Doug Liman recently spoke about what it was like to reunite with Matt Damon for his latest heist comedy film, The Instigators, after working together on the 2002 film The Bourne Identity. Damon plays Rory, while his co-star Casey Affleck plays Cobby.
In a recent interview with Entertainment Weekly, Doug Liman revealed that Matt Damon always felt “like a family or brother to him,” adding that he didn’t know the Affleck brothers, referring to Casey Affleck and Ben Affleck, who are longtime friends of Damon. He explained that when he joined The Instigators, he felt like he was meeting the “in-laws” and the rest of Damon’s family, which he found to be a crazy experience, but “in the best way.”
The director further explained that everyone involved in the project contributed to the story and that they constantly challenged each other, “trying to make the best possible movie.” Liman recalled a specific moment when they were all taking turns editing the script and explained how the script was passed back and forth between the co-stars, explaining that there was a scene where Affleck had a long monologue and Damon would edit it to make it “shorter” and then “we would give it to Casey and Casey would make the monologue longer.”
The Road House director said he realized he was getting into some “family trouble” that had nothing to do with the film, and since he had known the Last Duel actor for a long time, he approached him first, “I said, ‘Matt, don’t touch this scene anymore.'”
He said that whatever he and Casey were doing was because of their “history,” adding that he told the Oppenheimer actor to let his co-star “do what he wants to do.” Doug Liman then joked that because of this, he felt like a “marriage counselor” to them, adding that it was like when you “meet the in-laws as an outsider,” you can see the deep, long-standing friendship between them.
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The director added that fans can expect to see some “good things” in the film, such as Matt Damon and Casey Affleck’s “chemistry,” which he said you “can’t make it up, and they really do love each other.”
Meanwhile, Doug Liman’s The Instigators is now available to stream on Apple TV+. It’s the story of Rory (Damon) and Coby (Affleck), a father and a former convict who come together to pull off a heist on a corrupt politician. However, when their robbery goes wrong, they convince Rory’s therapist (Hong Chau) to join them on their escape from the city, where they must both put their differences aside and “work together to escape capture — or worse.”