Don't Look Up

How would humanity react to a scientific finding that reveals the world will end in a mere six months? For the universe of Adam McKay’s latest comedy, Don’t Look Up, the answer is by burying their heads in the sand (the sand being social media, a tech billionaire’s wild plans, and chirpy daytime talk shows). In the film, Michigan grad student Kate Dibiasky (Jennifer Lawrence) and her professor, Dr. Randall Mindy (Leonardo DiCaprio), discover a comet heading straight for earth that is certain to wipe out civilization. The pair, along with Dr. Oglethorpe (Rob Morgan) first attempt to get the President (Meryl Streep) to take action to no avail, so they bring their message to the media and the general public. 

The plot could have lent itself well to an apocalyptic drama, one all too believable, but in the hands of comedic master Adam McKay, its humor buffers the overwhelming parallelism to the current cultural climate in America. The writer-director is well versed in making crises more palatable. McKay has garnered five Academy Award nominations for his films Vice, a scathing portrayal of former Vice President Dick Cheney, and The Big Short, which tackles the housing bubble and financial collapse of 2008. With Don’t Look Up, the event may be fictional, but the themes of the film became even more impactful over the course of 2020. “The big, strange thing was that I had written the script before the pandemic,” says McKay. “I’d written this comedy, we were scouting it, and boom, the pandemic hit. That was probably the strangest six months of my life, seeing beat after beat in the movie come true.”

Here, McKay looks back at casting the film that reminds us just how good he is at making us laugh through the pain. 

“We realized we had one of these movies that they used to make in the 60s and 70s, the most famous one being It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, that had 25 different stars in it,” recalls McKay. “I remember when I was a kid, it was A Bridge Too Far, where there were so many stars in it, they had to do little boxes across the movie theater poster. So this started to feel like it was becoming one of those kinds of adventures.”

Mindy and Dibiasky are the outsiders to Washington D.C., and to the glitzy media world. Lawrence was the ideal casting choice to McKay for the character of Kate. “Kate Dibiasky is a character who has this wonderful, hilarious anger. She’s just spitting fire throughout the movie and she’s hilarious while doing it. There was really only one person who could’ve played her,” says McKay.

DiCaprio’s Dr. Randall Mindy becomes the media darling during the press storm around the impending comet, though the world is more interested in his charming midwestern personality and looks than the apocalypse he cares so deeply about. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen Leo play a character like this. Dr. Randall Mindy is a low-level professor of astronomy. He’s not the kind of guy you’re going to see on Nova, or hanging out with Neil deGrasse Tyson,” McKay jokes about his sheepish hero.

Though President Orlean may not incite the respect and admiration from her peers that one expects of a president, McKay notes the actress portraying Orlean has a different air. “When Meryl Streep walks on a set, everyone’s demeanor changes slightly. It’s like shooting hoops with your buddies, and you’re just goofing around, and then suddenly Michael Jordan walks on the court. Everyone just tries a little harder.” Orlean’s son Jason is portrayed by an actor McKay knew would bring some improv magic to the set. Speaking on Jonah Hill, McKay says, “I knew if I had him in this role, I’d have someone in there throwing fastballs and taking swings. And boy, he did not disappoint.”

Once McKay had his core cast, he kept the ball rolling to try to land his favorite talent. “I think a lot of actors would have no problem saying that Mark Rylance might be the best actor on the planet,” McKay says of the actor who plays tech bigwig Peter Isherwell. “Every day I would just marvel at the choices he was making." Next he needed to cast his morning show hosts. “Cate Blanchett was the actress where we’re like, Now we’re just getting greedy. She’s absolutely one of my favorite actors from the past 25 years. In my opinion, she can do anything. She’s hilarious. She’s emotionally moving. She’s in the fricking Lord of the Rings movies, for cripes’ sake.” McKay took another big swing to cast Blanchett’s co-star and co-anchor, Jack Bremmer: “We then started taking extra leaps, like going to Tyler Perry, who basically runs the state of Georgia. You’re like, There’s no way he’s going to do this. And we’re like, You know what? Let’s try. And Tyler Perry’s like, I’m in.”

“Then Kevin Messick, our producer, said, ‘Do we try Ariana Grande?’ And I said, ‘That’s insane, but let’s try it.’ And then we were just off to the races.” Grande took on the role of mega-pop star Riley Bina. “It made sense to have the biggest pop star in the world play the biggest pop star in the world,” says McKay. “The thing people tend to forget is that Ariana Grande is also a professional actress. We got her on set for her first scene with Leo and Jen, and she's improvising lines. I knew she'd nail the song, but I didn't know she could improvise in scenes.”

To play Riley Bina’s boyfriend, composer Nick Britell suggested rapper Kid Cudi. Francine Maisler, the casting director for the film, reminded McKay that Cudi, whose real name is Scott Mescudi, is not just a great rapper, but also a phenomenal actor with roles in titles like Westworld and We Are Who We Are. “Kid Cudi and Ariana were just really funny together, too,” says McKay. “Right away, they were playing off each other and improvising. I knew it was going to be good, but it turned out to be 10 times better than I thought it would be.”

The phenom cast is rounded out with another young bright star, one who already has an Academy Award nomination to his name. Timothée Chalamet was cast to play Yule, a skater punk from Illinois. “Yule’s super earnest, wears his heart on his sleeve, he’s got a little bit of a view of the truth,” says McKay. “Timothée read it and he was like, ‘I love it. I feel like one little thing’s missing.’ He and I just bounced it back and forth and ended up discovering the reason for his character being in the movie, which I won’t say. I don’t want to give it away, but that discovery really made the ending of the movie.” With this star-studded lineup, McKay has perfectly cast the end of the world.