ComingSoon spoke to Hollywood power couple Eric and Eliza Roberts about their latest movie, which is the dark comedy Hippo directed by Mark H. Rapaport. The duo discussed working together, their roles in the film, and more. Hippo is now playing in select theaters.
“The film examines the coming-of-age of two step-siblings: Hippo, a video game-addicted teenager, and Buttercup, a Hungarian Catholic immigrant with a love of classical music and Jesus,” reads the synopsis for the movie starring Eliza Roberts. “Like the Ancient Greek Aphrodite, Buttercup’s love is unrequited by a brother who prefers to indulge in the art of war and chaos. The result is a hormone-fueled, tragicomic waking nightmare that must be seen to be believed.”
Tyler Treese: Eliza, I wanted to ask you about your character of Ethel. Eric, who voices the narrator, calls her a “peculiar woman.” What did you like most about this role?
Eliza Roberts: I liked playing a mom of grown-ish kids. Because I am a mom of grown kids, and I loved the humor. I loved this group. Remember, we worked with Mark before and with Kimball. So I loved the whole cast. Then, the freedom to just kind of go there and the little moments and the fact that everybody kind of got the joke. Then later, I love that Rough House Pictures picked it up and all the things that have happened in the whole journey. People like you who kind of get it. It’s all been really exciting and really thrilling.
Eric, you play the narrator, and you have a really good voice. So, it’s a great fit. How is that experience of being in the booth? Because you’re really important here because you’re adding a lot of flavor to this movie and context to everything.
Eric Roberts: Well, when you’re in the booth, there’s no pressure. You can do things like, “Can I do that again?” and you don’t have a whole crew going, “Oh, here he goes again.” You just take me and one guy in the booth going, “Sure, Eric.” He rewinds it, and you do it again. It’s no pressure, it’s fun, and you can be very specific. It was just fun because the texture of the piece is so what it is, so when you add the narration, it makes it palatable. You can then go, “Oh,” as opposed to just, “Oh my God.” I love Mark’s work in that aspect of movie-making. It was smart.
Eliza, you mentioned working with Mark before. What really stood out about him as a director?
Eliza: He’s such an unlikely suspect. He looks like a guy who is gonna work at the hardware store or whatever, and then he turns out to be kind of this imaginative genius. So unbelievably consistently kind and open and energetic. The way that our first working situation came about is so unique. Eric was auditioning for Andronicus [with a] self-tape. I read with him because when we do self-tapes, we read with each other. I read with him playing his son, and when Mark called our agent to cast Eric as the dad, he said, “Oh, by the way, who was reading with him? Because she was really great. I mean, she was playing the son, but she was great.” Peter says, “Probably his wife, Eliza,” and then Mark cast me as his wife in Andronicus, which if you see Andronicus is a huge role. It wasn’t like an incidental little thing.
Eric: I know it’s a big deal.
Eliza: Thus began this little repertory company that we have going on here. That led to Hippo. I felt like in the role as Ethel, I was sending a message about behind closed doors, you never know what’s going on, but we have to care about each other. If mental illness is really an illness, then it’s a pandemic because everybody’s got some form of it. I’d rather just say we all are who we are, and there are various conditions, and everybody could use each other’s support. So, I don’t think of these people as being particularly crazy. I think of them as being more typically crazy.
Eric, you’re saying some wild stuff in this narration. First off, as a video game fan it is wild hearing you say Body Harvest for the N64 so many times, but you’re talking about weird stuff, like this kid masturbating with a stuffed hippo. How was it reading some of that stuff? It gets pretty weird.
Eric: Well, it gave me a part of my vocabulary I didn’t have until then.
Eliza: I think what I love about it, and I’m glad you brought that up about Eric doing that, was that he was completely nonjudgmental. He just told the story and never got in the way of the story. There was no, “Can you believe it?” or “Isn’t that weird?” I don’t even know how you did that. It was just one of those moments where something overtakes you, and you just know where to go.
Eric: It’s just so extreme of story and so extreme of narration.
Eliza: You play against it.
Eric: You can’t hit it on the head. You have to play it like it’s talking about the weather. You can’t play it like it’s talking about what it’s talking about, or you’ll never get through it.
Eliza, I wanted to ask you about working with Kimball Farley because he’s fantastic in this lead role here as the titular character. He’s just this really angsty teenager. What stood out about working with him?
Eliza: Well, he is so much more than what we wish angsty teenagers were because angsty teenagers can be really a danger to themselves and others. Kimball couldn’t be less like that. That’s what cracks me up. I know his parents, so it’s not an act. When we did Andronicus, he was willing to be one of the earmarks of a really great actor, which is being willing to be disliked. There was almost nothing likable about his character in Andronicus, and there was really almost nothing likable about his character in Hippo. He completely embraced it and went for it. He did an incredible thing that we actually instruct some of our actors when we’re coaching to do, which is stating the absurd as if it’s very reasonable.
He got so much comedy out of that and so much believability out of that. That’s part of what’s delicious about this movie and very different about this movie. It was very easy for him to just be smiley, happy Kimball and then suddenly Hippo. So we all had an amazing time. Even now, with working on this press tour we’re doing for the movie. He’s right in there arranging things and helping him. He’s a true collaborator, also. He’s a find. This kid has star quality. He should play Mick Jagger, for sure. Somebody’s gotta just pull that hair back and look at that face. He is Jagger.
I love that point you made about just delivering it straight because that kind of plays into Eric’s narration, too, because he does the same thing in it to a really great effect.
Eliza: Yep, absolutely. I just think Kimball is a major talent and can do anything. I think he will do anything. He’s also not screwed up in a way where he is gonna shoot himself in the foot or sabotage a career. He is just a pleasure.
Eric: Yeah. Special kid.
Eric, you’ve gotten to do quite a few projects lately with Eliza also in them. How special is it when you get to work together as a couple?
Eric: My wife is my favorite human. She’s one of my three favorite actors I ever knew about, and she’s cute. I mean, I like her, and I have a good life with her, and it’s just fun. We work together. Also, she’s my coach. I go to her for everything. I go to her like, “What do I do with it? Blah, blah, blah.” She says, “Try this.” “Oh, okay. Thank you. How about this?” “Try this, Eric, but don’t go here where you like to do that because you always screw that up.” “Okay, fine.”
We have these heart-to-hearts that are real. She keeps me lined up and I love it. Because when you’re recognizable, everybody tells you what you want to hear. They don’t tell you what you need to hear. My wife’s always been a need to hear. So, we have a great thing.
I love that answer. I can tell it comes from the heart. It’s not you sucking up, you’re being very genuine. It’s very sweet to see.
Eliza, you were in one of my favorite movies ever, Animal House, and what a fabulous cast that had. Could you guys tell at the time that you were making something special, or did it take you all by surprise that it’s still so beloved 40-plus years later?
Eliza: What a great question. No, we could not tell. I had done Schlock for John Landis when I was like 17 years old, and I knew John had an energy and a determination. Schlock was his first movie. Well, he did a lot of Gumby movies with Pokey and Gumby, but yeah…
Eric: They were shorts.
Eliza: Yeah, well, less than shorts. But anyway, he kept saying, “The studio loves the dailies. They love the rushes.” You always hear that on set. We thought we were making a giant inside joke, a giant, very low-budget inside joke, and that nobody was really gonna get it. You could see that Tim Matheson was incredible, John Vernon and everybody, but we didn’t have any idea.
I was pregnant with Keaton [Simons], whom John refers to as the youngest member of the cast, having been a fetus in the movie. I had morning sickness all day long. So when I see the movie, I get a little nauseous, to be honest with you, because it’s all a flashback.
We didn’t know, and we were stunned. Then, in terms of the longevity, I mean, Keaton and I just went up to do an anniversary showing of it up in Cottage Grove, Oregon, where the Dexter Lake Club has not changed at all. Now Keaton plays with Otis Day, they tour, and they play together, and they played there together. Then everything is Animal House, merch and memorabilia. It’s completely overwhelming. I mean, they did a toga party, they did a parade.
Eric: That was for the 40th anniversary.
Eliza: Yeah, yeah. Look at you, you’re a kid, and you love this movie. It was completely and totally unexpected. What a treat that is.
Eric, you released your memoir recently, Runaway Train, and the response has been so great. How rewarding has it been really, you know, opening up and seeing all this positive feedback of people really being touched by your story and really recommending your book?
Eric: I’m gonna be very honest with you. It’s the biggest ego trip I’ve ever had. I wrote a book, and people are buying it. It blows my mind. It was very hard to write. It took me four years. I’m not a writer. I did have a guide, and I had her [Eliza], my in-house editor, who would say things to me like, “You’re embellishing.” I said, “What do you mean?” “That’s not Eric. You talk too much about it, like a blah, blah, blah.” She straightened me out so I’d go fix it. I’m an actor. I like to embellish. It’s just automatic. It’s not like I’m purposefully lying. It’s just what I do when I talk sometimes.
Eliza: You do tend to want to tell the stories as if you wish they were, but you kind of have to force yourself to just tell ’em as they were.
Eric: Well, that’s what I did. I’m actually proud of the book because I avoided things. Because I read every biography on everybody famous, every autobiography, every biography, I read ’em all. But they all have the same kind of formula. They all have a hard childhood. Then you graduate from a hard schooling, then you don’t become a star for a long time, and then you do. Then everything is a happy ending. I didn’t want to do that even though my story has those tendencies. So, being honest is much harder than the word implies.
Eliza: And you have to listen to the audiobook because it has Keaton’s songs in it. Each one for each chapter fits lyrically and also emotionally, and tonally with what the chapter’s gonna be about. It’s pretty cool. The music is one of our favorite things about the book.
Thanks to Eric and Eliza Roberts for talking about Hippo.