We spoke to actor Michael Beach amid the release of I’ll Be Right There, his new indie film where he plays an old pal of Edie Falco’s leading-lady character. It’s a platonic, endearing rapport between two middle-aged do-gooders, a different dynamic than the secrets and lies in his other newly released project, The Perfect Couple, which just debuted on Netflix. The series also stars the reliably excellent Liev Schreiber, who has a fun little real-life connection to Beach. It may not be the same “endearing” rapport as with Falco, but it’s a fun one.
“Liev is a Yale guy, and I’m a Julliard guy,” ecplained Beach. “And so when, you know, Liev found out about that, it instantly became this, like, rivalry, this play-rivalry, because I don’t think it exists much anymore. But back in the day, [the schools] were considered rivals, And we didn’t go to school at the same time, I’m a little bit older than he is, but it was funny.” He added:
“It was fun because when we were on set and… there’s a scene where, at the end, you’re not sure what the button’s going to be — is it going to be his last line or my last line? Every once in a while, he would get the button; every once in a while, I would take the button. And then, when you call ‘cut,’ Liev would be like, ‘
Ah, you got me there, Julliard!’ I’d be like, ‘Ah OK, yeah, I see you, I see you!
‘ So, yeah, it was fun.”
The Big-Budget Perfect Couple vs. His Scrappy New Indie
The Perfect Couple has a stacked cast besides the Jiulliard-Yale rivals, and that includes Oscar winner Nicole Kidman. “It was great working with Nicole. I mean, she’s really good,” Beach told us. “We have a few one-on-one scenes together that are really nice. And it was a good experience, man. It was a good experience, a little different. That was a show that has an exorbitant amount of money.”
Beach continued:
“And then, when you come back to something like
I’ll Be Right There
where the money is minimal, but the material and, again, the people — I’m working with Edie Falco, you know, and you got Bradley Whitford and Michael Rapaport — [are top tier] I think in different ways. Because you’ve got Netflix, the king of streaming, and then you’ve got this indie film where you’re gonna fight to find a distributor, right? You know, the value of it and the quality of it and the experience of it is still just amazing.”
From Brainstorm Media, I’ll Be Right There is now playing in theaters. You can stream The Perfect Couple on Netflix through the link below.
Watch The Perfect Couple
