The Big Picture

Nutcrackers,
starring Ben Stiller and Linda Cardellini, is a heartwarming and hilarious holiday film.
Working with kids, animals, and director David Gordon Green led to memorable on-set experiences.
The duo breaks down what makes a Christmas classic.

A Christmas Story. White Christmas. Miracle on 34th Street. All of these are holiday classics that fill hearts and homes every December. The search for new films to add to the canon is constant, and David Gordon Green’s Nutcrackers, which stars Ben Stiller and Linda Cardellini, is an immediate and serious contender. Centering on selfish workaholic Michael (Stiller), the film sees him forced to look after his four mischievous nephews (real-life brothers Homer, Ulysses, Atlas, and Arlo Janson) with the help of kindhearted social worker Gretchen (Cardellini). It has plenty of laughter and love alike, both playing on favorite tropes and putting a refreshing spin on the genre.

This is Stiller’s first leading role in seven years, as he’s been working hard behind the scenes the past few years directing Emmys darlings like Escape at Dannemora and Severance. The chaotic delight of this film, however, harkens back to some of his best performances, including one of my personal favorites, Meet the Parents. Cardellini has a busy few months ahead. In addition to Nutcrackers, she’ll appear in Creature Commandos and is starring in No Good Deed, which reunites her with Dead to Me’s Liz Feldman.

Collider got the chance to speak with Stiller and Cardellini about what makes a Christmas classic, working with a plethora of both kids and animals on this production, their favorite days on set, and more.

Ben Stiller and Linda Cardellini Broke Every Hollywood Rule Making ‘Nutcrackers’

COLLIDER: First of all, congratulations on this movie — it’s so warm and has so much heart. I can totally see myself adding it to the rotation of movies that I visit every September— or every December, sorry.

LINDA CARDELLINI: You can start in September — that’s cool!

Why not?! What do you think is the key to making a Christmas classic like this?

BEN STILLER: Wow. I mean, I feel like they always have that emotional core, right? I think they’re not afraid to kind of wear their heart on their sleeve to a certain extent. It’s funny — I think the best holiday movies are not necessarily about Christmas or the holiday but about people coming together, or somebody doing something for someone else, or somebody somehow growing and finding something in themselves. It all comes back to like the Grinch, right? How the Grinch Stole Christmas. It’s the best when it works. And you have those movies you go to as a family to watch every year, and they become more and more meaningful because of the history that you share watching them together.

Yeah, absolutely. There’s a saying in Hollywood to never work with kids or animals, and yet you work with a lot of both in this movie.

CARDELLINI: This movie’s chock-full of both.

STILLER: Right? Or work with Ben Stiller, and you did that.

CARDELLINI: Yeah, I heard that. I was like, “Well, I guess I’ll try.”

STILLER: Kids, animals, and Stiller. Oh my god.

CARDELLINI: I mean, how lucky are we? We got to be on a farm with these kids and this incredible family. And the animals are actually part of their family as well — they all are named and loved and coming in and out. It’s unlike anything I’ve ever done. It was special to be there.

STILLER: It felt very organic. It is the kids and the animals — that’s the point of the movie. I think [director] David [Gordon Green] wanted to make it as hectic as possible and allow things to happen spontaneously, and we definitely had that. It felt like we were kind of far away from any sort of studio or somebody telling us how it should be or what to do. It’s just David’s world, and we’re gonna jump in.

I talked to somebody who worked with him a bunch of times before we did the movie, and she said, “Just jump into David’s world, and let go of your preconceptions ‘cause he’s gonna take you on a ride, and you’re just gonna just enjoy being in that atmosphere that he creates.” And that was the best advice because it’s just a fun, fun time with him.

Image via TIFF

There’s just so much great chemistry between all of you, and it feels very authentic. I feel like one of my favorite moments is when the kids hear the party music that Michael plays in the car because in an odd way, that’s sort of like their first moment of connection. Can you talk a little bit about how your character finds this common ground through humor and roasting each other, for lack of a better phrase? I found that really true to life and a really fun aspect of this.

STILLER: Yeah, I think Michael is so self-involved. I know people like this in life who are just so into their own thing that they’re not even aware that they’re being selfish or that they’re not being generous or they’re just not even opening themselves up to experiences that they could have. It was fun to kind of come up against Linda and her just really not, in any way, buying into that.

CARDELLINI: Yeah, he wasn’t charming her at first — I’ll tell you that.

STILLER: That’s always fun to play around with when you know somebody has her point of view. And she’s so great with comedy, too, so it was fun to know there was a reality there but also an understanding of where the humor was, too. I like that Michael incrementally gets better. In terms of our relationship, there’s a possibility there for something, but it’s kind of incremental, which felt very realistic to me.

CARDELLINI: And you don’t know exactly if it’s gonna happen or not.

I was rooting for it, personally, so I’m glad that we got little hints of it. It does balance the humor and real emotion so well. One moment I really liked was when Gretchen was talking about how some people can’t have biological children — I feel like that really adds a lot of dimension and depth to her character. I was wondering if you could talk about that particular moment a little bit because I feel like that’s something that isn’t talked a lot about but that a lot of people do struggle with, unfortunately.

CARDELLINI: Yeah, I do think a lot of people have struggled with it, and it is something that you come across with your friends and your family. When I read that part of the script, I realized who she was, really. Here’s this person who dedicates her life to a very tough job — and almost a thankless job, at times — where she is working on behalf of children, sometimes with people who don’t want to work with her. All she wants is for those children to be safe and loved, and so to be a person who works in that way — and then to know that’s something that’s going on inside of her — I think it knows who she is and what she does and why she does it.

And also why she wants him so badly to see the gift that he’s actually been given through this tragedy, which, let’s not lose sight of the fact that there is a real tragedy here and there are real feelings here. I think Gretchen really serves to sort of ground that in a way where the boys don’t have to always be talking about the parents and the sadness, but it’s there. She serves to sort of give the bottom of that story so the comedy can build from there.

Ben Stiller Got a Memorable Birthday Surprise on the ‘Nutcrackers’ Set
Image via Hulu

The comedy really shines through. I know the kids have mentioned they enjoyed filming the birds and the bees scene and the frozen pond scenes. They’re so good. I’m curious if there’s a day or two that you’ll always remember from this shoot.

STILLER: There are many days I will always remember. For me, probably catching the chicken. My knees will always remember it. My knees and joints. Yeah, shooting the birds and the bees scene with the kids because they were just coming up with this stuff — it was all improvised, so they were just coming up with this crazy stuff. Watching their dance at the end. We were shooting in the town of Wilmington in the middle of the night in this freezing cold in Ohio, and just watching them do that beautiful dance was really moving. And then I’ll always remember my birthday on the second or third day, and you were there.

CARDELLINI: Yeah, it was my first day.

STILLER: Yeah, and David surprised me with fireworks on my birthday in the field at the farm. And it was not just like a few bottle rockets — it was like Macy’s Day.

CARDELLINI: Yeah, it was better than Disneyland.

STILLER: It was crazy.

CARDELLINI: It was insane. They invited me like, “You should stay. There’s gonna be a surprise for Ben — it’s his birthday.” And I thought, “Oh, well I should stay for that — like a little cake.” And they’re like, “Yeah, there’s gonna be fireworks.” I thought, like, sparklers. Enormous.

STILLER: It was incredible.

CARDELLINI: It was so beautiful.

STILLER: Yeah, it was very moving to me because I’d never had fireworks for my birthday. I don’t know if you’ve ever…

CARDELLINI: No! God, no!

STILLER: I had only been on the movie for like a day, and I’m like, “Oh, this is amazing. Every movie should be like this.”

CARDELLINI: I looked around, and I saw all of the cast and crew and the family and Ben — everybody’s standing there looking up with so much joy and hope and awe, and I thought, “Wow, what a special event. What a special thing that we’re in this movie.” It was so cool to be there. I mean, I had just gotten there, but to celebrate you and your birthday.

STILLER: I mean, that’s David Gordon Green — his spirit creating this family for the movie that he really wanted to make. It felt very, very genuine and organic and beautiful.

Ben Stiller and Linda Cardellini on Jumping in Icy Water, Stepping in Poop, and Getting Pecked By Chickens Shooting ‘Nutcrackers’
Image via Hulu

What a beautiful surprise. And that leads into my next question. I love getting into the nitty-gritty behind-the-scenes details of everything, so I’m curious, what might people be surprised by when they learn about making this movie? What’s a little fact people wouldn’t realize when watching it?

CARDELLINI: That you went into that ice-cold pond.

STILLER: It was like 40 degrees when we shot that scene — the day we shot the scene where I fall in the pond. I knew it was winter, it was December, but sometimes winters are a little milder. I was like, “Maybe it’ll be like a 50-degree day or something.” And it was like 36 in the morning of it. I said, “We’re not gonna shoot that scene today, right?” But this was a little low-budget movie, and they couldn’t move things around. He was like, “No, no — don’t worry about it. We’ll have the stuntman do it if you can’t do it.” And then I was like, “Okay, I gotta do this. I’m not gonna let the stuntman do it.” And it got later in the day, and it got up to like 39, and then it got to 40, and then I was like, “All right, I just gotta do it.” So we did it, and it was bracing and refreshing and really fun. And then he had a little sauna tent that I went into afterward that you go up into your neck. That was really fun.

CARDELLINI: But from then on, nobody could complain because the star of the movie’s jumping in the ice-cold pond.

STILLER: If I hadn’t done it, I wouldn’t have been able to live it down the whole rest of the movie. And then people wouldn’t, I think, know that it’s the real house these kids really live in. These animals were not trained. These were all their real animals — the guinea pig, the cat…

CARDELLINI: Sometimes, they’d poop in a take.

STILLER: Yeah, and then I’d step in it. That’d be real poop that I have to step in. That’s real. There was a pizza box that the boy’s dad was going around grabbing Laddie’s poop for that scene. I realized I wasn’t doing The Crown or anything. The whole thing was very organic. It was all so much real stuff, and it was just a very special, unique experience.

CARDELLINI: It really was. We were watching you guys. We were standing in the pen with all the animals, and were watching you guys on the motorcycles, and I had these shiny things on my boot, and I looked down, and there was a chicken trying to peck my feet and eat whatever was on my boots, and it was just so funny. They were like, “It’s just a chicken — just stay in there, Linda.” And I was like, “Okay.”

STILLER: On film when they were filming?

CARDELINNI: [Nods and laughs]

STILLER: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which is great. There was always some camera going grabbing something. It’s like, “Oh, we’re gonna shoot the chicken. We’re gonna shoot Linda getting pecked by the chicken.” Or, “Boys are on the roof — shoot them on the roof.” It was that kind of thing.

I love that.

CARDELLINI: It’s kind of wild. It was fun.

That’s so fun. I have to say, Linda, you have such a busy season right now with No Good Deed coming out, Creature Commandos — all so exciting and all vastly different vibes. I’m curious if there’s a genre that you haven’t yet gotten to play in that you would really love to.

CARDELLINI: Oh, that’s a great question. I don’t know. I love my job, and I love being sort of a character actress. If you look at this character, Gretchen, she’s very down home. And then you look at Margo and No Good Deed, and it’s completely opposite. So that, to me, is the most fun about being an actor. But I haven’t really done too much period-piece stuff. I’d like to do some of that. I’d love to do a musical. There’s lots of stuff I’d like to do.

Nutcrackers is now streaming on Hulu.

Watch on Hulu

Mike, a workaholic executive, finds himself caring for his four orphaned nephews in rural Ohio. Initially a temporary arrangement, it evolves into a transformative experience for him, challenging his priorities and deepening family bonds.
 Release Date November 29, 2024 Director David Gordon Green Runtime 104 Minutes