It all comes back to Japanese Reality TV. At least that’s what Jeremy O. Harris, the ultimate multi-hyphenate, says is the secret sauce to Erupcja, the Pete Ohs film starring Charli xcx that just premiered at TIFF. “I forced Pete to watch The Boyfriend, and through watching it, he came up with one of my favorite editing devices in the movie that is a part of the secret sauce of how the story is told,” Harris tells me on a Zoom call. “Yes, there’s French new wave references in our movie, and there’s Polish cinema references that are all very great for the Letterboxd Criterion Collection crowd, but also for the dumb f****t that is watching Netflix brain rot, there’s something for them in there too.”
Erupcja is an early offering from Harris’s boundary-defying production company bb2, which is launching right here on the digital pages of i-D. With Josh Godfrey, a seasoned film and TV producer, Harris is creating a production company that will span film, TV, theater, and more mediums to allow a new generation of talents to work as he does: Across genre, across format, and across taste level.
Beyond Charli’s movie star turn, the company will also produce The Wives, a cinematic take on the Real Housewives multiverse starring Jennifer Lawrence. On the occasion of the company’s launch, we had an expansive conversation about film, art, finding your audiences and giving up on the algorithm, and, of course, Real Housewives. If you have a pitch for bb2, you can find them on Instagram here.
Steff Yotka: How did you meet and how has your relationship has developed into this company?
Josh Godfrey: Jeremy and Arvand [Jeremy’s fiancé] sat with us at the Indie Spirits [in 2020], and Jeremy and I very quickly bonded over who we thought should be winning and who should not be. We both have very strong opinions. Someone once said to me that there’s a strong bond when people love the same thing, but there’s even stronger bond when people dislike the same thing. Our love of the film and awards environment was obvious, but then we quickly learned that we share a very intense love for pop culture just in general.
Then, when Jeremy was in lockdown in London, we were talking a lot when major pop culture things happened. It just started from there. Shortly after, I think it was around Thanksgiving of 2022 or so, when he was like, “I’m thinking about starting a company. What do you think? Would you like to team up?” I had been in my film company for I think nine years at that point and made some great movies, like Manchester by the Sea and Suspiria and more, and I was very intrigued by the idea. It was a slow unravel [from that company], and then we started to kind of beta test our company by taking some meetings at Cannes.
Jeremy O. Harris: Concurrently with meeting Josh, I had just gotten my first major HBO deal, and a part of that deal was that I got to create this fund to support new writers and new writing. I was getting really a lot of joy from being able to do that, and as that deal was ending and I was starting to think about how I wanted to move in the world. I realized that the thing that had brought me the most joy was not just being able to put my own work up, which gives me immense joy, but wanting to make sure that so many people that we loved were on the bench waiting for their opportunity to have their turn.
I could complain about the other people that are in the game with me, or I could just invite more people into that game. Josh having that same sensibility of looking at people who are not making the normative thing or the easiest thing made him the perfect person to want to team up with.
Josh: One of the things that was very appealing to me was the fact that it was not just film and TV, but also theater, which is a great love of mine as well. … Obviously we know that there’s so much crossover. So many artists get pulled from the theater to write a film or a TV show and just being with them from the beginning of that journey and making sure they still have the ability to go back to theater when they want to do it, instead of getting firmly stuck in the film and TV world.
What are some of the things that you look for in a work or in a talent, whether it’s a director, a writer, an actor that you’re stoked about, and then maybe what are some of the things that you hate?
Jeremy: I personally love people who are, in everything they’re doing, raising their fists and challenging something. It could be: “Why does a rom-com have to exist like this?” or “Why haven’t we seen any movies that work from the POV of this type of person or this type of character?” Those are the things that get me really going, like, “Oh, you’re trying to solve a puzzle that’s really hard to solve, or you’re trying to paint a picture that not everyone can see immediately.” What’s underneath it? I think that abstraction is the thing I’m drawn to in visual art, experimentation is what I’m drawn to in music. I think that the same thing is true in film and TV.
The things I really hate are things that feel too easy. Anything that feels too easy, a plug and play feels so unattractive to me. Someone who’s like, “I’ve read that horror is really in right now. Why don’t we do a horror movie with this person who’s on the biggest TV show and the horror movie will look just like these other three horror movies that were popular 10 years ago or 10 minutes ago. And let’s do the big announcement and have the movie come out in the exact same way that everything else has come out.” That really sort of depresses me because it’s like, we’re at the forefront of AI, and if AI is already just recycling all of our ideas in the simplest ways, then why would I be drawn to the recycled idea?
Where are you finding your talents or your people or where are you looking that other people aren’t?
Jeremy: From the very start, I was thinking a lot about one of my favorite movies, Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters by Paul Schrader. When you look at the production of that movie, it’s all of the guys that were around him at the time, like Scorsese, Coppola. There’s a really famous picture of all of these guys sitting at a table in the ’70s. I think Spielberg’s there, I think Coppola’s there, Scorsese, Schrader. There was this real sort of like art film scene that was happening where these white guys were supporting each other in a very intense and specific way and lifting each other up. We saw it again in comedy in the sort of Judd Apatow camp.
Josh and I really dive deep into the community around me of the people that I think have some of the biggest brains who maybe haven’t had the opportunity as quickly as I did to have the big break. Why don’t I use my big break to open the window or the doors to the rest of the world? One of the people that we’re working with a lot is literally my old assistant, Raffi Donatich, who has a new movie at TIFF, which we’re very excited about. We have two projects we’re developing with her. One of my best friends from undergrad, Erica J. Simpson, is making something that’s right in the middle of our docket.
Probably our loudest project to date, The Wives, is made by Michael Breslin and Patrick Foley who I went to grad school with. Michael was literally my roommate, and wrote a play with Patrick that I helped produce right after grad school that was a Pulitzer Prize finalist. In our nascent moments, we’re literally looking at the people that we have dinner with, that we drink with, that we are in community with and saying, “How can we all be of service to each other?”
Joshua: One of our plays that’s about to go up at Studio Seaview right now, Prince Faggot, that’s a play that Jeremy had been developing with the writer Jordan Tannahill for years. He’s been pushing that boulder up the hill for years. Even when I came on board, when we started bb2, there were a lot of nos, there were a lot of closed doors. Most of the doors, 95% of the doors were closed because people just did not know what to make of the play and a lot of people couldn’t get past the title. When the show went up, it was a huge hit, critically sold out, waiting lists and everyone’s like, “Oh, that’s what that is.”
Everyone wants the path of least resistance, which I understand. Our business is in a really intense moment right now. But you never know what’s going to capture the zeitgeist. Prince Faggot, I think, is a perfect example of Jeremy seeing something on the page and seeing something in an artist and helping make it the best version of what that can be.
Your approach sounds like a company based on real community—rather than just calling something a “brand.” The best art was actually made because the same people kept going to the same bar and having these great conversations. That’s literally the history of art up until the internet basically.
Jeremy: Literally the story of going to a bar and having the same conversations is how Erupcja happened. Me and Pete [the director, writer, and producer] were talking about what his next movie should be at the bar across the street from my house—a really annoying bar called Clandestino. [Laughs.] It was the only bar open, because it was like 3:00 a.m. Charli walked in and was like, “Oh, Jeremy, what’s up?” I’m like, “Oh, Charli, what’s up? By the way, meet my friend Pete, he’s a filmmaker. Pete, Charli’s thinking about making movies. You guys could talk about how you make your movies.” And three months later we were on set in Poland in Warsaw making a movie. Old friends, new friends, acquaintances, and good drinks sort of got us all there. The idea that one of the biggest pop stars in the world is in a film that we produced it with Forever Holiday as well, is amazing.
Joshua: To your point, Steff, art is so subjective. I love that subjectivity. It may sound masochistic, but even when I was producing movies in the past, I would look at the bad reviews as much as I would look at the good reviews if they were there. Obviously, Letterboxd’s existence gives us that full range no matter what. You never know who the source is on the other end of it, but I kind of got a little bit of a thrill reading the one star review just as much as I read the five star reviews, because it’s such an important reminder that you’re never going to please everybody ever, ever, ever. Why would you want to? Some of our greatest films or plays have been extremely polarizing or were completely trashed when they first came out and are looked back on and reconsidered as masterpieces.
Jeremy: We put together films, we put together films, stories, plays, and TV shows with people that we think are the most fun companions at a dinner party. If I’m telling you right now that this is the person I personally would love to have dinner with and hear their ideas, I can’t be alone in that. I’m on TikTok, I’m on YouTube, I’m on all the things as much as everyone else, so I think that if something excites me, there is an audience that will also be excited by it because I’m an excitable audience member and Josh is as well. That’s what makes me really excited about what we do, is that oftentimes we will have a project that feels so niche that there could not possibly be an audience and there is one.
How do you feel like you are going to find your audiences and get your work in front of them?
Jeremy: It’s in the fabric of the work we’re doing already. That reach-out to an audience is there if you’re looking. There’s a version of us doing announcing our company is in a place that doesn’t look like i-D, but the reason we’re doing it in i-D is because we want to say to young people: “Hey guys, we’re here. We’re a home for you. Come hang out.” That that is something we plan on doing throughout the sort of distribution of all of our projects.
The only way I know that that is a thing that can work is because of Slave Play. I modeled so much of how I think about who audiences are and what things are for what audience is by the pure nature of just thinking about the fact that a lot of people did not think that there would be an audience for a play called Slave Play. It was alienating for Black people, it was alienating for white people, it’s not outwardly queer. It’s none of the things that would immediately build an audience. And yet through a lot of very specific targeting and radical invitation to say, “Hey, I know you’re from the art world and you’ve never seen a play before, but one of my inspirations was these three paintings. Will you please come check it out and see if you see that there?” It became a hotspot for a lot of different communities.
I’m really excited to see everything that you put out, but my last question is, if we’re making a movie of this call, which Real Housewife would play you?
Jeremy: Josh, you have to do the casting. Although I do know who my favorite housewife is, and I will be sad if you don’t say that that’s who I am.
Josh: Okay, okay. I think for Jeremy, it would probably be someone like, it would be a hybrid of Luanne and Sonia.
Jeremy: You’re giving me New York Housewives, okay, that is a microaggression. That’s fine. Let it be that.
Josh: But also a little bit of Kenya.
Jeremy: Got it, okay. Heard. Now I see how you see. … I don’t like the New York people. Well, I’ll say he’s Kim Zolciak, okay?
Josh: No. I’m not messy like that. By the way, fun fact, you know what’s so funny that you say Kim Zolciak? We have the same birthday. … I can’t get off this Zoom without rejecting his choice for me. And I figured out who my choice for me is. It’s Carole Radziwill; she has these moments and bursts of anger, and I definitely carry that.
Jeremy: I relate to most of the Housewives in Beverly Hills. The one I like the most is Camille Grammer. I think she has a bad edit. I love her. But I have the same birthday as Andy Cohen.
Josh: Oh, you do? That makes sense.
This interview has been edited and condensed.