The Big Picture

Collider’s Perri Nemiroff talks to
Addition’s
Marcelle Lunam, Teresa Palmer and Joe Dempsie at TIFF 2024.
Lunam coins the genre “psychological romance dramedy” to describe
Addition’s
complex stories, themes and characters.
Palmer was able to tap into her goofy side alongside Dempsie, and they enjoyed creative freedom while making
Addition
.

Based on Toni Jordan’s novel, Marcelle Lunam’s Addition follows a mathematician who struggles to balance her obsessive need to count with her budding romance. Teresa Palmer (Warm Bodies) and Joe Dempsie (Game of Thrones) play the romantic leads that we fall in love with as the film progresses, and they are also joined by Eamon Farren (The Witcher), who plays Palmer’s character’s imaginary friend, Nikola Tesla. Filled with deliciously complex characters, family dynamics, and emotions, Addition teaches Grace and audiences to embrace the vibrant and technicolor world of differences by moving on from previous traumas.

The film screened at the Toronto International Film Festival, where Collider’s Perri Nemiroff sat down with Lunam, Palmer, and Dempsie to break down the nuanced world and characters they created for Addition. The cast praised the freedom they found on set as they tapped into their goofy side while exploring the complexity of their characters and relationships. Find out why Lunam is calling Addition a “psychological romantic dramedy” in the video above, or you can follow along via the transcript below.

‘Addition’ Is About Accepting Someone For All Their Differences

PERRI NEMIROFF: Because Addition is celebrating a film festival premiere, some of our viewers and readers might not know what the film is just yet. Marcelle, Would you mind giving a brief synopsis?

MARCELLE LUNAM: Addition is based on Toni Jordan’s novel, and it’s a story about Grace Lisa Vandenburg. It’s really her coming through trauma story. It’s a romance. It’s a rom-com. It’s more than that. It’s her coming to terms with how to manage her anxiety and OCD and coming through trauma. It’s a really positive spin on that, which may sound kind of glib, but it’s not. She learns throughout the course of her story and her character arc. She’s quite therapy-resistant to begin with. She’s met Seamus incidentally at a supermarket, and they’ve met again and again and fallen in love over the course of their story. There’s a meet-cute at the beginning of the film, but their love story propels her to do something about her life that has become very small.

One of the most important things about the story for me was to tell a story about somebody who was celebrating difference. I’ll just circle back a bit and say Seamus’ character, what he does is he allows Grace to be who she is and accepts her for all of her flaws, all of her differences, and loves her for that. When she finally comes to realize that, she steps out of the difficulties in her life. It’s a story about how love can make you much stronger in a way. There’s a lot of that in it, and we worked a lot to guide the film in that way.

I wanted to stick with you for a moment longer, Marcelle, to talk about Becca [Johnstone], your screenwriter, because I was reading a little bit about her, and it’s unusual to get a feature script from someone who doesn’t have a traditional screenwriting background. Can you tell me a little bit about her background and why it best suited this story?

LUNAM: This had been a long gestation process. Bruna [Papandrea] and Cristina [Pozzan], the producers, had the book for 14 years. It’s a real story of never giving up. They had a different director attached, and they had another script that was very different to the one we ended up with, and it wasn’t resonating or working. One of the producers from Made Up Stories got Becca involved. Becca had been a journalist, and she was an emerging scriptwriter. They had brainstormed and got together, and Becca had presented what she thought would be a great adaptation of the novel.

She’d done the first draft of that particular one, which was probably about nine or ten years since Bruna and Cristina had first optioned the novel. It’s a very successful Australian novel. Then I came on to the scene once they had that draft in. Then Becca and I developed the script from there to where it is now. That was the story behind that. Becca had gone to film school, and she was an emerging writer, but this is her first feature film. She’s incredibly excited about it.

Teresa Palmer Calls ‘Addition’ “Earth-Shatteringly Beautiful”
“I think it’s quite hard to pin down genre-wise.”
Image by Photagonist at TIFF

Teresa and Joe, when this opportunity comes your way and you give a first read of the screenplay, what were some of your biggest burning questions in terms of how you were going to bring the story to life on screen?

TERESA PALMER: Bruna Papandrea sent me the script. I was on flight with my hundreds of children from Los Angeles to Sydney, and I was really distracted and dealing with babies and toddlers, and I knew I had to read the script because she wanted a general answer in the next couple of days. The moment I could really focus on it, it was just earth-shatteringly beautiful. I’ve never actually seen OCD portrayed like this on film, and the way that everyone breathed life into this character just in the script alone was stunning.

My character was really quirky, and she’s like a mathematician. Her life is very ordered. So, I just wanted to know, “What is this tone? How do we strike the tone here?” Because we’re dealing with quite a heavy subject matter, but it’s also a rom-com, and the characters are really playful and loud and bubbly and also hyper-intellectual. I knew that the first step in nailing the tone would be just talking with Marcelle and having a meeting, and that’s what we did. I landed in Sydney. A couple of days later, we met. I was like, “This is the coolest woman I’ve ever met.” [Laughs] She’s just got such great taste. Her vision for the film was just enticing and exciting, and I felt real electric energy there.

LUNAM: It was a very good café meeting. [Laughs]

PALMER: Yeah, it was! I was like, “Wow, this is brilliant.”

JOE DEMPSIE: I was all the way over in the UK, so I couldn’t be taken to a café for a croissant. But I echo a lot of what Teresa said there, really. Often, as an actor, the question that you have when you read a script is about tone because it’s the thing that’s the hardest to discern on the page. Having spoken to Marcelle over Zoom, you’d start to get an idea of that. Similarly to Teresa, if we’re gonna call it a rom-com, — I think it’s quite hard to pin down genre-wise — it felt like it was approaching that genre from a different angle, one that I hadn’t seen portrayed before.

From that point on, what drew me to the script was — and it sort of sounds kind of counterintuitive — but in Seamus, I saw the space to make the character my own. He was ambiguous to a degree. This is very much a movie about Grace. You can’t delve into the backstory of every single supporting role, but I wanted to do that for Seamus. Marcelle mentioned earlier that Seamus ultimately allows Grace to be at peace with herself a little more because he accepts flaws and all, but that’s a journey that we take you on and that they both go on.

Image by Photagonist at TIFF

PALMER: It’s not instant. I’m initially resistant.

DEMPSIE: It was also important that, actually, within the film, Seamus wasn’t this bastion of consistency and stability.

LUNAM: He’s not the knight.

DEMPSIE: He had to bring his own insecurities to the party. It’s a film about the differences between the way people present and what’s really going on under the surface. There’s none more intense study of that than the early days of a relationship, where you’re both trying to put your best foot forward; you’re both trying to give the most perfect version of yourself. When that starts to fall apart, things are a bit amiss with Grace, and rather than thinking there’s something wrong with her, he makes it about himself and thinks that she’s going off him. So, his insecurities are there, as well. He’s not this kind of super stoic, like, “I will be here to guide you to a more enlightened and calm place.” I felt that there was the space to do that, and Marcelle was so keen for us to do that, and we actively collaborated on all of those aspects.

Marcelle Lunam Calls ‘Addition’ a “Psychological Romantic Dramedy”
Image via TIFF

Joe, I’ve actually stolen your words from the press notes for other interviews because you mentioned that there was space for you to bring yourself to the character. It’s a beautiful way to put that. I struggle to not say, “You’re making an adaptation. How do you make that person’s thing your own?” Finding space in someone else’s screenplay is a really beautiful way to say it.

DEMPSIE: Sometimes, as an actor, I’ve certainly done jobs before where I come away from it and I’m like, “I think I did a good job, but someone else could have done just as good a job, or someone else could have done the same thing.” I really felt with this, Seamus would have been a totally different character had another actor played him, and I got a lot of satisfaction out of it.

LUNAM: We worked very closely and collaboratively together. We did a lot of ad-libbing on loads of scenes. We definitely added to what was on the scripted page. Joe did an enormous amount of work building Seamus off the page, breathing life into Seamus, and adding nuance and complexity. Teresa spent an enormous amount of time researching and delving into Grace. The complexity with Grace’s character is that we’re not just showing someone who is going through a moment where they have mental health challenges or anything like that. What you’re also doing is showing this really complex and nuanced situation where, at the same time, she can hold her own. She’s smart, she can go teaching and teach a class with kids, and she’s fantastic at it. She could be super sexy and jump on someone and lead the way, and it’s like, “Man, I want you now.” And she does it!

Image by Photagonist at TIFF

That complexity, that up and down, that was very important to show. You talked about tone before — we found the tone of the film, and it’s very organic. I come from an arts background, and I’m used to painting and sculpting and stuff. I approach film in a similar kind of way, like a collage almost. For me, I had to find the tone of the film and so it becomes a genre mash-up really. The tone of the film is a psychological romantic dramedy. If I was gonna name it, that’s what I would do.

DEMPSIE: I only wanna do them from now on — psychological romantic dramedies.

PALMER: That’s exclusively what he’s going to be doing. [Laughs]

LUNAM: I think that’s what it is. We go in and out of it. Sometimes things are funny and sometimes they’re really not. We wanted to ride those out.

Teresa Palmer Taps Into Her Goofy Side in ‘Addition’
“She doesn’t care what she does to the other person and that’s a very unique trait.”
Image via TIFF

PALMER: Marcelle was very generous with us because we threw in a lot of unscripted moments, and she really embraced them. I have a very quirky dorky side to myself. All my little weirdness, like she pulled all of that out of me and encouraged it. We see this Grace that maybe that wasn’t on the page, but you really allowed us to find the color that makes these characters unique.

DEMPSIE: That being a really key stage in a blossoming relationship, that moment where actually the pretense drops, and you’re able to relax and goof around in your underpants and let those inhibitions go a little bit. We had to find that. Teresa and I didn’t know each other before we made this film, so we’re getting to know each other as we’re shooting. And that environment was created by Marcelle. The time is important, you need to be given time as well as permission to try things out. There was just a really supportive atmosphere where if something didn’t work, it didn’t matter. You could just try something else and it’s fun. You don’t feel nervous about it, or you don’t feel like an idiot.

LUNAM: We played a lot; we had a lot of play.

PALMER: Some of my favorite moments in the film are the moments we just tried stuff like bold, quirky left-of-center stuff. They’re in the movie, and they’re my favorite little points in the film. It’s just gorgeous. I love it. There’s a moment where I’m walking over to him, and instead of just sitting down, I sort of collapse on top of him. I just do a collapse and my character has no boundaries with physical space. She doesn’t care what she does to the other person and that’s a very unique trait, and we just leaned into it because I was like, “I can be like that. Fantastic! We’ll put that on screen.”

‘Addition’ Has an Array of Eccentric and Complex Characters
Image by Photagonist at TIFF

LUNAM: Well, I love them. These guys were just amazing. It was a super joyous experience to do. In what instance does anybody have a full-on panic attack in a massive restaurant and then race outside and have crazy sex al fresco? [Laughs] We just did all of these things, and we could throw them up against the wall. We had a laugh. In the long run, one of the most important things was the heart and soul at the center of it. And respect, because when you get right down to it, all of the characters in the film had, at the base level, respect for each other, even though the family can be misbehaving. Anxiety plays out in all these different ways, right? While Grace has anxiety that she’s dealing with that presents itself as OCD, she also has her sister, who obviously has anxiety that manifests as being an ultra-control freak for everything.

DEMPSIE: It feels like everyone’s trying to make their peace with something in this film. You’ve got Larry who’s trying to sort of make peace with her sexuality, which isn’t sort of widely known among the other characters; you’ve got Jill, who feels like she’s become a bit of a stick in the mud because of this role she’s had to take on of keeping this slightly erratic family together.

PALMER: To reconnect with her daughter.

DEMPSIE: Yeah, there’s this central trauma that still defines all of their lives that they’ve not worked through yet. Everyone’s trying to sort of make peace with themselves in this film to some degree.

PAMER: Which is beautiful and such a human experience.

Special thanks to this year’s partners of the Cinema Center x Collider Studio at TIFF 2024 including presenting Sponsor Range Rover Sport as well as supporting sponsors Peoples Group financial services, poppi soda, Don Julio Tequila, Legend Water and our venue host partner Marbl Toronto. And also Roxstar Entertainment, our event producing partner and Photagonist Canada for the photo and video services.