"She's a total mess": Alison Brie takes on a new kind of role in "Apples Never Fall"

Over the years, we’ve gotten to know Alison Brie in Type-A roles like Trudy Campbell on the hit AMC series “Mad Men,” Annie Edison on “Community,” Ruth Wilder on “GLOW” and Diane Nguyen in “BoJack Horseman.” Brie is now taking on the challenge of becoming Amy Delaney, who she describes as “a total mess,” in the new star-studded Peacock series “Apples Never Fall” — and revealing another side of herself in the process. 

When I talked to Brie about playing Amy, she said, “There's certainly aspects of her that I connected with on a personal level that I feel like are parts of me that people don't know about because I haven't played characters that are like that, even though I'm not as much of a mess as her.”

“Apples Never Fall,” based on Liane Moriarty’s acclaimed novel of the same name, is the seven-part drama about an extremely dysfunctional family of tennis coaches and players.  Their lives unravel after the matriarch Joy Delaney (Annette Bening) disappears after an unexpected visitor, Savannah, shows up. Unlike most of the members of the Delaney family, Amy is not a hyper-ambitious tennis star, or wannabe mogul. She lives with graduate students and operates as a carefree spirit, until she is forced to change in an effort to help her family. But can she? 

“The show is highlighting how in moments of crisis, rather than a family coming together more than ever, often people just fall into their roles in a more firm way. Especially in this show, there's a lot with inter-family dynamics and alliances,” Brie said.

Watch my "Salon Talks" episode with Alison Brie here, or read a Q&A of our conversation below to hear more about complicated family dynamics, Brie’s latest collaboration with husband Dave Franco and the difference between acting in movies and television shows.

The following interview has been lightly edited for clarity and length.

Congratulations on the new show. Do you have extra anxiety when something new is about to come out?

Sometimes. It's probably different with every job and probably the older I get and the more I work the stakes lessen. Does that make sense? Maybe I'm wrong about that. I guess it just depends job to job.

Take our viewers into the world of “Apples Never Fall.”

“Apples Never Fall” is based on a book by Liane Moriarty, and she wrote books like “Big Little Lies” and “Nine Perfect Strangers,” which have also been made into shows.

If she writes a book, it's going to turn into a show.

Honestly, I have read like eight of her books. I love her books. It's true. I'm like, what could I adapt next? This book is about the Delaney family. They're a tennis family. They own a tennis academy. The parents, played by Annette Bening and Sam Neill, are just going into retirement. They have four adult children played by myself and Jake Lacy and Essie Randles and Conor Merrigan Turner, a couple of very talented newcomers. 

Basically mom goes missing. A stranger comes into the family's life and then Mom goes missing, and it really fractures the family in a lot of ways in terms of trying to figure out what happened to Mom and who's responsible.

And you play Amy Delaney.

I play Amy Delaney, the eldest Delaney child. Amy is a really fun character to play. She is a bit spiritual and a bit go with the flow, but she's also highly emotional and can be a bit of a catastrophizer and is a bit of a hot mess, doesn't have her life together. Even though she's the oldest of the siblings, she lives in a house with graduate students. She doesn't have a real job. 

I think that aspect of her really is her rebellion against the Delaney family. Growing up in this really competitive tennis family, they were totally result-oriented. The biggest step away she could take from the family is to not plan her life, is to have no goals at all.

It was a really fun character to play. It's so different from the type-A characters that I am often known for playing. I think she couldn't be further from type A. She's a total mess and her room's a mess. Her life's a mess. And, actually over the course of the series, you kind of watch her get it together a little bit. She is able to assume her role taking care of her younger siblings a little bit through this moment of crisis.

So how do you approach Amy? Do you spend extra time with the book? How do you get into the character because I felt like she's someone that I've met before. 

Even though I had read so many of Liane’s books before, I hadn't read “Apples” when I was sent the series, so I got to read the first three scripts, so my introduction to Amy was through the scripts for the show, and I just felt like I knew her immediately. It made me very excited. There's certainly aspects of her that I connected with on a personal level that I feel like are parts of me that people don't know about because I haven't played characters that are like that — even though I'm not as much of a mess as her.

She's such an interesting character because I actually think there's a real quiet confidence to her, even though everyone thinks she's totally chaotic. I don't know if she just reminded me of people that I had met, but I feel like I hooked into her immediately. Then always, for me, hair, makeup, wardrobe, that stuff really locks it in. The team on this show was so collaborative and it was really fun to have those conversations.

Thank you for saying that. It takes so many people to make a show.

So many people. And the detail to those conversations is exquisite. We're talking about the placement of tattoos on my body. What are those tattoos going to look like? What are the designs? That's a full collaboration with our makeup artists who designed the tattoos that I wore themselves. And then we're talking about what is she trying to hide about herself? What is she trying to show off about herself? Why do we think she got these tattoos? Ultimately when you're watching the show, the tattoos are incidental. You're not going to be thinking about them all the time, but it's something that really helped me have a deep connection to the character and something that we really got to work on in a really nuanced way.

We know that there's no such thing as a perfect family, even if the Delaneys seem that way. What do you think this show says about family and just the pressure to come off as these perfect families?

I think you're right that no family is perfect, and I think something that's really relatable about the show is that everybody has a veneer that they want to show to the public world, and then the truth that's going on behind closed doors, and family dynamics can be the same. You're going to get dressed up to go to church, but what's going on at home, what's the mess that people aren't seeing that you guys are hiding? 

Also I think this idea of family dynamics and the roles that we play in our family is at play. I don't know about you, I have an older sister, I'm the baby, and I just will forever be the baby of the family. There's no world in which I would accept more responsibility than my sister for anything. And also if anything bad happens, I'll just call my sister and be like, what do I do? I think the show is highlighting how in moments of crisis, rather than a family coming together more than ever, often people just fall into their roles in a more firm way. 

Especially in this show, there's a lot with inter-family dynamics and alliances. There's a real bond between the older two siblings and the younger two siblings. Birth order, I think, plays a lot into the way that you're raised, the way your parents treat you, the way that you think about your parents and also the way that we think about our parents as we become adults. It's like when you're a kid, maybe they're your heroes or you're terrified of them or whatever it is, and then you get a little older and you're like, they're just people.

It's a U-curve, right? They're the greatest people in the world, and then you get a little older and you're like, damn, they were f**ked up. And then you get a little older and you're like, oh wait, I'm f**ked up too.

They're just trying to get by. It's true. We all go through that phase just after college where you're like, wait a minute, everything that's wrong with me is because of you. Then you get a little older than that and you go like, we're all just doing our best, I get it. Now we're both like, “I’ve got to call my mom after this.”

So you're home in the house and then Savannah knocks on your door. Do you let her move in?

Oh my God, no. I feel like I'm so cold. I'm like, let her in. She's not getting past the gate. That sounds so mean. I would like to help people that are in trouble by saying, “Stay where you are, I'll call the police and we'll get you help outside of the premises.” I don't trust anybody.

Savannah is a walking red flag. 

Yes, yes. I know. But you see how there's a lot of play on this idea of also people in retirement then they suddenly don't know what to do with themselves or watching the parents go through that. And again, having adult kids, I'm sure I've sort of watched my parents go through this cycle of you have kids and they're your whole life for 18 years, however long, and then those people become adults who are like, “I got to go, bye.” 

I think that's where we're catching these parents kind of being like, “Our kids don't need us so much anymore.” And there's some other family drama that people are trying to ignore. So when this person comes in that wants to give them a lot of attention and sort of be like that surrogate child, they're really excited for the warmth.

Your characters are so different. Ruth from “GLOW” is nothing like Amy, right? This is why I like watching your work so much. What is your dream role?

I just like to be surprised and try different things, but it's easier said than done because you play a certain type of role and then people go, “Oh, well you could do that role well,” so then the things that come in your direction are similar. I think I just always like to change it up, and this show was a great opportunity to do that, because I do think Amy is really outside the box of other characters I played. But also it's just about changing it up, whether it's genre or just working with different people I'm excited about. This was really exciting to do a mystery drama because I haven't really done that before.

You write, you direct, you act, you sing too. Is the album coming?

No. No. No album. I don't think so. The singing is like a hobby. Singing is a fun hobby that's for myself.

It seems like it would be natural because you went to an arts college and grew up, in your words, a hippie family.

Yeah. They used to be more hippie-ish when I was younger. I don't think they're that hippie-ish anymore.

Did they grow to be conservative? Did they go from hippie to conservative?

I wouldn't use the C-word. They've got the hippie energy deep down. My parents are certainly very liberal. They've got that hippie energy. My dad is a little more old-fashioned maybe, and my mom is like, she's into her weed gummies as much as I am.

What impact did they have on how you approach acting? 

My mom has been a great inspiration to me just in her work ethic and her drive. She doesn't work in the artistic space. She's retired now, but she worked in education her whole life, but just was putting herself through school to get her masters while raising my sister and I and working two jobs and just really did it all, no excuses. That has had a great impact on my drive and work ethic. 

Then my dad is the creative side. He's a musician. My whole life I got to watch him writing his own songs and playing and singing with him sometimes. That sort of gave me permission to follow my dream and sort of believe that it was possible to work in an artistic field.

You worked in television and film. Is the approach different?

No. I guess sometimes in film you have a little more time. Everything in TV feels pretty fast. Even as the words are coming out of my mouth, I want to contradict them. I've worked so much in independent film, which is also like being shot out of a cannon. You're like, “We're going to shoot this movie in 15 days.” You have to be really creative about schedule and timing and make decisions really quickly in terms of character.

So ultimately, no, I think I always approach things the same way, and by that I mean just however it goes. I'm not like, here's the manual [for my] new role and I start with step one in the process. That's what's fun about what we do. It's different every time inherently because the people are different, the atmosphere is different.

With a film, the stakes are just so high because you get one shot. Even as a writer, they're going to clip you at 120 pages. But with a show, even as a writer, with a show, you get more space and time to build the character, to work on their art, to be able to transform. 

I would say when I think about film, I think the script is written, and even if you're continuing to do rewrites kind of even while you're shooting, still you know the whole story, beginning to end. As an actor you can look at that full scope of the story and do your character work from there. 

In TV, as you said, you might only have read the first few episodes of a show, and then they're writing it as you're shooting it and you don't know how that season's going to end, and even if that season ends, what's going to happen the next season? So you're sort of shooting from the hip in a really different way where even though you might get to do the character for much longer, for years sometimes, and then it just sinks into your bones and becomes an innate part of you, at the same time, you're learning new things about your character. The writers at any moment can be like, “And your sister's going to be in the next episode” and you're like, “I didn't know she had a sister. I've been playing it like she was an only child.” 

You have a sister. Her name's Gloria.

Yeah, totally. “Who's playing her?”

You work with a lot of the same people, which I think is so cool. Your husband, Dave Franco, Jeff Baena, your longtime friend Danny Pudi. What is it about working for the same people and working with the same people again and again?

There's just a comfort to it, definitely, of saying, “I know how you work and you know how I work, and it's been going well. Let's recreate that.” My husband Dave and I, we'll always just talk about how we want to surround ourselves with good people. I also think that you can get a lot of really good stuff creatively, artistically, flowing when everybody feels really comfortable and good. 

I do like how everything I say I want to immediately contradict. I'm sure people like to work in a way that's like, you're so uncomfortable, now we're getting crazy stuff. But I actually, I feel like the opposite. People should feel good and safe, and because you feel safe and supported, then you can take bigger risks in the work that you're doing, so I feel like that's my motto, and if I could just continue to work with the people that I love, I would be so lucky.

Anybody in the world you would love to work with? 

Sigourney Weaver is up there for me. I got to check Annette Bening off the list. Paul Thomas Anderson. The list is long.

What's next for you?

Dave and I are shooting a horror movie together. We are producing it together and we're acting in it together. This is the first time that we've acted together in something since shooting Jeff Baena's, “The Little Hours,” which was, I don't know, a decade ago. 

My wife and I worked together on a lot of stuff. We are good at leaving work at work.

Totally, yes.

But we had to learn. 

We are pretty good at it. We love working together. I'm really excited to go into another project acting together.