Paul Feig Talks ‘Jackpot!’, That MGK Cameo, and Making Fun of Hollywood

Paul Feig new movie, Jackpot! is—much like Idiocracy before it—a dystopian comedy that delights in mocking greedy, profit-driven corporations. But Jackpot!, which began streaming on Amazon Prime on Thursday, is focused on specifically on the greedy, profit-driven industry of Hollywood. How, exactly, did the director manage to successfully get a Hollywood studio to make a film that satirizes Hollywood’s predatory greed?

“That message was wrapped up in the peanut butter—it was the pill in the peanut butter for the dog,” Feig told Decider in a recent Zoom interview. “This overarching idea is such a sticky idea, as we call in the business: a lottery where you could kill the winner before sundown. If you have a good, core idea, you can get away with more.”

That idea came from screenwriter Rob Yescombe, and is played out on screen by Awkwafina, who stars as a former child actor named Katie. After taking time off to care for her dying mother, Katie returns to Hollywood to persue an acting career in the year 2030. Little does Katie know, there’s a new craze in Los Angeles these days: a city-wide lottery that gives losing ticket-holders a chance to kill the lottery winner and legally claiming their winnings. When Katie accidentally wins the jackpot, she hires an amatuer bodyguard (played by John Cena) to save her from the bloodthirsty mob. As Cena cheerfully explains, it’s not murder in California—it’s “just a chance at the big time!”

Jackpot! is just as absurd, silly, and lighthearted as Feig’s other comedies—Bridesmaids, The Heat, Spy, just to name a few—but it’s set against the depressing backdrop of a desperate, impoverished version of LA. “Sadly, it’s not too far off from the way that Los Angeles is right now,” Feig said. The director spoke to Decider about balancing the serious and silly tone, landing that rock star cameo, and his highly-anticipated sequel to A Simple Favor.

DECIDER: The movie is so funny, but there’s also this serious theme of poverty and desperation. I was particularly struck by the footage of the homeless in encampments in LA. How did you balance that theme with the movie’s silliness?

PAUL FEIG: I wanted to set a world in which you would believe that this [lottery] could actually take place. Sadly, it’s not too far off from the way that Los Angeles is right now. But the only way that this premise could be halfway believable is if you portrayed a world where there’s a lot of desperation. I didn’t want that theme to overtake the movie, because I still wanted it to be fun. But I always say my comedies are just dramas that are funny—because you have to have the underpinning of the character motivations, the friendships, the emotions, and the setting—the world that you’re in—has to feel real. It was just getting that backdrop, so that we could excuse why this is happening, and then go into the more fun aspects of it. 

In a way, the movie felt like it was about the greediness of Hollywood, especially with Awkwafina’s background as a child actor. How do you kind of pitch a movie to studios that is about how their industry is so greedy? 

[Laughs.] That message was wrapped up in the peanut butter—that was the pill in the peanut butter for the dog, if you will. It was just the setting, but the fact that the action, the comedy, and this overarching idea is such a sticky idea—as we call in the business—of a lottery where you could kill the winner before sundown. It’s a great, noisy thing to hang something on I think those other elements, for them, are window dressing on an otherwise buddy story. If you have a good core idea, you can put all these other things that you want to put in there, and it becomes less about that. So you can get away with more!

Awkwafina and John Cena were already attached to the film when you came on board, so can you tell me about some of your favorite additions to the cast, beyond that? 

Having Simu as our villain was really fun. I didn’t even think of him for it until his agents called. I wouldn’t even have considered that he’d want to play a villain! So I talked to him, he was like, “Yeah, I want to go for it.” It worked out really well for that. And then my supporting cast, who I just love. I have my team of who I call “money-in-the-bank people.” They can show up, there’s one line in the script, and they’re just going to take it, and turn it into something else. I mean, having Taylor Ortega, Mike Hitchcock, Holmes playing the Uber driver—the list goes on and on of people who are in there and are just so funny.

There’s nothing worse than just shooting the script that you have. You make sure that that’s good, and if you just shot that, it should be a good movie. But I want to bring creative, funny people in who are then going to take it to the next level and give me things I didn’t think of. There’s no wasted roles. Leslie Baker, my pal from The Office, played the security guard. It was so special. And people get really happy when they see people they know are funny. Then they trust the scene and they’re like, “Now I can just relax, and have fun in this.”

I have to ask about Machine Gun Kelly. Were any other celebrities considered for that role? What was it like asking MGK to say “butthole” over and over again? 

Didn’t take much coaxing, let’s just say that! He’s hilarious. No, it came about because we were just trying to figure out—there was a cameo written into it that I felt had been done a million times before. I was like, “We can upgrade this.”

Please drop the name!

Oh, no, I can’t, because it would be terrible. But I was like, “Who’s going to be unexpected?” We were really playing with a lot of different ideas and then got word that Colson—MGK—wanted to do something like this. And I was like, “That’s kind of fun!” I never would have thought of that. And the audience are going to think, “I never thought this person would be in this movie!” I talked to him on a Zoom, and he was really into the idea of doing it. I thought, “Is a rock star going to show up and be worried about not looking cool? Am I not going to be able to pitch certain jokes?” He was just like, “I’m up for anything, man!” You see what we do to him— we put him through the ringer, basically! And he just loved it. I really love the guy. He’s a real sweetheart. 

I love the prosthetic that Awkwafina wears when she uses the Face-Off machine to get a whole new face. Was that a wink to the Jason Statham joke in Spy? Tell me about designing and applying that prosthetic. 

Yeah, we finally got the Face-Off machine into something, which I’m very happy about. That was in Rob’s Yescombe’s original script, and I just thought it was hilarious—to get to actually do what we’ve talked about in Spy. That was a lot of prosthetics for Nora [Lum, aka Awkwafina]. That was many, many hours in the makeup chair for her. I’ve done stuff like that when I was an actor, and it’s really not fun. It’s really uncomfortable. It’s really hot. Then they, “OK, we’re on lunch!” It’s like, “OK thanks. I have to eat my lunch now with this thing on.” But she was a trooper. She did it. That kind of thing, even if it’s uncomfortable, it really helps your performance, because you feel like the character. You can really take on this whole new identity. So it was fun, but I was always like, “Let’s get through this fast, so we can get you out of that make-up.”

Thank you for bringing back the lost art of blooper reels with this movie. There’s a blooper where John Cena jokes about LA looking like Atlanta—how do you feel about how commonplace that’s become in the industry, turning Atlanta into various other cities, and how did you approach filming LA in Atlanta?

Generally, for me, it’s my least favorite thing to do. I really like to shoot a city for that city. I don’t like hiding what the city is. But this is such a Hollywood story and going there—I mean, honestly, Atlanta looks a lot like LA, if you’re not by any landmarks. I wrote that joke—”Do you ever notice that LA really looks like Atlanta sometimes?”—in case I didn’t think we were going to get away with it. But when we put the movie together, and put it in front of audiences, we realized,everybody just thinks it’s LA! That’s why I took it out and put in the end credits. It was my insurance policy. 

When you were filming Jackpot, did you know it was going to be a streaming-only audience, as opposed to theatrical? Did that change your approach to the comedy in any way? 

No—at that point, we weren’t sure which way it was going to go. Everything was pointing towards that it was going to be streaming. But honestly, you don’t shoot anything any different. I still wanted it to feel like a big event. We’re showing it on the big screen for a lot of different screenings—word-of-mouth, and the premiere, and all that. The only thing I adjust—and I do this with all my movies, even ones that I know are going to be theatrical—is if we have any inserts of a phone, or a text, or anything, I say “Make it as big as possible!” I know, eventually, somebody’s gonna be watching this on their phone. It drives my crew crazy—I’m like, “Bigger, make it bigger!” You have to be set for any audience, watching it in any format. 

I’m so excited for A Simple Favor, the sequel. Can you tell us where you’re at with it right now? Are you guys in post-production, will we maybe get a title or a synopsis soon? 

We’re in post-production. I’m now about six, seven weeks into my director’s cut. We tested it last week. I like to test early, just to see if everything’s working, and we tested through the roof. So I’m very excited about that. This has been a real nerve-wracking one, because I’ve never done a sequel before. I know how much people love the first one. I love the first one. And sequels, I always go, like, all I can really do most of the time is just let people down. [Laughs.] 

We had a script that got green-lit a year and a half ago. During the writer’s strike, I was seeing what people were writing about—how excited they were, what they thought the movie’s going to be—and I’m just like, “I think what we have isn’t going to make people— isn’t going to be what they are hoping for.” Not that I want to try to match expectations, but I also don’t want to subvert expectations, at the same time, too. Beacuse I don’t like when movies do that. When you’re like, “Oh, you like that? Well, screw you, you’re going to get this!” So we threw out about 70 percent of that script and, during the strike, rewrote it. And I’m so happy we did, because now I think it’s got the tone. The test audience we had was a majority of fans of the first movie‚ and they were very, very happy. It’s definitely not coming out until next year. We’ll slowly sneak out thoughts about it. But I also want to keep a lot of it undercover. Nothing I love more than people seeing a movie not quite knowing what’s going to happen. That’s always the thing with trailers. How do we do a trailer, and make people want to see this, but not give anything away? Which is not easy. 

We’ve seen those set photos with Italian actor Michele Morrone, marrying Blake Lively’s character. What can you say about his character and his addition to the cast?

He’s great. We needed this really otherworldly guy for this role. Who would Blake fall in love with? We just had so much fun with him. We have a great Italian cast. Elena Sofia Ricci—she’s this legend in Italy, and she plays his mother. It’s just great. I can’t give any away any more than that, but it’s a very fun dynamic that they all have. Blake fits very well into their world, and Anna coming into that world is very fun, because she’s both into it and also a fish out of water. 

You’re also set to direct a Blumhouse movie about a serial squatter. Is this going to be a horror movie? That would be a new genre for you, right? 

It’s definitely in that world. I love, you know, Jason [Blum] is an old friend. I have known him forever, even before he was the king of horror. I just think he’s the smartest guy in town. I really wanted to do something with their machine that they have, and I love this idea. My only goal in my career is to hit all the genres and try to put my stamp on them—or do my thing to them. This is definitely horror, thriller. But it’s always going to have a sense of humor. I always want to bring that to every movie I do. I never want anything to take itself so seriously. That’s not fun, and again, I just want to make fun movies. 

My last question for you— Freaks and Geeks is still one of my favorite TV shows ever. Would you ever do a Freaks and Geeks sequel, maybe to find out where everyone is as adults? 

People always ask about it, but I don’t know. I’m not drawn to do it, unless I had some amazing idea. Reunion things—I’ve been let down by them so many times. I feel like we got away with such a great thing. Part of me is, like, “Just leave it alone.” But you never know. They’re all so famous now that I don’t think we could afford them!