In Did You Hear About the Morgans?, Hugh Grant and Sarah Jessica Parker play a separated married couple who witness a murder and are subsequently forced to live together in the boondocks for their safety. (Val Kilmer’s soon-to-be-art-filled ranch in New Mexico served as a Witness Protection hideout set in Ray, Wyoming.) “You’ll laugh,” Grant told us at the movie’s New York premiere, “but I found myself strangely drawn to the West. I like big open spaces. I felt an urge to drive cattle right across America.”
Grant and Parker spent their downtime playing charades in their trailers and sitting outside, under the stars, by the river that runs through Kilmer’s backyard. Grant says he found Parker “enchanting”; he even enjoyed working with his animal co-stars. “The bear was interesting,” he said. “I’d never done a scene with an actor who wanted to kill me or eat me, that I know of. But the bear was very sweet. He turned out to be a real honey. Just wanted to get it right.”
Parker was a little less generous to the animals (“I prefer working with humans,” she said), but did find that she adapted well to the rural setting. “New Yorkers are famous for rushing off to the country every weekend,” she pointed out. But there was one cast member, Elisabeth Moss, who was very glad she was needed at the New York location. (She plays Parker’s assistant, holding down the real-estate agency while the boss is gone.) “I shot on the Upper East Side,” Moss told us, “so I just had to go across the park [from her apartment on the Upper West Side] to work. My trailer had a view of Central Park. It was dreamy!” She’s even a little offended by the premise of many romantic comedies these days, even The Morgans, that suggest city folk have to go to the country to be cured of urban ills. “I don’t think a lot of people have the luxury to do that, and I don’t think it’s necessary,” she said. “The city heals all wounds for me. But I like this movie, because they don’t want to go. They’re forced. They wouldn’t choose to go. And that seems about right.”
