A film NOT about men with guns, but about women in suburbia

Robyn Butler is one half of the creative team behind ABC’s The Librarians and Upper Middle Bogan. Her husband, Wayne Hope, is the other half. The two have teamed up again in their feature film, Now Add Honey, a comedy-drama about a seemingly normal family whose lives take a different turn when a popstar relative, the titular “Honey”, shows up.

Butler stars as the main character, Caroline Morgan, a woman battling with everyday issues — her older daughter’s teenage angst, her temperamental sisters, and her philandering husband.

Butler sat down with RendezView to answer some questions about the film and the motivations behind it.

Has anyone ever told you that you look like Tina Fey?

You know, a little bit, and I’ll take that compliment (laughs).

Now Add Honey has some truly funny scenes. One of the most memorable being where your character, Caroline, has a mini rant about how women get “unattractive” as they get older while men become more attractive and get the younger woman. Can you tell me more about that?

I think it’s the crux of the movie in a sense. It’s certainly Caroline’s dilemma. Part of the problem for Caroline is that everybody else imposes that on her. Everybody else is constantly making comments about her being old and unattractive, and her husband demonstrates that by leaving her. But the point of the movie is that all those things are an external judgment. I’ve watched male news readers and men on TV, like George Clooney — they can be as wrinkly as they like, and the leads in shows. The older the man gets the younger the female co-host gets. I just think it’s crazy. And what I really love about our film is that it’s empowering and says “Nah! No! We choose not to be irrelevant because we’re getting older. We choose to stay relevant and claim our self-esteem.”

You had an amazing cast — Lucy Durack, Hamish Blake, Portia de Rossi amongst them. As the writer of the film, did you have these actors in mind when you created the characters?

Only Hamish. I wrote the part specifically for Hamish because I knew I wanted to write about a lot of women and girls but I knew I needed to anchor a male voice in there that men would relate to and women would relate to as well. I wanted men to see this film. I didn’t want it to be exclusive to women, and I knew Hamish just ticks the box so well. And he is one of the funniest people on the planet.

Is he funny in real life?

So funny! He never stops being funny. I remember after the first day or two on set with him, Portia (de Rossi) just turned to me and went “Is he always like this?” He is so switched on, and that’s just the way he is. And he is the sweetest, nicest person as well. So he was the only one I had in my mind. Everyone else I had a version of in my head and fortunately every single actor became the version in my head.

You starred, produced and wrote this film, and your husband (Wayne Hope) is the director. At one stage, this movie would have been all-consuming. How did you juggle it all?

Yeah, we’ve made a lot of television in a similar way so we’re quite used to doing that now. We partition quite well. Wayne sits in the edit and I’ll start writing something new. It does become your whole life. There is no other way around it and I’m really grateful to be married in that instance. If my focus was this movie and my husband wasn’t doing it with me, he would probably leave me, going “You are the most boring person I’ve ever met.” Thank God we’re both boring together. We’re both skilled in different areas so we complement each other well and somehow we may it work. We have to switch off at a certain point because we have two girls. They require a life outside of movies being made and we need to just have dinner and talk about their lives and what’s happening.

Unless they follow in your footsteps?

Well, one of them might already be doing it a little bit, I have to say!

We do need more women in film, so it’s a good thing! Stats show that between 2009-2014, in Australia, women accounted for 15% directors, 32% producers, 23% writers, and 28% protagonists. Did you purposefully set out to create this film about strong, empowered women, or did this come about organically from the story?

It’s a bit of both. I wanted to tell the story about a woman ageing and a girl being sexualised and self-esteem and all those women’s issues, but it’s organic in the sense that’s just the way I see the world. Everything I create — the Librarians, Upper Middle Bogan — it all has more women than men in it, because that’s the way the world is, and I don’t see the world any differently. I’m really lucky that I have a partner I create everything with who sees the world like that too and he doesn’t baulk. I had several decision makers along the way that said “This is probably not a cinematic story because it’s about women in suburbia. Do we care?” Yeah, actually, we care. I think there are many writers out there wanting to get these stories told, but there are a lot of people — including women, not just male decision makers — who go “Well, I’m used to seeing men with guns in deserts”. We’ve got quite a long road to travel down but I am driving that first truck out.

You’ve done a bit of directing, but do you plan on doing more in the future?

I just don’t have the brain for the directing. I’d love to see more women directing, but for me if I can produce and write, that’s the way I’m going to get my stories told. I get very confused with left/right camera angles. For me, directing is not what makes me happiest — it makes me a bit stressed.

Speaking of directing, you and Wayne remind me a bit of Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt, in that they have just filmed a movie (By The Sea) together which Angelina directed, wrote, produced and starred in while Brad co-produced and co-starred. Did you and Wayne ever get annoyed or fed up with each other while working on this project,?

No, it’s funny, I know it’s really hard for people to understand, but we’re very, very good at communicating, so if we get annoyed at each other, we just defuse it really quickly. If ever we blow up about something or disagree about something, I’ll just take him aside and say ‘I don’t like the way that just happened’ and he’ll say how he feels and it’s just gone. We just don’t tend to get irritated.

You wrote an article for RendezView a little while back, which told of your battle with anxiety. You mentioned that 20 years ago, mental illness wasn’t something that people talked about, but nowadays more media personalities and celebrities are coming out and talking about their own battle with anxiety or depression. Does that help you now, hearing that other people are being more outspoken about the subject?

Yeah, it really does. There’s such a community now of thought and discussion and care. You do feel so vulnerable when you create things and I just wanted to talk about that vulnerability. It shouldn’t be something that is hidden and not talked about. It’s really great that we can talk about it.

And it’s good for everyday people to see that successful people can have these issues too.

Yes, it’s that idea of construction — everything we see on Instagram and Facebook, everybody looks perfect, and they’ve got these fantastic houses, when in fact we’re all ducks paddling madly under the water. So it’s really important to say, “Yes, I am successful, and I have demons.”

Now Add Honey is in cinemas now.