LORRAINE CWELICH: To call this film’s conclusion a surprise ending is the understatement of the year.

STANLEY TUCCI: Yes, most people are very surprised and I’m glad. They really, really like it. It was quite a chance that Neil took in writing it.

CWELICH: Without revealing too much, why did Neil choose this story’s particular structure?

TUCCI: Because it’s more complicated and darker.

CWELICH: What statement is Neil making about the issues of control, domination, and possessiveness between men and women?

TUCCI: That all the different pieces of relationships that we see in them exist in all of us, and in all our relationships, in one form or another.

CWELICH: At various times in his career, Neil’s been labeled a misogynist and a misanthrope. We kind of see both those aspects here. Your character at times belittles her, but he has issues himself.

TUCCI: There are misogynistic qualities to him, but you get the sense that he might be the same way with a man—not on a sexual level, but an emotional level. It’s a question of, you always hurt the one you love.

CWELICH: Exactly; Neil is finding fault with both genders.

TUCCI: Without question. You could easily flip the roles.

CWELICH: What appealed to you about playing this character?

TUCCI: I liked the darkness of it, the humor, the ambiguity. I liked that it was so intimate and we were going to shoot it in a very short period of time. I love doing that. And of course that it was Neil, whom I’d never worked with before, and that we could do it in New York.

CWELICH: How did you personally relate to your character?

TUCCI: The complexity of human relationships we’ve all experienced, whether they’re healthy or unhealthy. Sometimes we all make relationships more complicated than they necessarily have to be.

CWELICH: Did Neil tinker with the dialogue as he shot or did you improv?

TUCCI: No improv, but we started cutting and shaping stuff from the get-go, when we did a two-day table read. We probably cut 10 pages at the table read alone. Then as we were rehearsing in the space for a short period of time and we blocked everything out, we’d shoot a scene and then he’d say, “Maybe we don’t need these two pages.” Or, “Maybe this piece of dialogue would be better served in the previous scene.” Or, “Let’s take this monologue and just use these lines in it.” So it was always changing and a work in progress.

CWELICH: You’ve previously said you were hesitant to take on a dark role such as The Lovely Bones. In this film, you relish the darker aspects.

TUCCI: Compared to this, The Lovely Bones was truly horrifying. That was the hardest thing ever. This was kind of playful in a way. Both parties are playing. In The Lovely Bones, it was much more cut and dried who was good and who was bad. The goal with that film was to make him as real as possible and embody that evil. That’s what made it challenging and interesting. You want to shy away from it because it is so disturbing, but it was a beautifully written script that felt like that story had to be told. With this piece, as you work with it, you realize it’s necessary because it shows the complexity of relationship in an often funny way.