Seth Gordon on Cameron Diaz Comeback, Jamie Foxx Scare

Back in Action is headlined by Cameron Diaz’s comeback after 11 years away from acting, but Netflix’s most viewed weekend premiere in nearly three years is also Seth Gordon’s return to feature filmmaking. 

Gordon — who’s most known as the director behind hit comedies such as Four Christmases (2008), Horrible Bosses (2011) and Identity Thief (2013) — hasn’t made a feature film since 2017’s Baywatch, and while his four films have averaged a box office gross of nearly $183 million each, his absence coincides with the comedy genre’s steady decline at the box office and widespread disappearance from major studio development slates. Gordon doesn’t have the definitive answer for why comedy is no longer the dominant force it once was at multiplexes, but he speculates that it could be a result of the hectic political climate that’s been in effect since 2017.  

“[2017] was the time when comedy started to die down. I don’t know if there’s any relationship with that [administration] at all, but the mood of the country certainly shifted around then before Covid took it a step further,” Gordon tells The Hollywood Reporter. “So there’s a lot of us that are hoping for the pendulum to swing the other way. I’m holding my breath for that, certainly. We could use some stuff to laugh at, and it’s been a lot of superheroes and not enough comedy.”

Both before and after Baywatch, Gordon has quietly been a prolific pilot director and executive producer on a variety of notable television shows including The Goldbergs, Atypical, The Good Doctor, For All Mankind and The Night Agent. The success of Netflix’s Atypical and The Night Agent likely put the Chicago-area native in a favorable position to sell Back in Action, a spy action-comedy that was born out of Gordon’s original premise of how children would impact the espionage careers of Mr. and Mrs. Smith.

Gordon soon attached one of his Horrible Bosses stars, Jamie Foxx, in the role of Matt, a retired CIA operative turned family man. Foxx then took the initiative in order to cast the role of Emily, Matt’s partner in life and spycraft, by making the case to his former Annie (2014) co-star, Diaz, who retired following their 2014 collaboration to focus on motherhood.

“I was told that she wasn’t to be considered: ‘She’s fully retired. Don’t even think about it.’ But Jamie, who is friends with [Diaz] and has known her forever, had the first inkling of a possibility or an openness to reading something,” Gordon says. “They also share a manager, and the two of them got the script to her.”

Co-written by Gordon and Brendan O’Brien, Back in Action’s premise happened to overlap with Diaz’s 11-year hiatus from the screen, as Matt and Emily left the spy game once Emily discovered she was pregnant mid-mission. 15 years later, they’re drawn back in after utilizing their past skills to defend their daughter in what became a viral moment.

“It’s a really unexpected coincidence that the title and some of the themes and her character’s situation [as a retired spy turned mom] lined up with real life,” Gordon admits. “It’s almost as if Back in Action was meant to coax her out of retirement, but I swear it wasn’t. It’s just extraordinary timing and really good fortune and Jamie’s access, frankly.”

In April 2023, with two weeks remaining on the filming schedule, Gordon and co. had to shut down production due to a then-undefined emergency involving Foxx. The multi-talented performer publicly pulled back the curtain in last month’s stand-up special, What Happened Was…, revealing that he endured “a brain bleed that led to a stroke.” But at the time, Gordon only knew what the public knew, which was virtually nothing.

“They were, understandably, really private about whatever was going on. Of course, we guessed what was happening, but we were in the dark like everyone else,” Gordon shares. “There were a lot of crazy hypotheses floating around as you probably remember. So I tried to shut that out and just wait and not assume anything until I heard from his team and from Jamie himself.”

By the time Foxx recovered, the industry was in the midst of a double strike, and so Gordon had to wait patiently for the ability to reunite with Foxx and complete a critical section of the film’s first act in the suburbs.

“If we owed scattered little bits all over the film, I don’t know how that would’ve played out,” Gordon says. “But this was a missing 15-minute chunk, and we really needed it to even preview or screen the film properly. So we had to go back and do that, and hope that everything was going to be okay. And thank God it was.”

Below, during a recent conversation with THR, Gordon also discusses when he first knew that Diaz was “so back,” before looking ahead to his upcoming documentary about one of the four remaining pairs of ruby slippers from The Wizard of Oz. 

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The title, Back in Action, applies to Cameron’s career and the two main characters’ return to spycraft, but it’s also your first feature since 2017. Granted, there were two lost years in this industry, but were you just focused on launching show after show? I didn’t even realize how many notable shows you’ve helped launch (The Goldbergs, The Good Doctor, For All Mankind, The Night Agent). 

Yeah, there was definitely a stretch there where I was focused on pilots, and the business has been reeling for a while, especially on the comedy side. People have run away from comedy a little bit. Really great scripts then came around in TV, so I’d try to sell shows. But I’m always responding to interests and natural curiosity, and films take a long time to make. They just do.

Streamers like Netflix have helped pick up the slack with regard to comedy, but overall, why do you think the genre is not as dominant as it once was theatrically? 

God, you’d be able to answer that as well as I could. I don’t know if I should be on the record with this or not, but I feel like it coincided with Trump’s first time in the White House. [2017] was the time when comedy started to die down. I don’t know if there’s any relationship with that [administration] at all, but the mood of the country certainly shifted around then before Covid took it a step further. So there’s a lot of us that are hoping for the pendulum to swing the other way. I’m holding my breath for that, certainly. We could use some stuff to laugh at, and it’s been a lot of superheroes and not enough comedy.

Part of me can’t believe that we’re discussing Cameron Diaz’s comeback vehicle. I distinctly remember when she was introduced in The Mask, and the entire theater reacted as if she was already a movie star. So, how did you help convince her to end her extended sabbatical? 

I was told that she wasn’t to be considered: “She’s fully retired. Don’t even think about it.” But Jamie, who is friends with her and has known her forever, had the first inkling of a possibility or an openness to reading something. So he was working behind the scenes a little bit, and he didn’t want to get anybody’s hopes up or make promises for something that might not come through. They also share a manager, and the two of them got the script to her. Then we met and really hit it off. So it’s a really unexpected coincidence that the title and some of the themes and her character’s situation [as a retired spy turned mom] lined up with real life. It’s almost as if Back in Action was meant to coax her out of retirement, but I swear it wasn’t. It’s just extraordinary timing and really good fortune and Jamie’s access, frankly.

Yeah, the movie’s storyline parallels Cameron’s maternal-related retirement and comeback 11 years later. Two married spies retire to raise their family, only to be pulled back in 15 years later. Did rewrites of the script lean into that meta quality?

Not really. It was born out of a couple things. I went to a Dodgers game with my friend [and producer] Beau Bauman. I actually call it a Cubs game because that’s how I saw it [as a native of Evanston, Illinois]. I was riffing about this notion that came out of nowhere: “What if Jason Bourne had a kid? What would happen in his life?” And Beau was like, “Did that just occur to you right now? I think that’s a movie.” And then we were like, “What if it wasn’t Jason Bourne? What if it’s Mr. and Mrs. Smith and they had kids?” So we kept going back and forth about it, and it just felt like a really promising premise. Then Covid hit, and Beau knew that I always wanted to write something from scratch. I’d done some rewrites on things, but I wanted to create something from the ground up. So we worked on the outline a little bit, and it was partly an expression of being on ice as we all were during Covid. We wanted to get back on set and have this period of Covid come to an end, and some of that DNA is in the concept too. So we realized that there could be a meta quality to it, but we didn’t feel like we needed to lean any harder into it. It was already there. And how often do you hear that about development? It’s pretty rare.

Did Cameron hit the ground running once she got to set? Or did she need a minute to find her sea legs? 

Well, before she was even on set, she started training for the stunt sequences. So, in a way, she was already cruising, and one of the first scenes that was scheduled for her was that dramatic scene with Glenn Close in the kitchen. Mother and daughter go at each other, and she completely brought it. That’s really challenging material to do early in the schedule, and it was obvious that she’s a hundred percent still there. She’s still got it. We all looked at each other and were like, “Holy shit, she’s so good.” So we’re all just so glad she’s back.

Glenn Close, as Cameron’s character’s mother, was perfect casting. Did she join right after Cameron’s commitment? 

Yeah, it was pretty soon after. It was a scheduling dance above everything. She was one of the first, if not the first, person we went to; she’s perfect for it, obviously. We talked on Zoom and connected really well, but then it just became about scheduling because she had a pretty full schedule. We had to start by December 2022 in order for her to be able to do it, and we had to find that location [in London], so there was typical production mayhem. But she entered pretty early in the process, and just knowing that it might be her helped me clarify and solidify stuff. That’s what also led to creating the Nigel character. He was a very late addition to the script, and he was conceived completely for Jamie Demetriou. I loved him in Fleabag, and I don’t know what we would’ve done if we didn’t get him for something that was created with him in mind.

Apparently, Jamie Foxx was caught off guard by Cameron’s enthusiasm to do stunts. If she was participating, it meant that he couldn’t sit them out. Is that true? 

(Laughs.) That sounds like him, and yeah, there’s some truth to that. She brought so much intensity, and she always wanted to be the one who did it, not the stunt person. Of course, there were certain situations where we couldn’t let her do something, but she learned the choreography really well. Sometimes, when you’re cutting stuff together, you need to hide the actor and use the stunt person more, but the opposite was true here. So it put a little bit of pressure on Jamie. She’d done her homework and she was killing it, so he had to step it up too.

Jamie had quite a health scare during the filming of this movie, and thankfully, his recovery went so well that it’s now the subject of a stand-up special on Netflix. How far along were you when it happened?

It landed really late in our schedule after we had shot everything in London already. We had come to Atlanta to do three weeks of work, and a week in is when it happened. So we owed seven or eight days at that point, and it was just scary as hell. As he indicates in the special, they didn’t know exactly what happened. It’s a bit of a mystery what triggers those things, and while we know some of the symptoms, what really happens in there is not fully solved. So we were holding our breath for a long time, and by the time he was better, both strikes were happening. So it was a crazy process, and there were a lot of obstacles along the way.

But you ended up reconvening for some form of additional photography? 

We shot the days that we hadn’t finished originally. The suburbs stuff is the one area of the movie that got interrupted, so we just went back and finished all of that. If we owed scattered little bits all over the film, I don’t know how that would’ve played out. But this was a missing 15-minute chunk, and we really needed it to even preview or screen the film properly. So we had to go back and do that, and hope that everything was going to be okay. And thank God it was.

As you said, there was a period of uncertainty. During the early days of the initial assembly, were you pretty anxious that you might be looking at, God forbid, Jamie’s final performance?

I didn’t really let myself go there. I was hoping for the best, and I really had no information. We knew something was up, but they were, understandably, really private about whatever was going on. Of course, we guessed what was happening, but we were in the dark like everyone else. There were a lot of crazy hypotheses floating around as you probably remember. So I tried to shut that out and just wait and not assume anything until I heard from his team and from Jamie himself.

Cancelling the New York premiere was the right call given the harrowing circumstances in L.A. right now, but I’m glad you guys still got to walk down a carpet in Berlin last night. It would’ve been pretty disappointing if Cameron and Jamie didn’t get to mark the occasion after her break and his scare.

Yeah, that’s true, although that’s as much for pictures as anything else. They’ve both done that so many times. It’s just part of the perception.

It’s the mountaintop for the entire experience.

Yeah, you gotta do it.

Emily (Diaz) and Matt (Foxx) struggle to connect with their kids, and I read that you wrote this movie for your son. Were you feeling like these characters? Was this movie a means of connection for the two of you?

Actually, not really. He was a part of the process as I was creating the story, and I would run things by him, so we were connected through it. The disconnect in the family was based on witnessing my sister and my parents fight when I was kid. That’s what informed the conflict, and that’s why the central story arc is daughter-mother-grandmother. Those intergenerational misunderstandings felt like the right way to go. It was an organic and dynamic process as we were working on the script, and that’s just where it headed. But it would be misleading for me to say it was about me and my son.

There was a recent kerfuffle online as a bunch of creatives shot down a report that Netflix has writers write overly descriptive dialogue in case viewers are watching something passively (e.g. folding laundry, checking email). They all said they’ve never received such a note from Netflix. Is that foreign to you as well? 

I wasn’t told that. But there was actually a really cool part of the process where the filmmaker is invited to get really specific, if they want to, about what’s going to appear in the subtitles or not. It can be an automated process, but there are certain things that fall between the cracks, so you may want to call attention to stuff that plays visually. A really important part of modern filmmaking is thinking about that element because so many people watch that way. Last night in Berlin, we watched the English version with German subtitles, and because I’ve memorized the movie at this point, seeing what unexpected details they chose to call attention to and not was fascinating. So it’s an additional storytelling tool that you have to take advantage of at this point.

In a perfect world, what would you do next? 

Boy, I am deep in on a documentary that I’ve been working on for 15 years, so that partly answers your “where the hell have you been” question. (Laughs.) But it’s been completely fascinating, and I’ll be finishing that up. It’s about [The Wizard of Oz’s] ruby slippers. I know the guy that owned [one of the four remaining pairs worn by Judy Garland], and he toured around the country with them. Then they got stolen, and they were presumed gone for ten years until an FBI sting. It turned out these mafia guys were the ones that stole the ruby slippers because they’re worth so much, but then they couldn’t sell them. They couldn’t move the stolen product, and it’s just an amazing story. A couple weeks ago, they sold at an auction for $28 million. So this [former] struggling actor [Michael Shaw], who’s now in his eighties, has closure to this huge saga in his life as a result of how unexpectedly this all played out. So I think it’s going to make for a captivating doc.

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Back in Action is now streaming on Netflix.