Transcript
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Speaker: Welcome to Lightning Round, an adaptation mini podcast.
Speaker: I'm Nate and I am once again flying solo or sort of solo.
Speaker: I don't have my regular co-host with me, but instead I am once again talking to my sister Katie.
Speaker: Hi, Katie.
Speaker: Hi, I'm excited to be back.
Speaker: Thanks so much for rejoining and, and say hello to Millie in the background, your dog, Millie, that might've just made her podcast debut.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: She might be back.
Speaker: That's good.
Speaker: That's all right.
Speaker: We don't mind.
Speaker: We don't mind a little Millie.
Speaker: Um, speaking of Millie, oddly enough, I wanted to have you back on to talk about the housemaid because we of course did the pre pre housemaid episode where you told me about kind of why you liked it and
Speaker: how you couldn't tell me anything else about it.
Speaker: And I want to know now that you've seen the movie, I want to know your thoughts.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: Yeah, so I saw it like three days ago.
Speaker: I saw it the day after it came out.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: And I was honestly super happy with it.
Speaker: Really good.
Speaker: I was.
Speaker: I was still nervous going into it.
Speaker: I was excited, but nervous, mostly, honestly, about Sidney Sweeney playing Millie.
Speaker: But I was very satisfied with the whole movie.
Speaker: Really?
Speaker: Good.
Speaker: That makes me really happy.
Speaker: I think they did a really good job kind of following the book and hit all the important stuff.
Speaker: Good.
Speaker: I really enjoyed it.
Speaker: Good.
Speaker: And just to clarify, your dog Millie is not named after the character Millie.
Speaker: No, she is not.
Speaker: Even though the character Millie kind of turns out to be a badass.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: So you can see now, now that you've seen the movie, why I couldn't tell you anything.
Speaker: Yeah, there's pretty much nothing you could say.
Speaker: There's so many twists and turns throughout it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So tell me a little bit about, you said your biggest reservation was the casting of Sydney Sweeney.
Speaker: Did you think she was good in the movie?
Speaker: I did.
Speaker: I think, you know, I was worried that it wasn't just like a dumb blonde role.
Speaker: Like you, especially towards the end, see that Millie becomes this
Speaker: kind of criminal mastermind.
Speaker: And I had a hard time envisioning Sydney Sweeney in that position, but I think she pulled it off super well.
Speaker: I think that there was a little bit more humor thrown in, in the movie than there was in the book.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: You good one liners.
Speaker: And maybe that.
Speaker: So funny.
Speaker: Maybe that kind of like broke that barrier with Sydney Sweeney a little bit, made it a little bit more lighthearted in places.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But overall, yeah, I think she was awesome.
Speaker: I really did think that she kind of came alive after, spoiler alert for this episode, by the way, if you haven't read or seen the movie, I don't really know why you're listening.
Speaker: But I think Sydney Sweeney really came alive basically after she got out of the attic bedroom.
Speaker: She was like really funny, really just on top of it.
Speaker: You know, most of the movie, she was sort of just like a...
Speaker: wet blanket in my opinion.
Speaker: So I was really glad to see her kind of crank it up to a 10 after she got out of that situation.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I think there's a lot of buildup to this story.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Oh yeah.
Speaker: You know, like obviously a lot more happened in the second half where you learn a lot more in the second half.
Speaker: And if this movie does well enough to continue the series and make a movie of the next two books, they are not,
Speaker: like that as much.
Speaker: Those ones are just action from beginning to end.
Speaker: Yeah, that makes sense, I guess.
Speaker: So, yeah, I think there was a lot of buildup, but yeah, I still really enjoyed it.
Speaker: Good.
Speaker: I wanted to ask about your theater experience.
Speaker: I had like the best crowd to watch this movie with.
Speaker: I have some funny stories I'll share here in a little bit, but I wanted to ask if your theater was full, if people were cheering or, or like, what was the energy like kind of?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Well, it was definitely full.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: We went to like a matinee on Saturday afternoon and it was packed.
Speaker: Great.
Speaker: And yeah,
Speaker: I mean, there were, even in the movie theater bathrooms, all the women were comparing the book to the movie afterwards.
Speaker: Really?
Speaker: Cool.
Speaker: People were squirming during the torture scenes.
Speaker: Yeah, it was pretty lively in there.
Speaker: It was fun.
Speaker: Yeah, I was there, I went to a press screening, I got to see it just a couple days before it came out.
Speaker: And it was about half press and half, I don't know what the club was, but it was some kind of women's club.
Speaker: And they were like women, they were your age.
Speaker: And it was so fun.
Speaker: know it was like girls night for them and obviously everybody's sort of hyped up on getting to see the movie a few days early so the energy's already sort of up anyway and then i just lost my mind laughing there's a line when millie and andrew sleep together and in the morning he goes i i can't believe somebody looks this good in the morning and the one one girl in the way back at the theater just went
Speaker: Oh, brother.
Speaker: And everybody in the theater was just laughing.
Speaker: It was just, it was funny.
Speaker: And there was a lot of stuff like that where like, you know, there's some, not really jump scares in the movie, but some moments where you're like, oh my God.
Speaker: And, and people were, you know, audibly participating in that.
Speaker: So it was a really good, honestly, one of the better theater experiences I've had of the year, just because the energy was so high and people were excited and it's a fun time.
Speaker: The movie's fun.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Everybody's been super into it.
Speaker: And I think a lot of readers especially have been anticipating this for a while.
Speaker: This has been a big book club book this year, knowing that the movie was coming out.
Speaker: So, yeah, it's been pretty fun.
Speaker: Cool.
Speaker: The budget of the movie was 35 mil, which honestly, super, super cheap these days.
Speaker: And it earned roughly 19 in its opening weekend.
Speaker: So we got really close to making back that production budget.
Speaker: A movie generally needs to make two and a half times its budget or more in order to become profitable because of marketing and distribution costs.
Speaker: Sometimes if there's, this one won't have any awards campaigning associated with it, but that
Speaker: could increase how much money the studio spends on a movie.
Speaker: So hitting 19, that's pretty solid.
Speaker: And I think we've got a four-day weekend coming up here for the Christmas holiday.
Speaker: And of course, there's really tough competition, Avatar and SpongeBob and stuff like that.
Speaker: But I think they're in a pretty solid place for maybe some more movies to happen.
Speaker: Well, that would be awesome.
Speaker: They definitely set up the end of the movie to continue into the second book.
Speaker: Oh yeah.
Speaker: It's a little heavy handed.
Speaker: The end is, you know, like if I didn't know that there were more books, I would be like, Oh, here we go.
Speaker: Another sequel.
Speaker: But knowing that there are actual Frieda McFadden texts that they could be based on, I'm, I'm all for it.
Speaker: And that is actually the epilogue in the book as well.
Speaker: They have that scene as the epilogue and can't start with the differences at the end of the book.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, no, I guess not.
Speaker: I do want to ask you about the differences between the book and the movie and get sort of your thoughts on those.
Speaker: Were there any big ones?
Speaker: It sounded like maybe not.
Speaker: The entire premise, storyline, all of that was exactly the same.
Speaker: The biggest differences, the first one I noticed was their ways of torturing each other.
Speaker: In the movie, it is much more violent and gory.
Speaker: Really?
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Okay, wow.
Speaker: In the book, there was no grandma's china, or mom's china.
Speaker: Oh, okay.
Speaker: No family heirloom there.
Speaker: So Millie originally got locked in the attic because she left some of his textbooks sitting out.
Speaker: Textbooks?
Speaker: Yes, he had textbooks.
Speaker: There was three big textbooks that she left out on the table, and...
Speaker: His first punishment for her was making her lay on the floor in the attic and stack the three textbooks on her stomach.
Speaker: And she had to lay like that for three hours.
Speaker: Then, so she finally gave in and did it and apparently took the books off a minute early.
Speaker: So he makes her do it again.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: So,
Speaker: Whereas in the movie, he made her cut her stomach up.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Open, basically.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: I was squirming at that.
Speaker: I did not see that coming.
Speaker: It was crazy.
Speaker: But I don't think that that's a bad change in the movie.
Speaker: No, I mean, it's psychotic, so it works.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And probably a little more interesting to watch than having books balanced on your stomach.
Speaker: Right, right.
Speaker: You know.
Speaker: And then the first, when Millie got Andrew locked in the attic, then she kind of just reversed the same torture.
Speaker: It made him put the books on his groin and hold them there.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: And then after he did it, she did make him pull out his tooth.
Speaker: That was in the book.
Speaker: Good.
Speaker: People cheered at that.
Speaker: That was hilarious.
Speaker: People were laughing w hen he smiled, you know?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Some lady's like, oh, it's too.
Speaker: I know.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It was pretty funny.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So yeah, their ways of torture are a little different.
Speaker: I also believe, well, in the movie, Nina hid that knife in the attic for Millie to attack Andrew with.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: In the book, that was pepper spray.
Speaker: Oh, okay.
Speaker: And Millie sprayed him with pepper spray, but it was the same sort of, there's a physical altercation to get him locked in there.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And then the only other really big difference I noticed was how Andrew died.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: So in the movie, it was their daughter that convinced Nina to go back for Millie.
Speaker: And then Millie and Nina fought Andrew and he fell over the stairs and died.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: In the book, it's actually Enzo that convinces Nina to go back for Millie.
Speaker: And...
Speaker: If I'm remembering correctly, it's like four or five days later.
Speaker: So Nina goes back for Millie and finds Andrew starved to death in the attic.
Speaker: Whoa.
Speaker: She left him up there to die.
Speaker: Good for her.
Speaker: And Millie was still there.
Speaker: So there was the same sort of Nina saying, get out of here.
Speaker: I'll take care of it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But there was, yeah, there was no fight in the hallways and pushing him over the railing.
Speaker: Oh, interesting.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: It's a little bit of like a give and a take because I like the idea of that character suffering for a long time.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: But it's not super climactic, I guess, or cinematic anyway.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And I think that's really why it was changed.
Speaker: It's just not a lot to watch.
Speaker: But when the stuff is in a book, there's so many more details that you can write.
Speaker: You know, so again, I don't think that that was a bad change.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: So I wanted to ask about Enzo when we first talked about it.
Speaker: It might've been off mic that we talked about it.
Speaker: Now that I'm thinking about it, you were surprised at who they cast because he was so good looking.
Speaker: And that made me, I guess that left me under the impression that he was going to have a bigger
Speaker: role in the movie and he's like barely in it.
Speaker: I kind of kept waiting for him to like knock a door down and, you know, save somebody or something.
Speaker: So tell me a little bit about the differences with Enzo.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So I do think that he was in the book a little more than the movie in the book.
Speaker: He warned Millie multiple times, kept it very vague.
Speaker: And he did that once or twice in the movie, but
Speaker: Warned her multiple times.
Speaker: In the book, he also, while Nina was scheming this whole plan to bring Millie in to replace her, in the book, Enzo had helped Nina try to escape a couple times.
Speaker: He was really in cahoots with Nina trying to help her.
Speaker: And so that's why then later in the book, he was the one that convinced Nina to go back.
Speaker: To go back.
Speaker: I do kind of like that arc a little bit more.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: And, you know, after I saw the movie, I was a little disappointed that he wasn't in it more.
Speaker: But then the more I thought about it, when you're reading the book, he's really probably not in this one that much.
Speaker: It's probably a lot of just warnings or seeing his look out the window and the book describes it quite a bit and things like that.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: But I will say...
Speaker: If the movies continue to the second and third, Enzo is no longer a side character.
Speaker: He's going to be bigger.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Well, then I'll have to keep an eye on this guy's career.
Speaker: I don't even know what the actor's name is.
Speaker: Because sometimes they cast a movie sort of with like, forecasting in mind, like maybe he's got another big role coming up that's going to turn him into sort of a bigger name.
Speaker: Or something like that.
Speaker: So that'll be interesting for me to just sort of keep on the back burner as these movies hopefully continue.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So like that ending where they kind of set up her interview with another woman.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: In the book.
Speaker: And they briefly did mention it in the movie too that Enzo's sister was in a relationship with an abusive man.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: They dive a little bit deeper into that in the book.
Speaker: And actually at the end, Enzo and Millie decide to almost form this little group.
Speaker: And that's what they're going to do from now on is go help these women from their abusive husbands.
Speaker: And so they, again, they set up that same ending, but just kind of left Enzo out of that.
Speaker: But they won't be able to leave him out of next season.
Speaker: but yeah he's a huge part of this new deal with Millie so okay interesting yeah it'll be interesting to see what they do maybe they recast I don't know we'll see but um yeah thank you for clarifying that because that was on my mind the whole time I was watching I was just like if Katie had a picture of this guy in her head you know hot or not does is not really what I mean by it but like if you had spent the time to conjure this character then he must be
Speaker: a part of the story.
Speaker: And he barely, he really barely was when he finally had his first like real scene, you know, I think it's like a flashback scene with Nina when she's reading the letter that she wrote her kid.
Speaker: I was like, here we go.
Speaker: And then it cuts away.
Speaker: And I was like, what the hell?
Speaker: Where is this guy?
Speaker: Well, and actually one thing I did love about the movie too, is how she did do that like letter to her kid.
Speaker: I don't,
Speaker: fully understand why it was a letter to her kid because it seemed like her kid knew what was going on.
Speaker: But I think why they did it is because the book is split into two parts and the first half is like Millie's point of view and the second half is Nina's where she explains what's actually happening.
Speaker: And in the book she goes through, you know, step one, make him hate you.
Speaker: Step two, find a replacement, whatever, whatever, you know.
Speaker: So that was kind of their way of
Speaker: I think, doing her point of view from the book, which is cool.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I'm glad you said that because I meant to ask Chris how they handle that perspective shift in the book and forgot because it is sort of like the movie comes to a screeching halt and then all of a sudden Amanda Seyfried's the lead, you know, for an act and then they come together and it's sort of a two-hander at the end there.
Speaker: And that scene with
Speaker: her just screaming in the car when she thought we got out just gave me chills and the screaming and crying turns into laughing and back into crying and she's such a good actress i just yeah she's amazing yeah she really is
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And I thought, yeah, she balanced all of those like mood swings so well, you know, I thought it was like completely believable and you're not sure if she's experiencing acute psychosis or not.
Speaker: She really just blew me away for sort of a, you know, a schmaltzy like popcorn movie.
Speaker: I was like, man, she just really is full throttle in everything she does.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Did you see it coming at all that Andrew was the crazy one?
Speaker: I figured that it had to have something to do with him because I knew it was a psych thriller, right?
Speaker: And the cast is really small.
Speaker: It's really just those three characters for the most part.
Speaker: So I was like, one of these people has to actually do something
Speaker: psychotic here, you know, or it would not be a psychological thriller.
Speaker: And, you know, it's usually not the lead, right?
Speaker: In these kinds of stories.
Speaker: So I wouldn't say I saw it coming, but maybe I wasn't surprised when it turned out to be him, you know?
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: Does that make sense?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But I really, I really enjoyed it.
Speaker: It was really good.
Speaker: The only other thing with Enzo...
Speaker: See, I think that they talked about him a lot when Nina was talking about her history with Andrew and her trying to escape.
Speaker: And Enzo had helped her set up a safety deposit box at one point.
Speaker: And when Nina finally got out in the book and Millie was left behind with him, Enzo and Nina spent the night together.
Speaker: Oh.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: That's a bit of a curveball.
Speaker: And it...
Speaker: still kind of is that's like the one part of the book that kind of gets me like i yeah like yeah they had kind of contributes they had been like working together and he's taking care of her and they're all emotional but i'm like just because you got her you got her out into a hotel room does you guys have to sleep together i know it's it's almost a little bit like uh
Speaker: anti-feminist that the guy doesn't just do it, you know, and then like go on to keep being a good dude, but he's like rewarded with sex.
Speaker: And then he does for the rest of the series.
Speaker: He's a great dude.
Speaker: And I, yeah, I kind of forgot about that scene, honestly, until I was thinking more about how Enzo wasn't in the movie as much.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And that is kind of odd.
Speaker: I don't,
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I'm failing to see how that really even fits into the characters motivations or, or character arcs or anything like that.
Speaker: But I guess, I don't know, maybe, maybe Frida needed to write a sex scene that was not actually basically rape, you know?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That's fair.
Speaker: I wouldn't blame her for that.
Speaker: Well, good.
Speaker: I'm so glad that you enjoyed it.
Speaker: If you were to rate it,
Speaker: If you had a letterboxd, which means that you can rate it out of five by the half star.
Speaker: And if you want, you can also give it a heart in addition to your rating.
Speaker: And that means whatever you want it to mean.
Speaker: What would you rate this movie?
Speaker: Oh, man.
Speaker: I think I'd probably give it four, four and a half.
Speaker: Whoa, four and a half.
Speaker: I know.
Speaker: I really liked it.
Speaker: Especially, I feel like 90% of the time, just being the reader that I am, I'm usually let down by the movies.
Speaker: Not because it's a bad movie, just because the book has so much that you can't put all of that in the movie.
Speaker: But I was very pleasantly surprised with this one.
Speaker: I really enjoyed it.
Speaker: I thought it was great.
Speaker: Good.
Speaker: That makes me really happy that you liked it so much.
Speaker: I know how nervous you were and
Speaker: and I knew how bummed you were going to be.
Speaker: All you did, all you texted me on Saturday was, can't wait to talk to you about this movie, period.
Speaker: I was like, oh no, she hated it.
Speaker: No, I like walked out and I was like, well, shit, I can't call Nate and talk to him about this because we got to do it in the pod.
Speaker: And I was pretty pumped to talk to you about it.
Speaker: I was hoping you enjoyed it too.
Speaker: Yes, I really did.
Speaker: I think it might do really well.
Speaker: There's not a lot of like,
Speaker: I hate to reduce it to this, but there's not a lot of like girl movies in theaters for the Christmas weekend.
Speaker: So, you know, it's like I said, it's Avatar, SpongeBob.
Speaker: There's a religious movie that's doing really well.
Speaker: Anaconda, Marty Supreme, all a bunch of stuff that like, I think is really going to appeal to men.
Speaker: So yeah.
Speaker: I think there's a really solid chance that this movie fares pretty well over Christmas.
Speaker: And I just, I hope, especially with those cheap production budgets, 35 mil is a really cheap movie.
Speaker: I'd love to see.
Speaker: There's three of them, right?
Speaker: I'd love to see all three of them.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: It's the housemaid and the housemaid's secret.
Speaker: And then the housemaid is watching.
Speaker: Oh,
