Jason Bateman on auditioning with Jane Fonda for This is Where I Leave You: “She made me cry like a baby”

In This Is Where I Leave You—a film whose poster is basically indistinguishable from a GUESS Jeans ad I saw on Ossington last night—Tina Fey, Jason Bateman, Adam Driver, Corey Stoll and Jane Fonda play members of a, get this, dysfunctional family. They’re all forced to hang out under the same roof for a week, to honour the final wishes of their recently deceased dad. Hilarity (or an approximation of it) and some serious lesson-learning ensues, naturally.

Fey, Bateman, Driver, Stoll, Fonda, Connie Britton, Dax Shepard, Kathryn Hahn, Abigail Spencer, director Shawn Levy, producer Paula Weinstein and writer Jonathan Tropper packed out TIFF’s HSBC gallery for a jammed, double-decker press conference this morning. (It took moderator Richard Crouse about nine minutes to introduce everyone.) Fonda talked about auditioning—imagine! A two-time Oscar winner auditioning for a role!—opposite co-star Jason Bateman. “She made me cry like a baby,” Bateman said, “and that was pretty embarrassing.”

With so many funny people in a room, you’d expect things to get a bit chaotic. But aside from the minute or two when Shepard grabbed the mic and started hurling questions at the press gallery, everything seemed to orbit around veteran superstar Fonda. At one point, she was asked about working with younger actors. “I have no choice,” the 76-year-old snapped. “Most actors my age are dead.”