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Return To Me's premise is somewhat absurd. At least, it is by today's standards. But back in 2000, there was something truly hygge about the whole thing. The film follows Minnie Driver who is the recipient of a heart transplant and eventually falls for the widowed husband (David Duchovny) of the donor. A film with such a premise should've tanked but it ended up making a decent amount of money at the box office, earned some critical praise, and built a cult following over time.
During an interview with Vulture, Minnie Driver, who is never afraid to voice her opinion, revealed her true feelings about making the Bonnie Hunt-written/directed film. As well as spilled the T about working with her sometimes controversial co-star, David Duchovny.
Inside Minnie Driver's Relationship With David Duchovny
The first thing Minnie Driver remembers about making Return To Me in 2000 was the blisteringly hot summer in Chicago. Despite the shooting location being less than comfortable, Driver had an absolute blast in the city.
"I had a bike, and I’d ride all over the city. I made more friends shooting that movie — people who were my neighbors, people in the park, at the zoo. Which I’d visit every day because I fell in love with the apes," Minnie Driver explained during her interview with Vulture. "I’d go hang out on my days off. I swear to God, in the great ape house, the keeper there would let me go in and hang out. The great apes would spit water on me and the chimpanzees would scream at me. I loved it."
While hanging out with the apes, who are heavily featured in Return To Me, was a highlight, Driver went on to praise her co-star, David Duchovny.
Even though Duchovny has a complicated relationship with his most famous co-star, it appears that he and Minnie Driver got along famously. Seemingly far smoother than whatever happened between her and her Good Will Hunting co-star, Matt Damon.
"David Duchovny is one of the smartest — he’s exactly as you would imagine. He’s as funny and smart as he is handsome and charming," Driver continued during her interview with Vulture. "And he’d just had his little baby, West, and Tea [Leoni] brought the baby to the set, and they hung out. He’s just the great best friend you’d want to hang out with on a set, to shoot the breeze with."
Inside Minnie Driver's Relationship With Return To Me Director Bonnie Hunt
Part of the reason why Minnie Driver had such a positive experiencing making Return To Me in 2000 was the fact that she was working with a female director. Throughout her career, Driver has only had the chance to work with a couple of female directors, including the director of The Governess, Sandra Goldbacher.
"I’d barely worked with any women in that capacity. It was completely different, and it was amazing," Minnie Driver revealed to Vulture during an interview. "Bonnie is the triple threat: a great actress, a great writer, a great director. Plus, she’s an epic improviser; anything that wasn’t working, if you didn’t have an idea that worked, she’d have one. And she’s from Chicago. There was so much ease about what I imagine was a very pressured situation for her. It was literally her baby. A big movie, ish, at the time — MGM — and it was a big deal. I loved watching her enjoy it. Even though I know she got very stressed at times like all directors do, she knew what the film was that she wanted to make."
Driver went on to reveal that much of Hunt's stress came from some major curveballs thrown at her during the production. This included a moment when an Italian hotel manager suddenly refused to let the film crew come in to shoot at the very last minute.
"Everything’s been sorted out, and we get there, and the manager just decides that he doesn’t want a film crew traipsing through this hotel. He’s refusing to open the freight elevator to let us onto the rooftop. I remember everyone in the foyer of this hotel, and I heard Bonnie behind me, virtually in tears if not in tears. This is nightmarish."
In order to solve this problem, Driver was instructed by David Duchovny to go over to the hotel manager and essentially explain the plot of the movie. She was supposed to seduce him with the beauty and romance of the film. And it worked...
"I managed to tell the guy the whole story. I tell the whole story like I was at The Moth. And I’m not joking, by the end of the story, he’s in tears, and he’s like, 'Amore!' And he literally takes a big key chain out and goes and unlocks the elevator, and we go and shoot the movie."
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