Episode 169: ‘The Game’ with ‘Happiest Season’ Co-Writer and Actor Mary Holland

Episode notes

The Game

We are joined this week by the lovely Mary Holland. She is an actor and writer, who can most recently be seen in Happiest Season, a film that she co-wrote with director Clea DuVall. Mary’s on the show to talk about a movie that is nothing like Happiest Season at all, and that would be David Fincher’s mystery-thriller, The Game. Mary is an admitted fan of “games and escape rooms,” so it makes sense she gravitates towards this film. She and April go in-depth on the writing of Mary’s latest feature. She talks about how the script naturally changes when the film is cast, and how Mary Steenburgen breathed a different life into her role than was originally written. Mary also talks about her acting craft, the difficulty of shooting movies out of order, and the exhausting process of shooting “table scenes.” And lastly, she discusses the emotional “revelation scene” in Happiest Season, and how Kristen Stewart, Mackenzie Davis, and everyone involved had to really gear themselves up for shooting it.

You can see Happiest Season on Hulu now.

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If you haven’t seen The Game – it’s fun!

With April Wolfe and Mary Holland.