Summary

Collider’s Perri Nemiroff sits with The Threesome’s Chad Hartigan, Jonah Hauer-King, Zoey Deutch, Ruby Cruz, and Jaboukie Young-White at SXSW 2025.

Hartigan talks about the renaissance of rom-coms, genuinely funny scripts, and rooting out hidden talents.

The cast discuss connecting to their characters and tease their upcoming projects, including I Know What You Did Last Summer.

With a movie titled The Threesome, it is easy to make quick assumptions about where it is going to go. While Chad Hartigan’s feature certainly kicks off with that eponymous concept, it then focuses on the emotional entanglements that arise from the unexpected (and some expected) ramifications.
The three characters this film pries open are Connor (Jonah Hauer-King), his long-time crush Olivia (Zoey Deutch), and the new, unassuming Jenny (Ruby Cruz). After the fateful night, Connor and Olivia strike up a relationship, but things become messy when Jenny eventually reappears in their lives. With Jaboukie Young-White standing in as Connor’s best friend Greg, the love triangle in the film is forced to face accountability and the throes of adulthood, leading to an electric, comedic, and evocative look at difficult emotions.
The deliciously dramatic rom-com premiered at SXSW 2025, where the director, Hartigan, and cast members, Hauer-King, Deutch, Cruz and Young-White, sat with Perri Nemiroff at the Collider Media Studio at the Cinema Center. Hartigan explains why we need rom-coms, why the original script of the film worked, and how he incorporated his actors’ other talents into the movie. The cast members also reveal how they connected with their characters, from finding “effervescence” or security in relationships to drawing on their real-life history as “the gay best friend.” Hear about the cast and crew’s favorite comfort rom-coms and their future projects (including I Know What You Did Last Summer reboot and Richard Linklater’s Nouvelle Vague) in the video above, or you can read the transcript below.
‘The Threesome’ Is a Real, Grounded Romantic Comedy

“The romantic comedy needs to be back.”

Image via SXSW

PERRI NEMIROFF: I know about The Threesome, but our audience is first going to learn about it through the festival. Chad, I’ll give you these wonderful honors; can you give us a brief synopsis of your film?
CHAD HARTIGAN: The Threesome is about a young man, Connor, who gets thrust into an unexpected threesome with his longtime crush, Olivia, and a new stranger they’ve met, Jenny, and then about all the cascading complications that come from that threesome.
Accurate description, but I will warn everyone there’s a whole lot more to it than that.
I wanted to start by asking about something that’s in your director’s statement that caught my eye. I think it’s the first line of your director’s statement, actually. You said the romantic comedy is back. What do you think that recent romantic comedies have been missing that you were so excited to bring back via this film?
HARTIGAN: I was really just manifesting with that director’s statement. The romantic comedy needs to be back. I think it’s back. I did feel that the movies that have taken the center stage in this renaissance have been the ones that tend to be more wish-fulfillment and fantasy-driven and idealized versions of love and romance made for the movies, which we all love, but one thing that was missing was a take on it that was a bit more grounded and elevated and sophisticated and wasn’t afraid to really take a concept that was maybe made for the movies but examines how would people really deal with these situations and keep the characters focused and have all the humor come from the characters and not from set pieces and things like that.
‘The Threesome’ Cast Shares Their Comfort Rom-Coms

In that director’s statement, you were also talking about how the script came your way during lockdown, and you mentioned that you were retreating to all of your favorite comfort movies to get you through the uncertain days and nights. I also really liked this next part: “At that point in time, I was convinced that there may be nothing more noble in cinema than giving an audience an enjoyable 90 minutes to forget their problems.” I think that’s such an important thing that I have to imagine everyone can relate to. Can each of you name a film or a show that you retreat to when it’s a darker day, and you’ve just got to power through it?
ZOEY DEUTCH: Anchorman.
Good choice.
JONAH HAUER-KING: The Holiday.
Also, a good choice.
DEUTCH: It’s a Wonderful Life, Anchorman, Bringing Up Baby.
Bottoms!
HARTIGAN: Bottoms, for sure.
JABOUKIE YOUNG-WHITE: I think 30 Rock.
That’s a good one, too.
HARTIGAN: My most rewatched movie of all time is Can’t Hardly Wait.
Speaking to my heart right now. I’m gonna date myself, but I still have my CD of that soundtrack, and the VHS for that matter.
HARTIGAN: It’s an incredible soundtrack. I think we all agree that movies and culture peaked in 1998 when Can’t Hardly Wait came out. Am I right? No? Alright! [Laughs]
RUBY CRUZ: My Best Friend’s Wedding. I rewatch that a lot, and it’s not to forget my problems, but it is to cry. That movie makes me cry. That’s such a beautiful movie.
Sometimes you need that.

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Chad, I’ll come back your way to start digging into some of the story details. You are working with Ethan’s [Ogilby] script here. Can you tell me what space you saw in his original script that you thought you could fill in a way that’s unique to you as a filmmaker?
HARTIGAN: That’s a good question. There was so much that I admired about the script when I first read it. At first, I thought it was genuinely funny, and you get a lot of comedy scripts that are not. It feels like the ethos is, “We’ll make it funny later.” But this one was genuinely funny. The thing that I thought was most special about it was that there are so many complications and conflicts, but nobody ever makes a decision that I couldn’t personally understand or defend. I knew exactly why this person was mad at that person, but I also understood exactly why that person could be defensive about their actions. I think one of the hardest things to do as a writer is to have equal weight to both sides of movie conflicts and have it be up to the viewer to see where they want to land. I just thought it was so nonjudgmental, and it really just gave me an opportunity to feel like I could work with great actors in a genre that I love and make something that was fun and light because the movie I made before this, which I’m very proud of, was a bummer of a movie. It was a very melancholy movie. I really wanted to do something lighter.

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You got some of the best of the best right here! Zoey and Jonah, it feels like the relationship between your characters is the spine of the movie. Can you each tell me the first thing you saw in the other that signaled to you, “She is definitely the Olivia to my Connor,” and vice versa?
HAUER-KING: It’s such a nice question. I think there’s so much about her that he admires. He aspires to be a lot of things that she is: self-confident and smart and the boss and funny. He has a line in the film where he says, “You’re the funny one,” and I think he just really looks up to her. One single word would be he loves her effervescence.
“Effervescence” is a good one.
HAUER-KING: I’ve been trying to say that all day, and it’s the perfect time to.
DEUTCH: I think she obviously presents very self-confident, but she’s, in my opinion, quite insecure. He brings out a very soft side of her, like opens up a space for her to be more vulnerable, as uncomfortable as that is for her. I think a word to describe how she feels about him and what he makes her feel is “secure.” In love, that is such a valuable thing to feel safe with someone and secure. He makes her feel like it’s going to be okay and cozy and secure.
Ruby, I like asking this question a lot, but in particular, I wanted to ask it about Jenny because, with this threesome, in the beginning, she’s a little more of a mystery in terms of who she is personally and how she fits into this group. Did you have an “aha” moment, something you did in prep or early in the days of filming that made you say to yourself, “I know who my Jenny is now?”
CRUZ: I did, but it would give things away.
It’s understandable.
CRUZ: Because a lot of Jenny’s journey is figuring out who she is. She is young and has been in the same world. She’s lived in Arkansas all of her life. She’s really on a journey of figuring out who that person is, and there is an “aha” moment, but I can’t tell you.

Image by Photagonist

HARTIGAN: I can tell you that Ruby does a lot of research in advance. Even a month before we were shooting, she was texting me things and wanting to read more about things, and it was very impressive.
CRUZ: You provided me books, too. You sent me books in the mail, textbooks.
HARTIGAN: On acting. [Laughs]
I have so many follow-up questions that I know I can’t ask right now. We’ll save them for when we get to celebrate the movie further down the line, which I know is going to happen.
Jaboukie Young-White Was Inspired By ‘Bridesmaids’ and Personal History

“I was a gay best friend to a straight Connor before.”

Image by Photagonist

Jaboukie, I’m so excited to ask you this question because one of my favorite things about this movie is that you embrace some familiar things about the romantic comedy, things that keep me coming back to the genre and make it feel like a safe space, but it’s also got these unique touches to it that make it stand out. You are essentially playing the best friend, and there are many best friends in rom-coms that I love. Are there any past rom-com best friends that you kept in mind, but then I also want to know something you wanted to do to make Greg uniquely your own?
JABOUKIE YOUNG-WHITE: Wow. I mean, a movie of best friends, Bridesmaids is just a great comp that I was bringing to this in terms of it being hilarious, but then also coming from the amount of empathy and identification you feel with the characters, where you’re just hanging onto what they’re going to do next that they surprise you, they disappoint you, you root for them. That groundedness is what really attracted me to this script in the first place.
Then also, I haven’t even mentioned this yet, but my best friend in high school was named Connor, so I was a gay best friend to a straight Connor before and I really brought all of that depth to this character.
This was meant to be.
YOUNG-WHITE: I was going method for years. [Laughs]
‘The Threesome’s Cast and Crew Were Inspired By Their Surroundings

“That is a leading man. This movie is going to do well.”

Image by Photagonist

Another thing that was inspired by your director’s statement, Chad, is you made a point that you wanted this movie to be something that people can lean on when times are tough. I love films, but I also love filmmaking, and I’m a big believer that you should have those kinds of experiences while you’re making the movies that we fall in love with. For each of you, can you single out the day of making The Threesome that brought you the most joy, or made you hopeful about the future of independent filmmaking?
YOUNG-WHITE: There was a day when it snowed really bad, and the roads were super icy, and it was dangerous to drive down some of the roads, and someone’s car got stuck. Jonah gets out of the car and pushes the car out of the ice. I was like, “That is a leading man. This movie is going to do well. That’s the hottest thing anyone has ever done. We are in good hands,” and I really felt confident in the project after that. It was his car, by the way. He can drive. Another great thing. [Laughs]
CRUZ: I love that memory. I forgot about that. That was really sweet. That was really cute.
HAUER-KING: That was a good time. All of the film was shot on location, and a lot of the time, we were pretty nimble with how we moved around Little Rock and would shoot, sometimes, three, four, even five locations in a day. I loved that style of filmmaking because it felt obviously very planned but also felt reactive in a really fun way. So much of what we were doing was being inspired by our surroundings, and you get that in independent filmmaking in a way that you don’t with big studio films where everything is so planned to a T. Obviously, there’s a balance to strike. It’s kind of an old cliché now, but problem-solving and being really spontaneous in the moment and finding solutions to whatever issues you’re having, I love that side of it, and we had that in spades on this one.

Image by Photagonist

DEUTCH: I can’t pick one. This was one of the most joyous, lovely, fun work environments I’ve ever been a part of, thanks to you, [Chad]. The crew in Little Rock was unbelievable, so beautiful, collaborative, lovely. I loved our first moment together at Target, [Jonah]. That was a real bonding moment. I embarrassed him; I bought the doll of him from The Little Mermaid. But a little fun fact that I remembered is that in the film, Chad’s children, who play the children in the movie, are smashing the doll of him.
HARTIGAN: Little Easter egg.
DEUTCH: That’s not my favorite, but I just wanted to make sure…
HAUER-KING: That is her favorite. [Laughs]
That is a very fun little Easter Egg.
DEUTCH: My favorite moment of bonding was when the children were smashing my dear friend Jonah’s face. It was beautiful. But no, that was funny. I forgot about that.
HAUER-KING: I had never been to Target, by the way. I don’t live here, and it was truly the most exciting experience. They don’t do that over in the UK, not like that, where you can buy everything under the sun.
DEUTCH: We bought all these different disgusting drinks, like the gnarliest—Snickers and Milky Way— like disgusting, and we sampled them. It was a whole lot of fun.
HAUER-KING: And bought two sweaters, as well. It was the perfect day.
What a shopping list. I want to know who checked you out and what they thought of everything you put on that conveyor belt.
DEUTCH: It’s all totally normal to them. It’s Target.
Hartigan Roots Out Hidden Talents in ‘The Threesome’s Cast

“That song is so great. Let’s put it in the movie.”

Image by Photagonist

HARTIGAN: I’ll say that something that comes to mind is that, at some point during the shoot, I played Jonah some music that the composer was working on because the composer starts working on music for me from the beginning, and Jonah was like, “I have a song that I think fits into the same world.” So, I went to his hotel room, and he played it for me, and I was like, “That song is so great. Let’s put it in the movie.” Two days later we were filming in the recording studio, and we did one take where he just played his song live, and we put it in the movie, and it’s one of my favorite parts of the movie. Something that I always like to do is try to mine the real talents of the people at your disposal to like anything that can make the movie richer and more unexpected. I’m so happy, also, that he was willing to open up himself for that and offer it to the movie. Everybody was such a selfless group trying to make the best movie possible.
It’s one of the best qualities to have in a team of filmmakers.
CRUZ: Also, what is that place called? Hot Spring, Arkansas? We took a little day trip and went to some baths and some hot springs. It was so beautiful, so fun to have a road trip with these people and then also get to experience the day trip that these characters would have taken. They live in Little Rock, and having that little escape and getting to see Arkansas in such a sweet, intimate way was really nice. That was a really beautiful trip and, seeing those views, we went on that hike.
DEUTCH: That was so fun. And we got barbecue. It was great!
CRUZ: And a flight of beer.
Speaking to my heart with the movie recommendations and now all this. I love it.
Jonah Hauer-King Teases the ‘I Know What You Did Last Summer’ Reboot

Image via Columbia Pictures 

I have to wind down with you all soon. Jonah, I love all movies, but horror movies are my number one, and I’m a kid of the ’90s and early 2000s. You know where I’m going with this one.
HAUER-KING: I do.
I Know What You Did Last Summer. I also adore Leah [McKendrick] and I have all the faith in anything she writes. Can you tell me something about the new movie that will appease the hardcore fans, basically give me more of what I already love, but also tell me something about this new movie that maybe adds to it in a way I’m not expecting?
HAUER-KING: What can I say? The older fans will be appeased by Jennifer Love Hewitt and Freddie Prinze Jr.
Did you just call me old?
HAUER-KING: Older! [Laughs]
I’m just kidding.
HAUER-KING: The fans of the older movie. That’s the second time I’ve done that today. What’s wrong with me?
DEUTCH: He’s ageist. It’s all out there.
HAUER-KING: I’m not even young! [Laughs] Freddie Prinze Jr., Jennifer Love Hewitt, they’re back. They’re back to help… Nevermind. So, they’re back, and the fisherman is back—or fisherwomen. Don’t know. I do.
The thing that I like about the new one is Leah’s writing, and also a writer called Sam Lansky has come onto this, and the director is called Jennifer [Kaytin] Robinson, who made Do Revenge and a few great films. We were talking about this earlier, and it’s happened for a long time, but really, [there’s] this trend of horror movies treading that line between horror and comedy that’s really fun and exciting because they exist in quite a similar visceral space. I do think the original has a lot of comedic fun moments, but I think this one really leans into it, and it’s very self-referential, knows what it is, and it’s super scary and frightening, but also hilarious. Madelyn Cline is in the film. She really stands out as a real comedic actor, so that’s something to look out for.

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A+ tease. Horror comedies are thriving this year, and I’m absolutely loving it. Heart Eyes, The Monkey, and then I got that to look forward to. I can’t wait.
Deutch Is Reuniting With Richard Linklater on ‘Nouvelle Vague’

“He’s been working on it for 10 years.”

Image via Paramount Pictures

Zoey, I’ve got to ask about your new movie with Richard Linklater. It’s obviously high on my mind because one of the first times we ever spoke was here at this festival for Everybody Wants Some!!, and one of the things I’m really curious about is how different that movie seems from this new movie you made, Nouvelle Vague. Can you tell me a new layer you saw in him as a filmmaker by shifting to something so completely different in terms of content and what that story is? And I was also reading that maybe it was shot in black and white. There are just so many curious details about it!
DEUTCH: It’s a remarkable journey and thing for me because he mentioned it to me for the first time when we were shooting Everybody Wants Some 10 years ago in passing. It’s all in passing, so you’ve got to listen really carefully to what he says, I’ve learned. But he said in passing, “I think I’m going to make this movie, and I want you to play Jean [Seberg],” and I’m like, “Okay.” He’s been working on it for 10 years, so to be able to work with him again and to know how important this movie has been to him to make is just really, really exciting. I’m such a big fan. I am just very excited for it to come out. I’m so proud of him. I think he’s a genius and I respect so much how he just does exactly what he wants to do, not what anybody wants him to do. He is a true artist [who] keeps trying new things, and I’m very inspired by him.
Special thanks to our 2025 partners at SXSW, including presenting partner Rendezvous Films and supporting partners Bloom, Peroni, Hendrick’s Gin, and Roxstar Entertainment.

The Threesome

Release Date

March 7, 2025

Runtime

111 Minutes

Director

Chad Hartigan

Writers

Ethan Ogilby