Glamour: That mirrors Alison Brie's story in the movie perfectly. The second she lets her hair down, she finds somebody.
Dana: Literally, it's so true. It's really funny because whenever I write a movie, I try to put as much stuff that's either true for me or one of my close friends or someone I love into the movie because then I think there's something I can feel in it that's very authentic. With the Alison Brie character, I'm pretty type A, pretty A+, and I think I know exactly what I want. I was like, "Everybody, these are the boxes I need to get checked off." Then I met my husband, and he didn't check off a single box. He was six years younger than me, super athletic, and you'd have to put a gun to my head to get me to do a push-up. He didn't satisfy a single requirement or box, but he was like, "Whatever, I love you, let's do this." I was like, "I kinda love you too." Cut to we have three insane children and we're married. That was sort of in the Alison Brie story line, and I obviously put a lot of young guy stuff from my life into Leslie Mann's story line. I'm a total insane workaholic, and I looked up one day and thought, "Wow! I'm 32 and don't have anyone in my life I want to be with. I'm going to forget to have kids if I'm not careful." I still wanted to meet somebody, but I didn't really want to change my work ethic, so I put a lot of the Leslie Mann journey in there. The Jake Lacy character felt a bit like my husband. Hopefully it feels real.
Glamour: That brings me to my next question: Why is Jake Lacy's character so perfect? He's the best boyfriend for the modern woman. He loves that she has a career, he's supportive, he's charming...
Dana: One of my favorite lines in the movie was contributed by Katie Silverman, who was writing a lot of the improve-y jokes on the side one day, and she's the one who pitched that joke that "my Halloween costume in the sixth grade was a stay-at-home dad." That makes me laugh so hard, I can't stand it. I think the reason he, not to get too feminist on you, but when you have a really strong woman, I think that it's difficult for two people to be the same kind of alpha strong people in the relationship. But strong women don't want to date losers—we want to date awesome guys who are sexy and manly, so that's what informed the Jake character. He's not like her at all, he loosens her up, and he doesn't give a shit about his job or what he does. It teaches her to loosen up a little bit, and she teaches him how to access his more manly side, where he's like, "Pull your shit together. I love you. Get over it. I'm a strong man, and I love kids, and I want to be with you and a baby." Truly, I don't know if I could have written that character if I didn't know that person existed in my husband. When you're single in a big city like NY or L.A., you don't meet a lot of guys who can't wait to get married and have kids. It's not what most guys are out there doing, but he was like that. In addition to that, I think we had a lot of good convos with Jake and Judd Apatow and Leslie about that character that informed it. I'm grateful to them because they brought so much to the table. I won the lottery with that.
