{"id":330090,"date":"2026-03-05T10:17:14","date_gmt":"2026-03-05T10:17:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/330090\/"},"modified":"2026-03-05T10:17:14","modified_gmt":"2026-03-05T10:17:14","slug":"my-idea-of-an-exciting-night-is-dinner-with-my-wife-a-documentary-then-asleep-by-9-30pm-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/330090\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018My idea of an exciting night is dinner with my wife, a documentary, then asleep by 9.30pm\u2019 \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cIf you talk to anyone I know, they will tell you that I ask a million questions but that I rarely talk about myself,\u201d Dave Franco<\/a> says. \u201cI\u2019m a very curious person. I know everything about myself. So I\u2019m bored. I want to hear about you.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s nice of him to say that. But I don\u2019t think we\u2019re allowed to chat much about me. I am not the cheekily handsome star of Bad Neighbours, Now You See Me and The Studio. I am not the husband of Alison Brie<\/a> or the brother of James Franco<\/a>.<\/p>\n

As it happens, Dave Franco is not bad at chatting about himself. He is sparky, self-deprecating and full of good stories. He also knows how to talk up this week\u2019s project. He is currently promoting his voice role as Titus, the insect king, in Pixar<\/a>\u2019s amusing animation Hoppers. <\/p>\n

The premise has a plucky young woman transfer her consciousness into that of a robot beaver by way of saving a local habitat from environmental annihilation. As so often with Pixar films, grown-up themes are wound in with the zaniness.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s classic Pixar, where they have these messages in their films that feel very potent but they don\u2019t cram them down your throat,\u201d he says. \u201cThey approach it in a very nuanced, creative way. They present everything, and then you can take what you want from it. But it\u2019s also this beautiful story about these two different sides of that issue. There is this message about stepping into someone else\u2019s shoes, even if you hate that person.\u201d<\/p>\n

You get the sense that Franco could jaw on all night. Chiselled of feature, dark of aspect, he bears traces of a classic American melting pot: Portuguese, Swedish and Russian Jewish ancestry. It says here that he and James, a busy Hollywood polymath, were raised by mum, a children\u2019s author, and, dad, a businessman, in Palo Alto, California. That\u2019s Silicon Valley. Right? All juice bars and tech billionaires?<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a much different place when I was growing up there,\u201d he says. \u201cIt was beautiful. It was in the middle of nature. There were a lot of mom-and-pop stores. It felt understated and kind of low key in a way. But then, over the years, it became the centre of Silicon Valley. And northern California is basically all tech now, in a similar way that LA is all entertainment.\u201d<\/p>\n

By the time Dave left school, James, who\u2019s about seven years older, had courted cult success in the TV show Freaks and Geeks and rubbed against proper stardom as Harry Osborne in Sam Raimi<\/a>\u2019s Spider-Man. <\/p>\n

[\u00a0Sam Raimi: \u2018I was very lucky that Stephen King gave The Evil Dead a good word. It got noticed and I was off\u2019Opens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

The younger Franco initially studied creative writing at the University of Southern California, but he dropped out when, shortly before graduation, he secured a decent role in an independent picture.<\/p>\n

\u201cI remember telling my teachers, \u2018Please, let me finish this final month from afar,\u2019\u201d he says. \u201cI\u2019m just a month away. And they said, \u2018I\u2019m sorry, you have to be here in person.\u2019 So that made me drop out of USC to shoot in Winnipeg.\u201d<\/p>\n

He laughs as he describes a \u201cphysically demanding\u201d shoot that led to him dislocating a shoulder. But he was enjoying the experience until he wasn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe then find out that they had no money left,\u201d he says, laughing. \u201cThey hadn\u2019t been paying the crew for weeks. They send us all home. We\u2019re waiting for the call for them to say, \u2018We spent millions of dollars on this movie. Let\u2019s come back and finish these final two weeks.\u2019 But we never went back.\u201d<\/p>\n

He filed it all under Experience.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey eventually finished the final pieces of the movie with an entirely different cast,\u201d he says. \u201cI don\u2019t know how they did it, but they put the movie together. So it\u2019s out there. It\u2019s living in the world. The worst movie you will ever see. Ha ha!\u201d<\/p>\n

No enormous breakthrough occurred. Franco, rather, worked his way slowly up the ladder to become a reliable \u2013 and undeniably handsome \u2013 leading man. He was great in 21 Jump Street. He had fun in the conjuring heist Now You See Me. Franco acknowledges the assistance of his brother in the early stages.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was so helpful on so many levels, just to have someone who had gone through it,\u201d he says. \u201cI could ask him any question and likely he had already experienced whatever I\u2019m asking him about. He helped me get my first manager, which is not a small thing. That is not something I take for granted.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"TheThe Studio: Seth Rogen, Dave Franco and Ike Barinholtz. Photograph: Apple TV <\/p>\n

Even before meeting him, you feel fairly confident that the version of \u201cDave Franco\u201d he plays in The Studio, Seth Rogen<\/a>\u2019s popular Hollywood satire on Apple TV, isn\u2019t a mere variation on the real thing. Esquire described the character \u201ca hard-partying, high-rolling troublemaker\u201d. One can certainly imagine real-life models for such a loudmouth, but the amiable Franco, married to Alison Brie \u2013 clever star of Mad Men and Community \u2013 for the past nine years, does not sound like one of them.<\/p>\n

\u201cI appreciate you saying that,\u201d he says, smiling. \u201cI\u2019m a pretty low-key person these days. I do not have a drug habit. My idea of an exciting night these days is going to a 5pm dinner with my wife, coming home, getting in bed and watching a documentary and being asleep by 9.30pm. <\/p>\n

\u201cSo \u2018Dave Franco\u2019 in The Studio is going to Vegas, and he\u2019s taking a cocktail of alcohol, weed, mushrooms and cocaine. That was a big departure for me, even though I technically am playing myself. <\/p>\n

\u201cBut it was so fun. In a similar way to this character in Hoppers, I get to just be totally unhinged, bring my energy up to an \u201811\u2019 and just have the time of my life.\u201d<\/p>\n

So how accurate is The Studio about Hollywood? Are the executives so vacuous and venal? Is everyone so conscious about watching their own back?<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are certain things in the show that I think people might think are farce that are actually very true,\u201d he says. \u201cSome people in the industry have told me that they actually have difficulty watching the show because it stresses them out too much. It\u2019s a little too close to home. But I don\u2019t know. I feel very lucky along my journey in this business, as I\u2019ve been surrounded by really good people who have taken care of me.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"DaveDave Franco and Alison Brie. Photograph: Hubert Vestil\/SXSW Conference & Festivals\/Getty <\/p>\n

One of those people is now Brie. They married in 2017 but have been dating since as long ago as 2012. That counts as an eternity in Hollywood. I sense no reticence from Franco in rabbiting about his life and career, but he did seem to be having a better time when he and Brie were promoting their recent horror film Together<\/a>. There was a lot of amiable banter between them.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis whole experience is a lot easier when you have someone to bounce off of \u2013 especially my wife, who obviously is the person I\u2019m closest to in this world, the person I love more than anyone in this world,\u201d he says. \u201cBut she happens to also be a very outgoing, gregarious, funny person, and so, when I\u2019m doing these press junkets with her, it ends up being a good time. We could just be silly together and lean on each other.\u201d<\/p>\n

Franco looks to have struck a neat balance in his career. He emerged through comedy, but he has also found strong supporting roles in acclaimed dramas such as If Beale Street Could Talk and Love Lies Bleeding. The very fact that he was cast in The Studio confirms his presence in the Hollywood dramatis personae. People know who he is and what he does. One of the things he does now is direct. The Rental, his 2020 horror, went down well with the critics.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Together review: Alison Brie and Dave Franco star in stomach-churning masterclass in eughOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

\u201cMy first ever job was at a tiny video store,\u201d he tells me. \u201cI was 14 at the time, and it was actually illegal for me to be working there at that age. So they basically paid me by allowing me to take home as many movies as I wanted. And so that was kind of my film school.\u201d<\/p>\n

The experience of directing made him appreciate the different pressures of the performing art.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe greatest experiences I have had have been directing,\u201d he says. \u201cThey have been such fulfilling times in my life. But you put so much of yourself into it. So it\u2019s actually amazing now to step on set just as an actor. \u2018Oh, I just have one job. I\u2019m going to kill this for you. Let\u2019s go!\u2019 Ha ha!\u201d<\/p>\n

Hoppers is in cinemas from Friday, March 6th<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cIf you talk to anyone I know, they will tell you that I ask a million questions but…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":330091,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[66988,24591,93,631,61,60,69218,28020,51474,6924],"class_list":["post-330090","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-alison-brie","tag-dave-franco","tag-entertainment","tag-for-you","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-james-franco","tag-pixar","tag-sam-raimi","tag-seth-rogen"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/330090","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=330090"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/330090\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/330091"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=330090"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=330090"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=330090"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}