Allison Janney and Andrew Rannells star in a hilarious and heartfelt look at losing a loved one
When Jim Rash wrote his latest film Miss You, Love You, about a personal assistant who is sent to help plan the funeral of his employer’s stepfather, the Academy Award-winning screenwriter did not have to go far for inspiration. “The very simple premise of the assistant coming was the funeral for my [own] father,” says Rash. “My sister had a work thing going on, so she brought her assistant, who no one knew — he didn’t know anyone in the room —and I thought that was such an interesting lens, to see [us] when we’re at our most vulnerable, and the roller coaster as we dealt with our emotions. That’s where I started.”
In the film, Allison Janney plays Diane, a woman who has lost her husband to Parkinson’s disease, while Andrew Rannells is Jamie, the assistant of Diane’s estranged son Tyler, who arrives in his stead. The project initially started as an experiment to write a play. “Then the pandemic hit and I was like, ‘Well, while we’re in our homes, I’ll turn it into a screenplay,’” says Rash. Then, when Rannells and Janney signed on, the actors decided to take a theatre-like approach to the project. “We were very fortunate that [Jim] gave us the time and the space to really rehearse it like a play,” says Rannells. “Allison and I spoke before we got started and we both had the same idea, that the only way to do this was to memorize the entire script like a play.”
For Janney, an entertainment industry veteran known for her award-winning roles in The West Wing and Mom, the project was a series of firsts. “This is the first time I’ve done something like this where we took all of January of 2024 to memorize the entire script, and when we showed up in Albuquerque, we hit the ground running, ready to play,” she says. The scope of the role was also something that excited Janney. “I’ve never been offered a role of this size and the scope of Diane’s journey is quite extraordinary,” she says. “I was a little intimidated but also really excited about the challenge of doing a role like this and getting to do it with Andrew. Everything about it was so appealing, because Jim’s writing is so perfect and there’s not any fat in there, anywhere.”
In her son’s assistant, Diane finds the opportune vehicle for expressing all her resentment and anger. “It was the perfect dynamic for her to just take out everything on him. And, as a result, they learned a lot about each other,” says Janney. Jamie, says Rash, is a character that he based on himself. “It’s fine. Writing is therapy,” deadpans Rash. “But you know, you pull from what you know, and then of course they elevate it and make it their own from there.” Rannells did not find it hard to relate to the character Rash had written for him. “I think that was a big part of why I was so attracted to it, because I recognized myself in Jamie and in Diane. They’re both people that feel like they can just do it alone. And of course that’s not the case,” he says.
“I certainly have gone through periods of my life where it feels easier to not share with people and you don’t want to be a burden, and then you find yourself opening up to a total stranger — someone next to you on a plane or a barber — and you’re crying in front of someone you’ve never met before.”
While Rannells could imagine being friends with his character, Janney believes Diane and Allison are not a match made in friendship heaven. “I feel like Diane wouldn’t like me,” she says. “Because I talk about feelings all the time — I think she wouldn’t want to be around me. I’m soft and mushy and she’s very controlling and very hard on herself, hard on other people. She’s prickly, very prickly, which makes her fun to play for me, because I get to be prickly, which it’s fun to be.” Indeed, the exercise felt cathartic for the actress. “What was fun in playing Diane, is getting to let some of my inner anger out at family members that I had in my mind who were very many different people at many different parts in the film.
The decision for Tyler (depicted by Rash’s friend Tyler Barnes in photographs) not to attend Diane’s husband’s funeral makes him come across as an unsympathetic character, but as the film investigates the reason for his absence, and the relationship between mother and son, perceptions may change. “Diane’s feeling agitated by the situation by which her son has chosen to put her in, on top of grief, on top of three years in an environment that she didn’t totally choose,” says Rash. “But when we learn the context of someone — in other words, when we get to hear just a miniature moment from their past that explains everything that they are, it allows them to be human and the empathy, sympathy, all that stuff bubbles up.”
Rash, perhaps best known for his role on Community and his screenplay for The Descendants — which won him and co-writer Nat Faxon the Academy Award in 2012 — recognizes that even the most tragic moments are accompanied by humour. “Your most vulnerable place is grief, but at the same time, there’s always this hovering desire to laugh, it could be something we feel has to be so serious, but all of a sudden something humorous happens,” he says. “The person who has left most likely would prefer that we’re laughing, enjoying and celebrating and all the things that we try to get back. And grief is not just the death of someone — it’s the loss of love, it’s the loss of a mother/son connection. It’s just a past we can’t get back to.”
Miss You, Love You, streaming on Crave