At the Ritz-Carlton in San Francisco, I sit with a group of other writers around a table as the audible antics begin approaching outside the door. SNL veterans Bill Hader and Kristen Wiig, along with director Craig Johnson, are splitting each others’ sides with jokes and voices. They are tired and somewhat giddy from a day of press, supporting their incredible new film, The Skeleton Twins, and they loosely greet us with smiles and how ya dos. Bill chucks a muffin from that morning down the hallway, comically screaming ‘This BETTER BE GOOD!’. Bill and Kristen feed off each other’s energy, a polite and friendly Craig Johnson between them, and they all take a deep breath and search around the table for who’s first to dive in…
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Craig, you co-wrote the script with Mark Heyman, and I heard he’d been working on the script for eight years. How did the final cut of the film differentiate from the original script?
Craig Johnson: Well, we actually had a couple versions of it that were unfinished that were all over the place. We had one where Milo was a drag queen. (To Bill) I haven’t even told you about these versions of it. There was a road trip element.
Kristen Wiig: Maggie was a cat. (laughing)