Film is full of mismatched pairs. It's usually the nerdy guy with the girl of his dreams who's way out of his league, usually played by the usual rotating pairs of actors. You Kill Me is less conventional mismatched pair. Tea Leoni plays a Jersey girl who falls for a hitman in hiding. The actress doesn't find it so far fetched.
Tea Leoni Talks You Kill Me
"I would say in this context that Frank is a perfect choice for Laurel," she said. "So he's a drunk Polish hitman from Buffalo. The little things. I think that one of the things that attracted me to this script actually, there wasn't that gratuitous monologue on page 45 where we find out why and how damaged Laurel is. And that this guy could come in and simply speak the absolute frank truth and how maybe inexplicably sexy that is. We've been trying to tell guys how sexy that is for centuries. They don't seem to get it. And in that way, I think Frank was a great choice. I mean, I wouldn't really want my daughter to date him but that's just me."
In the dark comedy, Laurel keeps up with the killers' one-liners about death and murder. "I loved it. She's drier than I am a little bit I think. She reminds me more of David [Duchovny]. My husband has more of that sense of humor. I don't really see Laurel getting into pratfalls, either doing them or appreciating them. Her loss. I think pratfalls are hysterical. But I did think she was funny."
You Kill Me
That's not to say she's fearless. "Actually, I think she has a lot of fear. I think she's more awake to her fears maybe than most. So maybe she's courageous in a sense but you could also say she was stupid or you could say she was exhausted. I don't know but I expect that she recognized this guy, cloaked in alcoholism and murder."
Behind the scenes, Leoni was just caught up with her costar's royal moniker. "The interesting thing about Sir Ben is that first of all, I didn't know that you were supposed to do the Sir and then the first name, so when I first had lunch with him, I thought I was supposed to call him Sir Kingsley which frankly I thought was very sexy. Because Sir Ben, that's sort of funny. What happens if your name's Chuck? You're going to be Sir Chuck? Whatever. I thought it was pretty sexy and I insisted on calling him Sir Ben, long after he almost demanded that I not, because how often are you going to get to make out with a knight?"
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