Spoilers for the 2025 movie schedule entry, I Don’t Understand You, are ahead. You can see the film in theaters now.
When it comes to this year’s upcoming horror movies, the ones I gravitate toward have a healthy dose of comedy in them. So, obviously, when I learned that I Don’t Understand You starred Nick Kroll and Andrew Rannells, I knew I was in for a good time. That proved to be true, as I found myself laughing a lot. It turns out the cast couldn’t get over some of these moments, too, as the directors revealed the one line Rannells improvised that Kroll couldn’t keep it together for.
When I watched I Don’t Understand You, I wrote down a quote in my notes where Andrew Rannells' Cole tells Nick Kroll’s Dom that “This can’t be a thing we start doing in LA,” right after they kill another person. I laughed so hard because it was such a casual way to address the fact that these guys’ romantic Italian getaway turned into a murder spree that they were responsible for.
Well, incredibly, that line was improvised, and Nick Kroll couldn’t stop laughing about it either, as co-director and writer Brian Crano told me:
It was a Friday night at 4:30 in the morning, and they're talking over a dead body, and Andrew says, just what one time, just says, ‘We got to stop doing this. This can’t be a thing we do in LA.’ And Nick about died, like he could not get it together to shoot the rest of the scene. So we had to come back and do it. It was so funny.
Now, as you likely know, both Kroll and Rannells are part of the beloved show Big Mouth (which you can stream with a Netflix subscription), so they have history together. That made them both a great couple and great comedic partners in this movie.
Plus, both Kroll’s film and TV projects, as well as Rannells' work, prove they are comedy icons, and they know how to improvise. So, I can’t say I’m shocked that there was serious breaking while filming this movie over improvised dialogue.
The directors loved it too, especially this moment about not murdering people when they get back to LA, which is where Dom and Cole are from. To prove that point, co-director and writer David Joseph Craig said:
It's in the movie, so it made its way in there.
As I mentioned, in I Don’t Understand You, Kroll and Rannells play a couple who wind up stranded in an Italian home, and they accidentally kill the entire family who lives there.
It’s such a great horror comedy because you are genuinely worried about these guys for the whole movie, and the tension built up in this house is terrifying. It’s also hilarious because nobody has any idea what’s going on, and the way Dom and Cole cope with what they’ve done is ridiculously hilarious.
What can I say? When you put Nick Kroll and Andrew Rannells in any movie, funny things around bound to happen, and I Don’t Understand You greatly benefited from it.
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