Directed by Marius Vaysberg, About Fate takes a genuine stab at Rom/Com with Margot Hayes, played by Emma Roberts and Griffin Reed, played by Thomas Mann.
With Christmas in her taillights and her sister’s, played by Britt Robertson, and New Year’s Eve wedding fast approaching, Margot has convinced herself that her boyfriend – the drop-dead-gorgeous (and narcissist supreme), Kip Prescott, played by Lewis Tan is about to pop the question.
No matter that they’ve only been together for three months. No matter that her reliably blunt mother, Judy, played by Cheryl Hines, who, like the rest of the family, has yet even to meet Kip – thinks Margot is simply setting herself up for disappointment, again. Yet she heads to dinner to meet her beau and is ready to say “Yes!” to the proposal.
But as fate would have it, at the same restaurant is where Griffin Reed is planning to propose to the woman of his dreams, the drop-dead-gorgeous nightmare, Clementine, played by Madelaine Petsch, online influencer and local model, that same night.
New Year’s Eve-Eve, the date of his overprotective mother, played by Wendie Malick, said, ‘I do,’ to Griffin’s dad.
Of course, things go anything but according to plan that evening. And with their respective dubious relationships going awry, it’s ultimately down to Margot and Griffin. Fate throws together two perfect strangers – and two perfect soulmates – to see what’s staring them in the face… Namely, each other.
“They felt right together,” says director Marius Vaysberg of the palpable big-screen chemistry between leads Emma Roberts and Thomas Mann in About Fate, which was filmed in and around Boston last summer over the course of 26-days, “There’s this simplicity and humanity about both of them that they connect in a way,” explains the director. “Because of the pandemic, it was hard for the three of us to meet [before filming], so it was a risk that I had to take. But it felt like it was going to work. And it sure as hell clicked as soon as the three of us met in Boston.”
The secret to a brilliant romantic comedy is simple enough, according to screenwriter Tiffany Paulsen, here marking her first collaboration with Marius Vaysberg and her third with Emma Roberts. “You have to want the couple to kiss,” she says with a gracious tip of the hat to her About Fate director for bringing that last element to the screen. “Marius is genuinely one of the loveliest people I’ve ever worked with,” says Paulsen. “He brings a unique warmth, humor and openness that I’ve never experienced with a director. He absolutely knows what he’s doing and what he wants but has no ego in being open to ideas… I loved working with Marius.”
