Everyone wants a piece of Cocaine Bear. The Elizabeth Banks-directed movie, which became an internet sensation ever since it was announced, features a packed ensemble cast including the hottest espionage couple since Mr. and Mrs. Smith. The Americans‘ Keri Russell has revealed her husband Matthew Rhys, whom she met on the set of the FX show, asked her to text Banks to get him in the film too.
Russel plays Sari, a panicked mother whose daughter is missing somewhere in the bear-infested woods. The script was so fascinating for the actress that she encouraged her husband to read it. He immediately wanted in on the absurdist fun after reading just one scene.
“He said, ‘Who’s playing that guy?’ and I said, ‘I don’t know,'” Russel recounted in an interview with Digital Spy. Rhys then asked his wife to text the director about the role, to which Banks offered a simple “‘Great, see you in Ireland!’.” The “guy” in question is Andrew C. Thornton II, a real-life narcotics officer who was later convicted for smuggling drugs.
The movie is inspired by the true story of a black bear who ingested 34 kilos of cocaine in Georgia in 1985, which it found in a bag dropped from a plane by Thornton during a supply run. That bear instantly died, and so did Thornton moments later after getting caught in his parachute, but the bear in this film becomes the terrifying doped-up hunter of a group of people out looking for the lost drugs.
As for Russel, the “wacky” script and the presence of another The Americans alumna in the cast was all she needed to say “yes” after Banks asked her to read the script.
“The fact that [Elizabeth Banks] had casted [Margo Martindale], I was like, ‘Oh I see the tone of what you’re going for’ and it just made me that much more interested in it because I could see the wackiness of what she was trying to do.”
Joining Russel, Rhys, and Martindale in Cocaine Bear is the late Ray Liotta playing a drug lord, O’Shea Jackson Jr and Alden Ehrenreich as drug dealers and Brooklynn Prince as Sari’s daughter. Internet comedian Scott Seiss also makes his feature film debut.
Cocaine Bear premieres Friday, Feb. 24.