The Big Picture

“The Kill Room” is a comedy-infused thriller directed by Nicol Paone and written by Jonathan Jacobson. The film follows the story of a down-on-her-luck art gallery owner, Patrice (Uma Thurman), who becomes involved in money laundering schemes. The director, Nicol Paone, started her career in comedy and brings her comedic background to the film, which features a talented cast including Samuel L. Jackson and Joe Manganiello.

What is art? Is something only valuable when we decide that it’s valuable? Ah, now we’re talking. Directed by Nicol Paone and written by Jonathan Jacobson, The Kill Room is a comedy-infused thriller that follows Patrice (Uma Thurman), a down-on-her-luck art gallery owner who spends more time trying to please both her fading and potential clients than she does actually appreciating what they produce. Between the bills and the drugs, she is getting a bit desperate. Enter — quite unexpectedly — Samuel L. Jackson’s wise-cracking Gordon and his hitman colleague Reggie (Joe Manganiello), both of whom need a better, more creative way to launder money.

What if Reggie painted something that they could “sell” for a very high price? Suddenly, everyone wants something from the popular, new enigmatic artist known as “The Bagman.” The Kill Room’s director Nicol Paone has been on both sides of the camera, getting her start in improv comedy, writing, directing, and performing for Funny or Die, and writing and directing the 2020 comedy Friendsgiving. During our 1-on-1 conversation, Paone spoke about her early comedy days at The Groundlings, how wonderful it was to be able to shoot where she grew up in New Jersey, and the many different ways Uma Thurman was dedicated to the project.

COLLIDER: I was so excited to finally see this movie and I have a lot of questions on that. But before we get into it, I was reminded of how you started on Wall Street, which is not Hollywood.

NICOL PAONE: Or is it?

[Laughs] That’s a good point. That’s a very good point. I started in business, and I was like, “No, this isn’t… this isn’t what I’m doing.” So I’m curious if you had a specific day that you decided, “I’m getting out of here,” or if it was a bunch of little moments that you were just like, “This is hell, I’ve got to get out.”

PAONE: No, it was a very specific day. I was working for a company and I didn’t know they were owned by the same Chinese men who were laundering money through the United States. And so I worked for three companies, I went one to the next, to the next, and they were all owned by the same person. It was December 11th, I forget what year. We were supposed to have a black tie formal and I was owed my bonus and I was owed like four months back pay. A lot of money, like over $100,000. And you know, you’re like, “Christmas is gonna be great!” and you’re just really excited. I walk into the office and there is crime tape up and it became an investigation with the CFTC.

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Oh my God.

PAONE: That was the defining ending! Talk about great endings, but wonderful beginnings because I took all that knowledge with me, and so I’m really glad that I know what the bottom-line thinkers are thinking about.

Wow, that’s intense. I wasn’t expecting that.

PAONE: Terrifying. Hey, you asked!

[Laughs] I did ask. It’s my fault. Then you went to The Groundlings and you wrote for the Sunday Company.

PAONE: Yeah, it was fantastic. I was in there with Kristen Wiig and Ben Falcone was the director. Jim Rash, who later won the Academy Award for The Descendants, and Stephanie Courtney, who is Flo [from Progressive]. Kent Sublette is the head writer of SNL. Mikey Day, Edi Patterson, like really incredible humans. And Melissa McCarthy would come and watch, so, no pressure.

Oh, Edi Patterson, man, she’s wild. I like her a lot on The Righteous Gemstones.

PAONE: Hilarious woman.

Did you finally feel at home performing? Did you prefer writing? Were you enjoying both?

PAONE: I really enjoyed both. I remember this one particular sketch. I was editing it on a Saturday night, and I was like, “I don’t have to be anywhere. I just love being here working on this, knowing I’m getting to perform it tomorrow night.”

And then you went to The Big Gay Sketch Show. Did you feel more confident with that? What was different with that show and The Groundlings?

PAONE: That show was actually easier than The Groundlings because you got to do things over. At The Groundlings everyone was trying to be a main company member and you didn’t really get a chance to do things over. It’s a live show. With The Big Gay Sketch Show, it was loose, it was fun, it was a lot of our first jobs. I remember the first day I walked in — I didn’t realize I did this, but my cast mates reminded me that I did — I brought a binder of all my sketches.

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I’m picturing Leslie Nope on Parks and Recreation. She had a binder for everything.

PAONE: One of those white, classic sterile binders.

With no personality on it.

PAONE: Nothing.

Nothing. Emptiness. It’s funny you mentioned money laundering because that’s what’s in this movie. I’m sure you did not expect to be brought back to that. How did The Kill Room get into your hands?

PAONE: When I was on Wall Street, I worked with a guy who — he was the only one I told I was taking acting classes — and then after that whole brouhaha on Wall Street, I decided to take acting classes full time. I was working with the manager and the manager said to me, “Get into NYU student films,” and the next day that guy who I hadn’t talked to in like a year and a half called me and was like, “I remember you were taking acting classes. Do you want to be in my cousin’s NYU student film?” And I was like, whoa. There are three moments in my life like that, that are very synchronistic. I did the NYU student film and we formed a production company, and all these years later, a good friend and producing partner called me after I did Friendsgiving and said, “I have a really great script for you.” I really enjoyed the script and I developed it for maybe a year and a half more with Jonathan Jacobson, who wrote it. It was all there on the page, I just added some twists and turns and developed all the other ancillary characters out.

Did Uma sign on first? What was the order of getting everyone together?

PAONE: Jonathan and I, while we were working together on the rewrite, we had signed an option deal with Anne Clements of Idiot Savant Pictures and Yale Productions. When the option was up with Anne, Jonathan asked if I would produce, and I said absolutely. And then three months later, we had Uma on board and it was because I was hounding Danielle Thomas, who is a partner at Untitled, to read the script. I just was bothering her for about a year thinking it’s right up her alley. I know she’ll love it, she’s an art collector, she’s a big Broadway fanatic. It was her sensibility. And I was right, she loved it and she happened to represent Uma Thurman and asked me if she could send it to Uma. But before, while I was on a walk, my partner asked me who I thought would be the ultimate Patrice, and I blurted out, “Uma Thurman.” And then a week later Danielle Thomas calls me and she was like, “This is Uma Thurman,” and I was floored.

Image via Shout! Factory 

And it is Uma Thurman. She’s not acting in a scene, she is the scene. She goes through so many different emotions in each one. I love Maya Hawke, I think she’s one of the best actors out there.

PAONE: She’s fantastic.

When I saw them together, one, that was fun because they are mother-daughter, but also, Maya’s character Grace was pissed at her in every scene. I was just having so much fun watching it because she was ripping into her. She says “F*ck you!” at one point. It was a very good back-and-forth. Did you have to step away and just let them do their thing or did you give them a lot of specific direction?

PAONE: The way I like to work is individually, having lots of discussions beforehand. They’re such incredible actresses, I want them to just feel free and comfortable to do their thing. And so there were a lot of discussions, but truthfully when they first got on set, we built varied performances in throughout the takes, but you can’t create chemistry and they have it together and it was really fun to see them play. Maya was up for anything and I think it’s the perfect relationship for them. It’s not some precious “mommy-daughter relationship.” It made me happy and it made me laugh, and it’s their first role together.

It was very refreshing to see them go at it and it was funny to see Uma nervous around Maya.

PAONE: That’s how incredible an actress Uma is and that’s how powerful Maya is and it’s fun to see. Oftentimes a lead doesn’t want to seem less powerful than say, a guest star, and Uma had zero problem with that.

Samuel L. Jackson, he had fun. Every line of dialogue, I was like, “That could only be said by him.” Did he improvise a lot? How many takes did you do with him?

PAONE: I know that there is this thing out there that Sam only does three takes. I think I got him to do six takes on some things. He gave me a couple of looks like, “Come on!” (Laughs.) That role is really interesting because it was written as Herschel, a 72-year-old Jewish man. And when we were discussing the casting, Uma texted me, “Is Sam Jackson an option?” And I was like, “Are you kidding? Of course.” And so Jonathan and I had a day to rewrite the script before the Christmas break to get it to Sam. I was also meeting my fiancée’s family that day over Christmas, and so I basically had to go in, say hello, and while they were off doing Christmassy things, I had to take over their bedroom and rewrite the script frantically for Samuel L. Jackson to give it to before the break.

That’s a good problem to have though.

PAONE: It’s a great problem to have.

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How much did the story change in the edit? It’s a tricky tone. With Joe Manganiello, I feel like he’s intense. He’s very funny, but he’s an intense guy. And then you have the scenes of Maya and Uma. Did you discover stuff in post?

PAONE: Oh yes. We switched a lot around, we switched the order of scenes. My editor Gillian Lasting, she was wonderful. She knew all the tricks of the trade. We had to switch things around because we didn’t have an ending. Joe got COVID and we had a lightning storm that rerouted Uma’s plane, and so we had to rewrite the ending for what we had. The scene when they’re in Miami, that’s the back of stand-ins’ heads. When you see the front of [Thurman and Jackson], and Uma’s saying, “We’re just making art,” that was like a little filler scene that we had to put in to shoot the front of them in New Jersey in October and make it look like it was the same day. That was the trickiest part.

What made me laugh a lot in the movie was how people all of a sudden started liking the art because other people like the art. That can go to so many things in life. Was there anything growing up that you didn’t necessarily want, but all of a sudden all of your friends had it?

PAONE: That’s a good question. Definitely not Cabbage Patch. I did not fall into that… line of thinking. But I watched everyone go crazy over that. Maybe like EA Sports, NFL, you know.

I wasn’t into Cabbage Patch either, so I’m with you. We’re both from New Jersey. What was it like filming there?

PAONE: It was amazing. I had to drag Uma, Sam, and Joe to Angelo’s restaurant in Lyndhurst. It’s where my parents went on their first date. It’s a perfect looking restaurant for the scenes. The characters were originally Brooklyn, Staten Island. I was a little hesitant, there are a lot of mobbish links to New Jersey, but this one felt okay, because there was a little bit of a wink. All from love.

I’m sure every day on set there was a challenge or two, but was there a day when something came up that you didn’t even anticipate being a problem, and how did you get through it?

PAONE: Absolutely. Every day was difficult for various reasons. I kept saying, “When you’re in Florida, and you are at your tech scout, just breathe a sigh of relief knowing you have one or two more scenes, and some exteriors. It’ll be sunny, it’ll be wonderful.” At that moment when I was at the tech scout, we were at the Miami Convention Center, and my producer walks up to me and goes, “Joe has COVID.” From that moment to the moment we left Miami was just disastrous. We had to rewrite the ending, and Uma’s plane the next day gets rerouted because of lightning. So she lands in Sarasota and tries to get a rental car so she can drive down. No rental cars. She’s sitting in front of this hotel and the woman she was talking to in First Class sees her and says, “Get in, I’ll drive you to Miami.” The woman didn’t realize it was Uma Thurman. She kept calling her, “Irma.” (Laughs.) Halfway down the Florida turnpike, the woman realizes she’s driving Uma Thurman, and then she realizes she’s friends with Uma’s manager.

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That’s bizarre!

PAONE: Yes, this movie has so many bizarre synchronicities. Uma arrives, and we only got maybe for hours with her because it rained, and then we were done.

Do you want to keep directing?

PAONE: Definitely directing. Writing and directing, 100%. I had an incredible crew. Not an easy shoot at all, and we were tested in all the ways, but the crew never wavered. I just feel like we have such incredible crews who are dedicated to making incredible films and not making content for content’s sake. We’re really lucky and I benefited from that because I just worked with an incredible group of professionals. My editor, my DP, my production designer, wardrobe. They were there for the work.

The Kill Room is exclusively in theaters now.