VIDEO EXCLUSIVE: Aristotle Athari & Michael Lukk Litwik On Making ‘Molli & Max In The Future’ With Zosia Mamet

In writer and director Michael Lukk Litwik‘s sci-fi romantic comedy Molli & Max In The Future, viewers follow the story of Molli, Zosia Mamet, and Max, Aristotle Athari, as the two’s paths continuously cross through three dimensions and four planets over the span of 12 years.

In an exclusive interview with uInterview founder Erik Meers at the South by Southwest Film Festival in Austin, Texas, Athari revealed what it was like working with Mamet on set.

“Well, I mean Zosia’s very, very easy to work with because she’s just so pleasurable,” he began. “She’s just like a nice person to be with, it’s just like I was waiting for a moment to be like, you know, kind of that moment where you know somebody’s like a little Hollywood and she’s like not like that at all. We shared a lot of photos of our dogs back and forth with each other. We kind of became best friends before we even met because we had been talking through Zoom a few weeks prior to us actually meeting and starting rehearsals and whatnot but, yeah, I mean I think probably maybe my favorite moment when we were shooting was the tennis scenes because we were yelling and that was pretty fun. I mean it was all fun, I mean, it was really hard not to have fun even the hot times when we were in that led studio, it was fun you know like because I’ve never been in an LED stage in my life and that was really cool.”

Then the two discussed their favorite scenes of the film.

“One of my favorite scenes, or the one of the scenes I’m very grateful for, is the scene where Max’s professing his love to Molli because I feel like I learned so much just from watching Zosia do, you know, do her reverse on it or like on her part of the scene with me,” Arthari said. “It felt like I grew a lot as a performer just doing this whole thing to begin with, but yeah, you know, like when you work in comedy you don’t really get an opportunity to do those kinds of scenes, you know. I had done stuff like that, like some plays and stuff when I was younger, but when you do comedy for so long you don’t really get that opportunity again. I was very grateful for that so that was fun, so I know it’s a very emotional thing, like to say that was fun to really be sad, it was my favorite.”

“It’s so hard to like separate what my favorite scene is without thinking about like the challenges of shooting the project of like, you know, what scene was the hardest to film and the easiest to film but I think one of my favorite moments in the movie is just one of the dumbest moments in the movie which is when Max leaves his father,” Litwik said. “I don’t know if I want to spoil it here but I think the first 11 minutes of the movie is pretty grounded and I think the movie ramps up its absurdity and with his first interaction with his dad you realize you’re on a roller coaster ride and you got to either strap in or or the movies not for you. And working with Danny Burstein, who’s like a Broadway legend and just was so fun and I wish we could have had more time and just build out that character even more but yeah, that was so much fun, and shooting on the LED stage was just so nice.”