Interview (Written): Nancy Meyers

A Vulture interview with writer-director Nancy Meyers, whose movies include Baby Boom, Father of the Bride, Something’s Gotta Give, It’s Complicated, and The Intern.

In The Intern, De Niro plays a 70-year-old widower who goes to work as a lowly intern at a fashion website run by a 30-ish Anne Hathaway. Where did the idea come from?

I actually had the idea when we were shooting It’s Complicated. I was driving to work one day, and for the life of me I don’t know why, but I got this idea: What if an older person took a job as an intern? It just made me laugh. And then it became, well, who’s the guy? And then who would he work for? A woman just seemed like a logical good idea — never for a second did I ever want it to be romantic. And when I started thinking about interns, I started thinking about guys, about what’s happened to men.

What do you mean, what’s happened to men?

Well, the difference between this man and the millennials. I’ve seen it in my own life. I see guys in their mid-30s with their little boys, and they’re wearing the exact same outfit. They’ll wear like the same T-shirt, same kind of shorts, same sneakers, and I just remember when men didn’t dress like their 4-year-olds.

When my kids were growing up, they had Take Your Daughter to Work Day. It didn’t cross my mind that there was no Take Your Son to Work Day, because it was expected the men will grow up and go to work. I think my generation, brought up by Oprah Winfrey, really got behind girls in a great way, and I think the boys … the line in the movie is “Well, maybe they didn’t get left behind, but you know, there’s definitely some kind of gap.” I’m not talking about all men, of course. But I don’t think the Peter Pan quality is something women want in their men, that’s for sure. Like I said in my movie, men have gone from men to boys and women have gone from girls to women. It’s a problem. I can only imagine that that discrepancy and that dynamic must feel more than a little off if you are in the thick of it. And Hollywood has done its part in the last ten years of selling that guy as a leading man. And he’s not. The childish man who can still get the interesting, smart women? And people say I write aspirational.

Is that why you didn’t write a romance this time around?

I didn’t want to write another romance. I never wanted to write another scene in a restaurant between a man and a woman. I think David Mamet said, “There’s always the scene in a restaurant where the woman gets to talk.” I just didn’t have it in me to write one more of those things. And I felt sort of done with the romantic story. It just wasn’t what I was feeling. And I felt I’d covered that subject pretty well: to fall in love, and out of love, and be divorced, be Cameron Diaz’s age, or be Meryl Streep’s age. So I thought, A relationship between a man and a woman that’s not romantic, this is interesting. I’ve never done that. I think the age difference kind of really keeps the romance out of it. But I guess really, to be honest with you, if she were 60 or he was 35, I think they’d be wonderful together. But I think they’re both too cool and smart to ever have thought about it.

For the rest of the interview, go here.