In this interview with Pillot Productions‘ Dempsey Pillot, the cast of the Paramount+ limited series The Offer discuss making the behind the scenes story of the production of The Godfather in 1972 for Paramount Pictures. The interviews include cast members Miles Teller, Juno Temple, Giovanni Ribisi, Dan Fogler, Matthew Goode, Burn Gorman, and Patrick Gallo.
The first interview is with Giovanni Ribisi who plays New York City mob boss, Joe Colombo in the limited series. Ribisi discusses playing the real life person for television and how he prepared for the role in The Offer. He discussed reading the 2015 book written by Colombo‘s son, Anthony Edward Colombo with filmmaker and author Don Capria, Colombo: The Unsolved Murder and how the book talks about the person Joe Colombo and not the mob boss and that allowed him to play the role better from a human perspective where he better understood the decisions Colombo made while involving himself in the filming of The Godfather on location in New York City. Ribisi also discusses the friendship that came from Colombo working with the film’s producer, Albert S. Ruddy when negotiating the production in New York City with Ruddy that would lead to problems for Ruddy at Paramount.
The second interview was with Patrick Gallo, who played Mario Puzo, and Dan Fogler, who played played Francis Ford Coppola in The Offer. The first question asked of them by Pillot was about how they prepared to play such iconic people in real life. Puzo as the author of The Godfather novel, and Coppola as the director of the novel adaption and film atop most lists as one of the best movies of all time. Fogler was the first one to answer the question and said that he didn’t get to talk to Coppola but had made a with his nephew, Talia Shire‘s son, Robert Schwartzman who talked with Fogler about his uncle and as Fogler puts it, “gave him the inside scoop” on Coppola, and Schwartzman also recommended family members that were close to Francis that were able to give Fogler a background for character development and preparation when Dan Fogler spoke with them. Fogler also researched his earlier work before he made The Godfather, specifically 1969‘s The Rain People, due to it being a box office failure and considered to be Coppola‘s lowest point in filmmaking and Fogler thought it interesting to look at Coppola‘s work and thought process during that period considering the film is the flip side to Coppola‘s career coin against his historic influential film that became the landmark gangster film along with setting box office records with its release in 1972 that weren’t broken until 1975 by Steven Spielberg‘s Jaws.
Patrick Gallo answered Pillot‘s question by saying it was made a little harder to prepare to play Puzo because he had passed away in 1999, and there isn’t a lot out there to read bout the author to research Puzo, so Gallo said he read a lot of his written work and tried to find him through that for character development and preparation and he was able to find him through that work and connect to the real life person and character he was playing in The Offer.
The third interview was with Burn Gorman, who plays the CEO of Paramount Pictures parent company, Gulf + Western, Charles Bluhdorn, and Matthew Goode, who plays Robert Evans, who was the head of Paramount Pictures and green-lit the production of The Godfather. The first question Pillot asked them was about them being British actors and what it was like to play characters who produced a film about what it is to be American as the underlying theme in the 1972 film. Goode said that he felt honored to play Evans, whom he called a titan in his field, and Gorman stated that he was actually born in Hollywood, that his father was “a bit of a hippie” and taught at UCLA and that he didn’t move to London until his childhood and was raised there rather than the United States. Gorman said it was lovely to be back in Los Angeles to film the limited series, and that it was also a unique experience because they filmed The Offer during COVID and the regulations around the pandemic, but that despite that, it was uniquely interesting to be telling a Paramount Hollywood story while filming it on the Paramount lot where the stories occurred.
The last interview was with Miles Teller, who plays The Godfather producer, Albert S. Ruddy, and Juno Temple, who plays Bettye McCartt, Al Ruddy’s personal assistant during the filming of the 1972 film. Teller and Temple were asked by Pillot about the idea of the film ever being remade, and Juno Temple called it almost blasphemous for anyone to attempt to remake it, questioning why anyone would want to remake such perfect and inspirational film to filmmakers after its original release. But she considered her participation in The Offer, and retelling the story of how the film got made to be a once in a lifetime experience for such an inspirational film that means so much to so many globally. Teller echoed Temple‘s thoughts on anyone ever remaking the film while also discussing being a fan of the film while while telling the story of its production through the limited series. Teller stated that he felt lucky to play Ruddy and be apart of the one in a lifetime experience in what felt like a Hollywood history lesson while filming. He also stated that he hopes fans the film like him enjoy learning the behind-the-scenes story as much as enjoyed making The Offer.
The interview also includes what the cast learned while filming The Offer, and the cultural effect the film had on Hollywood and making films before and after The Godfather. The cast also discusses with Pillot how fascinating the story the limited series tells about the production of the film, as well as what Al Ruddy went through while producing to get The Godfather made. It’s amazing to think one of the greatest films ever made almost never got made.
You can watch the full interview with Pillot Productions and the cast of The Offer below:
All 10 episodes of The Offer are available to stream exclusively on Paramount+ now or are available for purchase at your preferred retail store.