandemic movie per se. It oddly had some pertinence as we started to drift into the pandemic and thinking about all the things that were happening then. What does it mean to be confined with people that you may or may not agree with on all fronts? As everything that was happening socially, politically was being unpacked during the early pandemic as it was, that also informed the story. It was interesting. It started off as something I think smaller and grew.

Alison Stewart: This is a two-hander, Sterling, what do you know about this scenario of being in this small, just you and your partner that you didn't know before?

Sterling K. Brown: Like the character, I think that routine is something that really grounds and stabilizes me. Knowing that I can get up and do the same thing every day gives me a sense of normalcy and makes life, I don't know, something else is going to come along. I remember at the beginning of the pandemic, honestly, my wife and I both entered into a period of devout sloth because you're like, "Oh, it's over. It's done. We have nothing to do. Let's just pig on out."

We did it for a few months. Then we're like, "Oh, it doesn't feel good to do this." There's still going to be something on the other side of whatever is going on right now as we're here right now. I think Ray is of a similar mind. There has to be something on the other side. I need to stay ready so I ain't got to get ready. You know what I mean?

Mark Duplass: Yes. For me, I realized something during the pandemic as I was listening to countless self-help audiobooks, this concept came up, which is the joy of missing out as opposed to the fear of missing out. I realized that I do quite well in a small space with a couple of people that I like with limited options because I don't have to worry about what else I'm missing. I'm actually just enjoying a few things. It's like vacationing in a small town. There's only one restaurant, I'm going to have a great time rather than be in New York and think about everything you're missing.

For me, I think I was subconsciously exploring that a little bit with Biosphere as I was writing it. I think that it's part and parcel with what I wanted this movie to be, which is when you think post-apocalyptic movie, you really just think like ravaged spirit, starvation, exhausted body. I love the idea that these guys are having a little bit of a good time in there to a certain degree. It's okay. Of course, they do receive their challenges as they should. That has been my experience to a certain degree and I acknowledge that it's a certain privilege to be able to have that. It was something interesting to explore.

Alison Stewart: Actually, listen to that a little bit of that from the beginning of Biosphere, Ray, and Billy are going about their morning jog, their routine. They're inside the biosphere, and they're talking about important things like Super Mario Brothers. This is from Biosphere.

[movie soundtrack]

Mark Duplass: When people are making something, they don't realize that they put themselves in the thing.

Sterling K. Brown: I do. Yes, we reflect ourselves in the things that we do.

Mark Duplass: Exactly. These dudes, they don't realize it, but they put their relationship in the game. Now here we are wondering, "Oh, why is Mario in charge?" All right, go ahead.

Sterling K. Brown: What?

Mark Duplass: I know you think it's stupid.

Sterling K. Brown: I didn't say that.

Mark Duplass: You don't have to.

Sterling K. Brown: I actually didn't say anything.

Mark Duplass: You're going to hate it when you do that.

Sterling K. Brown: Do what? Okay, look, man. [laughs] That's your whole theory. It took you two weeks to come up with that?

Mark Duplass: It's half-baked, man. You made me tell it to you too soon. That's why it sounds dumb.

Sterling K. Brown: Because there's so much more to expound upon, right? It's just plenteous with depths to mind. I'm being facetious. That means I'm kidding.

Mark Duplass: Don't do that. I know.

Sterling K. Brown: Don't do what?

Mark Duplass: I know what that means.

Sterling K. Brown: Do you? [laughs]

Mark Duplass: You know what? You mispronounce the word capricious one time.

Alison Stewart: Oh, I feel him in that moment. I have mispronounced words and been told about it by [unintelligible 00:09:29] radio listeners. My guests are Mark Duplass and Sterling Brown. We're talking about Biosphere. Why did you name a former President of the United States, Billy?

Mark Duplass: I just loved it. I just loved that.

[laughter]

Alison Stewart: Joe Biden or John Kennedy?

Mark Duplass: Yes, [unintelligible 00:09:44] by everybody else but his buddy calls him Billy.

Alison Stewart: Billy. Is that it or was he Billy?

Mark Duplass: That's it. No, I think he was Billy.

Sterling K. Brown: [laughs]

Mark Duplass: I think we've gotten to the point where we feel like-

Sterling K. Brown: Uncomfortable.

Mark Duplass: -a guy like this and with that name is acceptable enough with the current systems to slide his way up the top.

Alison Stewart: The way you guys dress is really interesting in the film too, because Ray seems to be like he's getting ready. He knows that there is something else. Why is that? Why is he the kind of guy who gets up and puts on clothes even though he's in a biosphere?

Sterling K. Brown: He's a fundamentally optimistic dude. He has faith that something is going to come along that allows them to expand whatever life is that they know right now. That there will be something else. Why he holds on to that, I think he has things that get explained in the course of the film but he just has this dogged determination that something good will come into being. Right, would you say, you wrote it?

Mark Duplass: Yes, I like that.

[laughter]

Mark Duplass: That's an excellent interpretation. Billy is not that way. Billy is [unintelligible 00:10:54]. He's just kind of like--

Alison Stewart: I thought it was funny. The thing that Billy packs for the end of the world is his Yale sweatshirt to remind people that he's smart, right?

Mark Duplass: Well, it's important. Listen, listen.

[laughter]

Sterling K. Brown: He represents.

Mark Duplass: Nobody believes he went there.

[laughter]

Alison Stewart: My guests are Mark Duplass and Sterling K. Brown. I'm just getting a note, Biosphere will be screening tonight at 6:00 PM at the IFC Center and Mark and Sterling will be there for Q&A. As you can tell from this conversation, it will be entertaining. This is also just a really lovely story about friendship and about love. When you thought about it, when you were writing it, and then as you and Mel were having conversations with Sterling, how did you want to explore that idea of friendship and then friendship possibly becoming romantic?

Mark Duplass: I love male intimacy as a subject matter. It's really interesting to me. It was pointed out to me, as my brother and I started making films in the early 2000s, and the 2010s, everybody kept saying things like, "Boy, the way that these men relate to each other in your stories is just fascinating." I was like, "Really?" I was like, "I thought that's just like what-

Sterling K. Brown: [unintelligible 00:12:05] dudes.

Mark Duplass: -[unintelligible 00:12:07] dudes too because that's how Jay and I are." I also grew up, like I said, I grew up in New Orleans and I know that that's not always the case. It's not a new subject matter for me to be able to explore male intimacy. I think obviously, it goes into some new areas with Biosphere. For me, this is a movie that clearly has themes of toxic masculinity and clearly has themes about redemption and whether we do deserve another shot at things. I've come to believe and this is just for me, personally, that it is okay to be not enough in this world. It's okay for me not to be the perfect parent, perfect brother, husband, friend, artist.

The more I humble myself and the more I realize I need help from really smart, interesting people around me to get it there, the more things go well for me. In my mind, I thought, "Okay, what if you just have these two people here with seemingly insurmountable odds, seemingly no chance for survival but if they really did put their heads together, could it work?" I thought a fable would be a nice place to explore that.

Sterling K. Brown: I would say outside of the confines of societal norms, what dictates how we relate to one another because so much of it is what we're told from the outside how we should be. Now, it's just us and there's nobody telling us what should or shouldn't be. What rules do we establish for ourselves in terms of how we interact with one another? The idea of accepting someone for who they are. I think most discord happens when you're constantly trying to change someone or you want them to be something other than what they're presenting to you.

The idea of just really, honestly, being present to who you are and saying, "I accept you for who you are," is a really lovely thought that I think the movie is trying to get across and a message worth putting into the world.

Alison Stewart: It doesn't shy away though from homophobia because there's a moment when Ray's not sure and he gets really aggressive and he drops the F-bomb. It reminded me, and hearing you perform that Sterling, I think you know where I'm going to go because he starts talking about how he didn't even know it was in him. It was just in itself and it came out. I thought about a nice white liberal person feeling that way about a person of color.

Sterling K. Brown: Sure.

Alison Stewart: They don't even know what's inside of them until they're pushed to the point and then something comes out.

Mark Duplass: It's the programming, right?

Alison Stewart: Yes. I'm curious about that scene.

Sterling K. Brown: I'll draw a tangent to it because I want to be oblique with regards to the film itself, but the idea that someone only considers themselves to be racist is if they're planting a cross in your yard or hanging up from a tree. So much of what we're trying to address in the blind spots of the world is thoughtlessness. You know what I mean? There are certain things that we just don't consider and oftentimes, it is the people in positions of privilege that don't have to consider what it's like for others.

Men don't spend a lot of time thinking what it's like for women. Straight people don't spend a lot of time thinking what it's like for the queer community. White folks don't necessarily spend a lot of time thinking what it's like for Black folks. I think that the idea that this thought may not have been in his head or whatnot, and now it's come to the forefront of his consciousness and he thought he was a real woke liberal kind of cat until he was faced with something.

Mark Duplass: Well said. If we got the movie right, hopefully, audiences, they'll maybe see something of themselves and some of their blind spots in there, even if they identify as super woke and educated. I, myself, I'm clearly unpacking some of my southern straight cis white male privilege that I have and the blind spots I keep coming across. What I hope the movie does for people is not provide an aha or a got you moment, I'm going to cut you down at the knees, but provides to be warmly held and a nice gentle giggle about it all and say, "All right, I see this a little bit of myself." You can have some conversations with people about it and not feel zinged.

Alison Stewart: How did you work to be sensitive about these issues around gender and sexuality?

Mark Duplass: That's such a great question. This is the most research we've ever done for a film before the script phase during the script phase and then also importantly in post-production. It's the most we've ever tested a film. Without getting too much into it, it's the road to hell is paved with good intentions. There's only so many perspectives that we had even though we had such a wonderful creative team from people from all walks of life. We had to really just take this movie out and show it to a bunch of people and just say, "How do you feel about this? What are we missing?"

We spent a long time dialing this thing in so that it could be the version of what we wanted it to be. We couldn't create that on our own. You know what I mean? You get close and you show it and you go, "Oh, I totally missed that. Thank you for helping me and pointing that out."

Alison Stewart: My guests are Mark Duplass and Sterling K. Brown, the name of the film is Biosphere. It's in theatres and on-demand. Biosphere will screen tonight at 6:00 PM at the IFC Center. Mark and Sterling will be there for a Q&A. The [unintelligible 00:18:04] really is interested in spelling out how the world ended or what Billy did exactly.

[laughter]

Alison Stewart: Why did you choose not to get into the details of what happened?

Mark Duplass: We tested that as well, honestly.

Alison Stewart: Oh, interesting.

Mark Duplass: We put some more of that stuff in the script and had some of our very close friends and collaborators read it. Everybody pointed out that like, "I wanted to know that it happened but I didn't want to know how it happened." This, at the end of the day, is a story about these two men as a microcosm of what's going on in our world. Will they be able to evolve and survive or are they going to just die on the hills that they have already built for themselves?

The more we got into semantics, even with the scientific stuff and the backstory, audiences continually said, "[unintelligible 00:18:50], just give me just enough and then go back into their faces. I want to see what they're thinking and how they're responding."

Alison Stewart: Ray decides to forego his political beliefs for his friend.

Sterling K. Brown: Yes.

Alison Stewart: Why? Why? Why is friendship that important to him?

Sterling K. Brown: That's a good question. It's a really great question because my wife and I have very different takes on this sort of thing. My wife is ready to burn down everything and I'm like, "Can we build a bridge? Can we find a way to connect with one another?" It seems like sometimes, things are becoming so divided that maybe it's not as easy and I am the optimist that believes that there still has to be a way that doesn't necessarily vilify everyone that thinks differently than myself. I think he recognizes, in his friend, a good human being. Someone that he genuinely loves.

I think that he sees an opportunity to be of assistance. I think he's going to do a better job if I'm there than if I'm not there. You know what I'm saying? That's what I got to say about it. What do you think?

Mark Duplass: That's exactly how I felt about it. There's an optimist inside of Ray who feels like, "You know what, maybe that sweet kernel of a good person in Billy can be brought back out and maybe we can get into a realm of great leadership. Even if that doesn't happen, I'm also a scientist and a pragmatist so I just want to make sure that I'm holding the flame thrower so that I can put the throttle to a three instead of an eight. At least I'll do that."

Alison Stewart: The name of the film is Biosphere. I've been speaking with its stars, Mark Duplass, who also co-wrote it, and Sterling K. Brown. Thanks for coming to the studio.

Sterling K. Brown: Thanks for having us.

Mark Duplass: Thanks for having us.

Alison Stewart: That's All Of It for today. I'm Alison Stewart. I appreciate you listening. I appreciate you and I'll meet you back here next time.

[music]

 

Copyright © 2023 New York Public Radio. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use at www.wnyc.org for further information.

New York Public Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline, often by contractors. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of New York Public Radio’s programming is the audio record.