Miles Teller on Returning to Rom-Coms for ‘Eternity’: “Happy That I Was Given the Opportunity Again”
Miles Teller, Elizabeth Olsen and Callum Turner get their rom-com on for new A24 film Eternity, which follows a woman who, in the afterlife, must choose to spend forever with her longtime husband or her first love, who died young and waited decades for her. “It might start a few fights, like, ‘You would choose…
Miles Teller, Elizabeth Olsen and Callum Turner get their rom-com on for new A24 film Eternity, which follows a woman who, in the afterlife, must choose to spend forever with her longtime husband or her first love, who died young and waited decades for her.
“It might start a few fights, like, ‘You would choose me in eternity, right?’ ‘Oh right, right, of course,” Teller joked at the Los Angeles premiere on Wednesday of couples seeing the movie. The film debuted at TIFF and has screened at festivals this fall, as the star added he’s observed that “people branch off and you can tell that they’re asking these questions that we’re all going to be faced with; it makes people, in a wonderful way, think about loved ones or friends or family members, anyone who has passed away that they hope to be reunited with. I think dying is a tough thing to talk about, even though everybody thinks about it, and this way you get to watch a really entertaining version of it for two hours.”
Teller — who plays Olsen’s husband of 65 years, who returns to his younger body in the afterlife — was drawn to the story as a “really tender-hearted piece, and that’s generally the stuff that I am attracted to.” It also marks his return to the rom-com genre, after early films in his career, including That Awkward Moment and Two Night Stand (both in 2014) and the more rom-dram leaning The Spectacular Now (2013).
“I was happy that I was given the opportunity again,” he told The Hollywood Reporter of his rom-com return. “I think most actors are pretty multifaceted — they just get put in a lane maybe early on and I just have a wide range of interests, so I feel lucky that I’ve been able to kind of weave in and out. But this movie is just kind of life-affirming and to me those are the best projects.”
Olsen, in contrast, is taking on her first rom-com with the project, as she joked, “If I were to do a romantic comedy, it made the most sense for me to do one as a 90-year-old,” like Teller, her character dies in old age and appears as her younger self in the afterlife. “That was a really amazing opportunity to get to have.”
She pointed to Shirley MacLaine films like The Apartment and Irma la Douce as inspirations, and said after her first rom-com experience, “The truth is I want to do all of the genres, I really want to do all of them. I’m enjoying that this was a part of it. I’d love to do [another] one as like a 65-year-old.”
Eternity, directed by David Freyne and co-starring Da’Vine Joy Randolph and John Early, hits theaters Nov. 26.
