In Nuked, which premiered at Tribeca Film Festival, a group of college friends and their partners reunite for Jack and Gill’s 40th birthday party. On a lavish estate, the friends take part in a cannabis-infused dinner party. As inhibitions fall, an alert on everyone’s phones warns them of an impending nuclear missile strike. The friends hide in an attempt to survive and ride out this horror, but tensions rise as truths about each couple come to light.

Nuked is the feature directorial debut of Deena Kashper, who also penned the screenplay, with star Justin Bartha serving as an executive producer. Nuked features a stacked cast that also includes Pitch Perfect‘s Anna Camp, Lucy Punch, George Young, Tawny Newsome, Ignacio Serricchio, Maulik Pancholy, Stephen Guarino, and Natasha Leggero. Nuked leans into the hilarity of old friends reconnecting on a weed-induced night with the unexpected high stakes of an impending missile adding tension to the night, offering a unique character-driven exploration of relationships with COVID-19 as a definite influence.

Screen Rant interviewed the cast of Nuked, including Justin Bartha (National Treasure), Maulik Pancholy, George Young, and Ignacio Serricchio. Bartha explained how the pandemic was a major part of what made the story so enticing, while Pancholy praised his co-star Stephen Guarino. Serricchio revealed that the cast was a major draw, and Young shared how keeping track of how high each character was in the movie was important for continuity and character arcs.

Nuked Explores Relationships In The Heat Of Disaster

Bartha became an executive producer because of the connection he felt to the story. He explained how, after Kashper sent him the script, in the midst of the pandemic, the two would discuss not only the story, but relationships and how they were impacted by the pandemic. This shifting of relationships in the face of death is the heart of not only the comedy, but the pathos of Nuked as well.

Justin Bartha: We need more comedies out there, and we’re pretty excited that we think we made a pretty good one. So Deena [Kashper] sent me this script during COVID times. I dunno if you guys remember that. We ended up, because everything was shut down and it was the only thing that we really had to do, I would randomly just stay up and we would talk about the script and inevitably talk about our relationships through the lens of the script.

Every night during Covid, my wife goes to bed early and is a very clean liver, literally has a clean liver and I am, or was, the opposite. I’m trying now. So I would spend so much time just late at night, maybe smoking a little of the weed mentioned in that movie a lot. And just talking with Deena. It became kind of like therapy sessions of just what we were all going through and how to navigate relationships and marriage during the time of cholera, if you will.

It was just really a heart opener and we just really opened up and started to infuse all of our thoughts and feelings about what was going on into the script even more to make it super personal and reflect what everyone that we were talking to was going through. I know a lot of, I don’t know about you guys, but everyone I talked to either went through a divorce, a breakup, they opened up their relationship, some people got back together with people. It was just this seismic shift of adult relationships during that time. I think that was what was initially what’s super exciting about the project.

It was just funny and it didn’t take itself too seriously in a time where we were all kind of just worried about dying and taking ourselves way too seriously. That was the jumping off point. And then when we started to incorporate all of these amazing actors, everyone brought their own experience to the script and the movie, and we ended up with just this amazing mix of all these different points of views of what it was like to try to navigate relationships during a disaster.

Ignacio, can you tell me a little bit about your character and what you really felt a connection to him with when you first read the script or when you began really embodying the character?

Ignacio Serricchio: I wish I had a very, an answer like he did. All profound and everything. I think I was the last one cast, right? To be honest, I was attracted to Justin, I was attracted to the cast honestly. When you get a cast like this, really great things can happen. That excited me and that made me want do the film. The character is very unlike me and alcoholic, he got into drugs, and he was a rock star. Also I had really long hair at the time, so I was like, this is perfect. That’s pretty much it.

George, how do you find the right comedic tone and timing, especially with a comedy like this really leans into a thriller concept?

George Young: [Joking] It was pretty clear that I didn’t kind of lost the tempo. I was the sort of the buzzkill. But no, the writing is there. The writing was there and Deena, our director and writer, encouraged us to play with it and made sure we were all very calm. It’s an ensemble cast, so you got to play with each other and just enjoy it. When I saw the cast as well, like Ignacio was saying, the cast was actually, for me, it was a bit intimidating.

It was all these people who are like, you have Tawny Newsome, who’s an improvs master, and then Lucy Punch, Ignacio, Justin, Anna [Camp]. You have all these people who excel in comedy. I get this direct offer with a briefcase full of cash and I’m thinking, is this just going to be a money grab? What else can I bring? I’m just taking at this point

Ignacio Serricchio: The fake accent.

George Young: The fake accent, which I have to stick with contractually. Seriously, it was intimidated coming in. I’m like sh-t. Well, they haven’t actually seen me on tape. It’s an offer Deena’s talking to whatever and what are they doing?

A Key Part Of Nuked’s Continuity Was Keeping Track Of How High Their Characters Were

Bartha’s character learns a dark secret that shifts his perspective on his wife and their marriage. He explained how he approached the comedy of a character having to put on a happy face while struggling with feelings of anger and hurt before the tension inevitably erupts.

Justin Bartha: What’s tough about that is that everybody is having a fun time. All the characters and the actors are having such a fun time. Jack has a secret that only he and the audience knows. So I think to try to not take the buzz of the fun away is the hardest balance. But then you have, we like to say that this is an adult stoner comedy. So what was fun is all the actors get to play multiple realities at the same time where, first you have the kind of performative thing of seeing old friends for the first time in a while, and then you fold in drugs and alcohol and they have to kind of start to navigate that.

And then you fold in this big surprise of a nuke that’s headed towards us. So I think very soon after my character has this surprise, this secret, everybody has this balancing act of multiple levels of fear and loathing that are going on. So I think there’s just 20 minutes or so where Jack is kind of sideswiped and has to be on his own and then everybody joins along.

George Young: And we all had to really monitor that. How messed up are we at this point to that continuity of, okay, here we’ve taken X amount of stuff, like how messed up are we here? Then we might go back a few levels.

Ignacio Serricchio: I feel like I had it the easiest, to be honest. I think my character’s just constantly high. So I had it the easiest out of you guys. You guys had to really figure out how high are we and how not to open.

Justin Bartha: I don’t know if you’d have it the easiest because you’re kind of the cleanest dude out of all of. You’re the one guy that has never really drank or done drugs. So it’s interesting, to try to figure out how to act like that and fail miserably.

Ignacio, can you talk to me about working with Deena and how she stands out from other directors you’ve worked with before?

Ignacio Serricchio: I also, was attracted to the idea of being a part of somebody’s first new big project. That’s motivating to me. So being able to be witness, have a front row seat to somebody doing their first big project and collaborating. Deena I think did a really great job with eight people who had different opinions and big personalities. I think we did a pretty good job of containing our egos for the most part. She did a great job and I think we all just wanted her and the movie to succeed. She did a wonderful, wonderful job given the limited time. I mean, we had a storm one day and had to cancel shooting.

George Young: That lost day. That lost day.

Ignacio Serricchio: When [Justin] doesn’t hear his name for 30 seconds, you lose him. But Justin was, just a great leader. He just a great leader. No, no. He found the best restaurants in Bentonville.

George Young: Deena was very experienced in the comedy space.

Why It Takes 2 Near Death Experiences To Push One Character Outside His Comfort Zone

The missile in Nuked is the second life-threatening experience that Pancholy’s character goes through in the movie. He explained why it took two brushes with mortality to convince his character to go outside his comfort zone while the other characters in the movie seem, at least initially, to be deeply impacted by this singular event.

Maulik Pancholy: That’s a really good question. I think that speaks to the intensity of this particular moment that Deena has crafted so beautifully in the movie. It’s one thing to sort of feel like, I think, and I don’t want to give away details here, but with his past medical history, I feel like there’s a thing of like, Okay, there’s this impending thing, but I might have some control over it versus like, Oh my gosh, there’s this thing that’s coming at us that we have no control over at all and it could literally mean the end.

I think that’s the big wake up call for him. I think he’s very happy in his relationship, but it’s the first time the question of what does the length of the relationship mean for the future of it, that really comes to light. So I think that the two things combined are sort of a change.

George Young: And Maulik will remember, Caitlin, remember from earlier in our interview that Justin said about Covid being that they were chatting about the formation of this film. Covid was that sort of reset button for a lot of people. People changing careers, people doing that. And this, the nuclear, that scare that we have in the movie kind of presses that reset button. Everyone’s reassessing everyone’s lives. Kind of what Maulik was alluding to there.

Maulik, is there a moment where one of your castmates really helped you as a scene partner to elevate your own performance?

Maulik Pancholy: A hundred percent. First of all, I mean I feel like you can feel this energy here, but we all were so tight, or at least we pretended to be on set. But I feel like we created such a community and so we were all gunning for each other. We all had big emotional moments, big comedic moments. But I would give a special shout out to Stephen Guarino who plays my other half in the movie.

In particular, there’s a moment towards the end of the movie on the sofa where we think this is it and we’re reminiscing about all the things that are meaningful in our lives. I feel like the two of us played really well off of each other. You can’t act alone and I think that’s a big shout out to Stephen for just bringing so much to that moment because I think it’s really funny and really sweet.

George, your character when we first meet him seems to have kind of the perfect life. How did you want to show the cracks in that before the dark secrets are actually revealed?

George Young: The cracks start to appear as he starts to get gradually more and more messed up and the pressure of the new baby with Lucy Punch’s character get to him. You see very early on he talks to Jack, Justin’s character, about how it’s getting to him, this new family dynamic when before it was so great. So sort of fast paced, him and Lucy, just having the time of their lives and now this new life is changing their lives. So it’s like real life, my wife just said ominously, so I am going to be single soon in real life as well. That’s also news. But yeah, so just the character’s cracks reveal through the drugs. That’s what drugs do.

About Nuked

A group of friends gets together for a cannabis-infused, technology-free, dinner party only to learn a bomb is headed right for them.

Check out our other Nuked interview with director Deena Kashper, and stars Anna Camp, Tawny Newsome, Lucy Punch, and Natasha Leggero.