It’s Jack and Gill’s 40th birthdays, so they invite their college friends to a rented mansion for a weekend away. Phones are confiscated for an “unplugged” dinner party, but to ease the tension, Jack and Gill reveal the five-course meal is fully cannabis-infused. That does the trick – until someone sneaks a peek at their phone and discovers a nuclear bomb is headed straight for Los Angeles. Holy f#$k! The pot kicks in just as they realize they might only have 30 minutes to live. Will they survive in the makeshift basement bomb shelter… or get nuked?
A high-concept comedy (quite literally), Nuked (you can read our review here) comes from writer/director Deena Kashper and brings together the comedically capable duo of Anna Camp (the Pitch Perfect trilogy) and Justin Bartha (the Hangover trilogy), who spoke with our Peter Gray ahead of the film’s release, discussing the understanding of their characters and the real-life dread that was unavoidable when detailing an “end of the world” situation.
Congratulations on the film. It’s been described as a “stoner comedy for adults”, which feels like something we don’t get a lot. When it comes to the comedic elements, there’s so much potential with these absurd situations. How much room is there to improvise on set? And were there unscripted moments that made it into the final cut that you’re both proud of? Or that fundamentally changed anything?
Justin Bartha: That’s a good question. You know, this is a small movie, and we shot it relatively quickly. Myself and Anna and the whole cast, we really worked with Deena (Kashper, writer and director) as hard as possible before we got to set, to really explore our characters and to make sure that the foundation was set once we got the camera rolling. That being said, Deena comes from a comedy background and an improv background. I think what we really tried to do was, once we were all really comfortable, we got what was on the page and then we tried to explore through the character relationships as much as possible. There are certainly a bunch of moments that were improvised, and it’s kind of a mix between what was on the page and how the characters evolved when we were on set.
Was there any character moment in the script where you knew “This is who my character is.” A line or a scene that made you completely understand Jack and Gill?
Anna Camp: Oh, man, I felt like Gill in the first half of the movie, she’s trying so hard to be someone and to present herself a certain way, that I think my favourite moment is when she’s finally honest with Jack. They’re down in the basement and she really tells him how she feels about having a child. I felt like in that moment her character kind of cracks open and her honesty pours out. The rest of the movie I really loved playing, because it’s like two different people, in a way. She’s projecting so much, and trying so hard, and finally she can be free, even though it’s painful. The conversation they’re having, it’s her truth. That was one of the moments I loved doing the most, especially acting with Justin too. We really crafted that scene together and just wanted to make sure that we showed the love between these two people, even though they’re having really difficult conversations together at a very tense time. That was my favourite part, where I was like, “Oh, there she is.” She’s free and she can look at her husband, even though it’s hard to tell him this thing.
Justin Bartha: One of the things I love about this movie is that you see the kind of duality of these people, how they were before this big event, and then what happens after they find out that the world is ending. You also play off of the secrets that they’re all keeping from each other. They have this multiple personalities, in a way. There’s a big lie that happens between Anna’s character and my character that’s discovered in the beginning of the film, and there’s a couple of moments where Jack is by himself, and you can kind of see where he is, whether he’s leaning on smoking weed or he’s just pretending to be another person. The same thing that Anna was talking about with her character.
One of my favourite moments is after we go through this crazy experience, and Anna and I are sitting on the couch at the end, and we’re kind of facing Lucy Punch’s character, who’s our villain type of character, and it happened pretty naturally with Anna, and we did talk a lot about every scene, but it’s this one scene – also at the end of the shoot – and something so lovely (happened) where we just kind of synced up. All of the bullshit had evaporated and we were on the same team. I think so much of what I love about this movie, through the comedy and the craziness that happens, it’s about couples being on the same team. We can’t always agree with each other, and we’re always going to be at odds with certain things, but once you can root for each other and sync up, this beautiful kind of ease comes out of it. I love the scene that Anna and I had at the end, where we’re kind of just vibing with each other after the mayhem.
Working in a movie like this, does it change the way that you approach comedy? When you have a character in such a high-stakes situation, does that affect the way you approach the comedic aspects of either full tilt or grounded in truth?
Anna Camp: It’s definitely a challenge when you’re playing in these very heightened, extraordinary circumstances and to really keep it grounded in a way that’s truthful. But also, this is an insane thing to happen, right? If you really put yourself in these people’s shoes, and you’re also high out of your mind, on top everything, there is so much comedy to mind here. But, at the end of the day, that’s a terrifying place to be, especially for Gill. I mean, you see that. She’s the one that has the biggest panic attack out of everyone. I also don’t think that she’s used to smoking weed or eating weed dinners, you know what I mean? It’s very scary. I think that all of her anxieties are very much revealed in that moment. But it’s also very fun, because each character reacted so differently, and then you put them all in a room together, and it’s just comedy gold. It’s just super fun to be able to play with each other, and listen to everyone’s improvs and build off of one another. Everybody was so perfectly cast. For their roles, I can’t picture any other actor playing these parts, which is something truly special. It’s definitely a tightrope to walk in these heightened circumstances, but also keep it grounded. I hope I did okay.
Did you have those conversations about what you would do in this situation?
Justin Bartha: I mean, what’s wild is we’ve all thought that the world was ending. The jumping off point for (Nuked) was the 2018 nuclear scare from North Korea, but we shot this after the pandemic, and it was very much informed by the pandemic. If it was shot before, it would have been a completely different thing, but as a human race, every single human being had thought about death for a couple years straight. I don’t know about you guys, but I self medicated through a lot of that. There’s definitely that Russian Doll of anxiety. It felt so ingrained in me that I was excited to try to explore through this movie as to how can we exorcise that demon that we’ve all been living with for years now? We don’t know how to quite digest that. One of my favourite scenes in the whole movie is when Anna’s character has her panic attack. It was funny. Deena has put together this amazing ensemble, all on the same wavelength, and then one character comes out and has this blow up. We’ve all been in that situation where the weed hits differently, or someone gets too drunk, and you’re like, “Oh, shit!” The vibe changes and you have to go and match that. It’s this really fun dance with all these great actors of going really big there, and going really small here. It was such a blast to do.
It is kind of bizarre to see movies being in the pandemic now as a normal storyline. But it makes sense as it was something we all lived through. I will say, Australia did it all right over here.
Justin Bartha: You did do it pretty well.
It’s something we can’t ignore though. It was a few years of uncertainty, so it kind of needs to be ingrained into films. And when a script like this comes your way, was it an immediate reaction for you both?
Anna Camp: I remember reading it, and then I also knew that Justin was attached, and we did a play together a few years ago in New York, and I was just like, “Oh, my God. Thank God I get to act with him again, and have more scenes with him.” But, yeah, just reading it, it felt so relatable, so funny, and just so much room for comedy to be mined. And I love movies that take place in one night. The timeline just makes everything go faster, and the stakes are so high, and I love seeing that. Also, the arc that Gill had, I got to play with so many things. I get to be this one way in the beginning, and then the end just break open and be totally free and honest. I just loved it. It was a no brainer. I was very excited to do it.
Justin Bartha: Yeah, similar to Anna, I love a high concept comedy. And there’s so few adult comedies. I love a stoner comedy. And you don’t get sent (them). They’re not made that much anymore. I was excited about that. And aside from the high concept, the great hook of the nuke. When Deena sent this to me, and we started talking about it, I was just having all the conversations I had during the pandemic, about my friends who were couple who were just going through it. They were either getting divorced, separated, opening their marriage, finding high school sweethearts again…all these massive relationship shifts. So much of this script was about these different styles of relationships, and how an end of the world moment affected them. It was the perfect vehicle for me to kind of understand what was happening to them during the pandemic, and how relationships have been changing. Then when Deena mentioned they were thinking about Anna, and she’s one of my favourite actresses, I was just so excited to be able to play a married couple with her.
Nuked is available On Demand and on Digital in the United States from July 11th, 2025.
