I wanted to be an actor growing up," she re-
calls. "All throughout middle school, I was
adapting books and forcing everyone I knew
to be in plays -- and losing friends because of
it." But Meriwether's creativity was inspired
not by a need to perform, but by wanting to
live inside the worlds of the books she was
reading. As is true of most screenwriters, she
had a complete, 360-degree view of each
scene. Transitioning from acting to writing
was inevitable. She just needed a push in the
right direction.
laughs. "So I just started writing a play."
tapped out several plays while tending to an
up-and-coming career in film and television.
She wrote a pilot for Fox called Sluts in 2007,
which caught the attention of Ivan Reit-
man's production company, The Montecito
Picture Company. Given the bluntness of her
show's title, they thought she might be in-
trigued by a romantic comedy they were de-
veloping called Fuck Buddies.
Kutcher) attempt to add a sexual dimension
to their otherwise platonic relationship with-
out falling in love. Explains Meriwether, "In
When Harry Met Sally, it was, `Can men and
women just be friends?' In our movie, it's,
`Can men and women have sex without
bringing in relationship mishegoss?'"
ect was "low priority" at Montecito, wrote
with relative freedom for about four or five
months. As is customary for Meriwether, the
initial draft was funny but, structurally
speaking, a complete mess. "This is the first
movie I've written, so I don't know exactly
what my process is yet," she says. "When I
write for the theater, it's all over the place at
first. That's just how my mind works. I think
I get a lot more excited about writing jokes
and characters and whatever pops into my
mind than about crafting a perfect story."
tured the entire screenplay. "We were doing
a lot of drafts to get the two leads cast," Meri-
wether says. This required Meriwether to get
into the heads of both of her leads and write
fully fleshed out characters who are clear
feel like I do have those feelings where I'll do
a pass where I'm really in one character's
head and then step back and do another pass
and get into another character's head and
have to adjust for that character," she says.
duo of Portman and Kutcher -- both of
whom have produced before (Portman's an
executive producer on No Strings Attached),
and therefore had ideas about how to shape
their characters. "[Natalie] is one of the
smartest people I've ever met, which doesn't
seem fair because she's also I think the most
beautiful person I've ever met as well," Meri-
wether says. "She was incredibly supportive
and also incredibly helpful. She was basically,
as she should be, defending her character
and making sure we didn't compromise her
character's story." She also gives Kutcher high
marks as a collaborator. "He's incredibly
smart about producing," she says. "I feel like
I really got lucky. They were both genuinely
smart and helpful about the script and mak-
ing sure we were making the movie they
wanted to make."
acters, who, given all the attention paid to
the protagonists, weren't quite "popping" as
much as they should. "We realized that these
other side characters in the movie weren't
developed at all and we realized how impor-
tant they were," she says. "That was a lot fun
going back and reworking the side characters
while we were auditioning people and tai-
loring the characters for those actors. There's
a guy in the movie who plays a gay room-
mate of Natalie's; he definitely wasn't in the
first draft of the movie. Ivan had just seen
him on CHELSEA LATELY. He wasn't even re-
ally an actor, but Ivan was like, `I really want
him in the movie,' so I created this character
for him."
while working alongside Reitman. "He really
is a legend and I was so honored to work
with him," she says. "In the moments where
I had the most amount of work or was grip-
ing about having to turn something in last
minute, he'd be like, `You don't even know.
You're going to miss me.' I think he's right.
Even in the hardest times, I knew that this
was something really special and a great ex-
perience I was having."