Atlanta resident Janelle Monae loves playing murder mystery games. She is serious about it.
“I play more murder mystery games than watch the films,” said Monae in a recent interview with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution at the Four Seasons Hotel in Midtown. “I play with my family. I host murder mystery parties. This is part of my life!”
So she was gobsmacked when Rian Johnson, writer and director of the 2019 hit murder mystery film “Knives Out,” gave her the juicy role of Andi Brand, tech billionaire entrepreneur Miles Bron’s (Ed Norton) jilted collaborator in the sequel “Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery,” out on Netflix Dec. 23.
The film has already earned Monae a Critics Choice Award nomination for best supporting actress. Besides Monae and Norton, the cast includes the return of Daniel Craig as the genius detective Benoit Blanc with the oddly syrupy Southern accent and newcomers such as Kathryn Hahn as a Senate candidate, Kate Hudson as a former supermodel and Leslie Odom Jr. as Bron’s chief scientist.
“It was a triple upon triple blessing,” Monae said.
Johnson, who loves the work of mystery writer Agatha Christie, set the new film on Bron’s private island in Greece and shot the exteriors in the summer of 2021 on Spetses, an actual island in Greece.
“It was signaled from the top to the audience this wasn’t turning the crank on the first one again,” said Johnson, who joined Monae for the interview. “This is a whole new deal. We traded in the browns of a cozy New England autumn for the blues and yellows of a Greece in the summer. It does draw from the destination whodunits of ‘Death on the Nile,’ “Evil Under the Sun,’ ‘The Last of Sheila.’ There’s a rich tradition of the sand and sun murder mystery.”
Despite the eccentricities of Norton’s billionaire character, he isn’t far off the mark of actual billionaires such as Elon Musk, Richard Branson or Jeff Bezos. “Every time I’d be writing and thinking, ‘Am I going too far? Should I tamp this down?’ I’d see the news and realize I have a lot of headroom here,” Johnson said.
He also chose to set the film at the start of the pandemic to reflect the here and now. “This genre is good at building a microcosm of society,” he said. That includes having suspects that lean into social media influencer tropes. Hudson’s flighty Birdie Jay gets in trouble on social media by comparing herself to Harriet Tubman. Dave Bautista’s brawny Duke Cody is seen doing a live stream on Twitch defending his love of women’s breasts.
Credit: Cr: John Wilson/NETFLIX
Credit: Cr: John Wilson/NETFLIX
“Agatha Christie wrote period pieces that reflected her time and place,” Johnson said. “I was writing this during the pandemic, a global event we all went through. But I also wanted to treat it with a light touch. These are not serious movies.”
There are images of Hahn’s character Claire Debella being interviewed over Zoom by Jake Tapper of CNN. And Birdie parties maskless but excuses it by saying everyone there is “in my pod.” Even when Birdie arrives at the dock in Greece, she wears a stylish (and useless) mesh mask while Hahn’s properly masked Claire comically avoids Birdie’s attempt to hug her.
In the film’s setup, Norton’s Bron gathers his so-called friends and Andi, his former business partner, for a weekend of fun and games as a break from the pandemic. (He also apparently has a magic throat spray in May of 2020 that immediately immunizes his guests.) Once they arrive, they find out Bron is hosting a fake murder mystery game where he himself is supposed to die.
“He is so unaware,” Monae said. “Ignorance is bliss. We all have complicated present and past relationships with him. You don’t know what is happening on his island.”
Her character, she admits, is “super mysterious. When I read the script, I was blown away by the twists and what my character represents in the film. I was able to play comedy, drama and action within this character.”
Credit: Cr: John Wilson/NETFLIX
Credit: Cr: John Wilson/NETFLIX
One thing is for sure: The butler didn’t do it. Why? Bron sent all his staff home, relying entirely on largely unseen robots to clean and serve food and drink. But we don’t see much food because chaos ensues before dinner is even served.
“This is probably why everyone is so drunk,” Johnson said. “They end up munching on tamales. While writing the script, I thought it would be fun showing robot dogs serving food, but that was too much.”
And playing off the idiocy of celebrity culture, Johnson created a Jared Leto-branded Kombucha tea (with 9% alcohol!) and Jeremy Renner hot sauce, which plays a surprising role in the movie. He also got permission from the actors to use their names. “I’m fans of both of those guys and they both have a good sense of humor,” Johnson said. “They were both good with it.”
Credit: Cr. John Wilson/Netflix © 2022.
Credit: Cr. John Wilson/Netflix © 2022.
IF YOU WATCH
“Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery,” available Dec. 23 to Netflix subscribers
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