Jeremy Jordan makes the Valentine's Day pitch for 'The Last Five Years' — plus exclusive clip

The film adaptation of Jason Robert Brown’s musical The Last Five Years may be coming out on Valentine’s Day weekend, but it’s the story of a broken relationship. Jeremy Jordan, one half of the movie’s central couple, gave EW his pitch for why it shouldn’t be avoided, though—even though it is a downer.

“You pitch it as a love story and then you go in and you get something that’s a lot deeper than your average, run-of-the-mill love story, and you get something that you can talk to your significant other about,” Jordan said. “You get something that sort of mines a lot of unspoken things between couples. There is a level of romance in it, and there’s a level of, what did these people do that we could do differently?”

The story of Jamie (Jordan) and Cathy (Anna Kendrick) is told in alternating songs and alternating timelines—Jamie’s side of the story unfolds chronologically, while Cathy’s story is told in reverse. It begins with Cathy, at the end of their relationship, singing about how she’s “still hurting.” However, when we meet Jamie at the beginning of the film, he’s euphoric about his new union with Cathy and how his writing career is going. All this is evident in his second song “Moving Too Fast,” the song in the exclusive clip below.

Jordan also spoke to EW about the process of making the movie and what he learned from Kendrick.

EW: How did you first encounter Last Five Years? I came to it just through the CD.

JEREMY JORDAN: Me too. That’s how I found it. I was in college studying musical theater so naturally. This CD had just come out right after I first came to college because I started in 2003 and that’s when I think it was released or maybe right before that. I knew the CD intimately; fell in love with it immediately knew all the songs by heart for at least 10 years. So, yeah, when this came along I was like, “I have to do this, how do I do this, I must do this movie.” The audition process was long but easy because I never had to memorize anything. I worked my butt off and then finally convinced them to put me in their movie.

Did you ever do it in college?

No. I’ve never seen it. I never did it. I had “Moving Too Fast” in my audition book. I don’t think I ever used it, though. I was too scared to do it because it’s hard. So I didn’t want to make anybody play it, but I could sing it, so I was like, “I could sing this song.”

You have a lot of scenes of reacting to her, singing to her without her responding. It is a very theatrical piece. How did you talk with Richard LaGravenese about making it filmic?

For me, in terms of that aspect, the thing that unlocked it for me was realizing that one of the things that makes it work so well on stage is you just hear one side of an argument or one person’s view of something. And you’re not muddled by all the extraneous things or what the other person’s putting on it. I wanted to maintain that sense in the scenes. There were a few moments where we had to add some reactions just to make it realistic.

For instance, in “If I Didn’t Believe in You,” which is my solo, I’m singing whole song to her, and she’s literally sitting on the edge of the bed, just looking forward. And it’s such a real moment where one person is just talking and talking and talking and getting it all out of his system and the other person is just sitting there, not listening but listening. Not listening, but what she hears are all the bad things, and it’s just like there’s no coming back from that and it’s such a real kind of incredibly relatable moment that we created. I think the movie sort of emphasizes the whole idea of talking, talking, talking, but the other person’s not really taking it in. I think that’s their fatal flaw that they don’t really listen to each other. The whole movie is one person talking and then the other person talking, but nobody’s ever present. There are few moments in the movie where there’s really just presence. Even when they’re happy and they’re at all the parties and she’s smiling and she’s like, “and then he smiles,” there’s a glimmer, but then he’s off doing something else. It’s just very indicative of real life I think. It’s almost a cautionary tale in a sort of way.

Speaking of cautionary tales: this is coming out on Valentine’s Day—

Look at the poster! It looks like a love story!

It’s a pretty sh–y date movie.

Well, don’t say that out loud.

Well, what is your pitch for the Valentine’s Day audience?

I thought the exact same thing. I was like, “Valentine’s Day? You realize what happens, right? You realize the first seven minutes of this movie are her crying, right?” But some of the greatest love stories are the most devastating. You think “love story” and are like, oh, happy. But love story doesn’t mean happy ending. It means story about love and all the different facets of it. I think they were smart when they decided on Valentine’s Day—I don’t know why they did—but they’ve released a lot of footage of the happier moments. You pitch it as a love story and then you go in and you get something that’s a lot deeper than your average, run-of-the-mill love story, and you get something that you can talk to your significant other about. You get something that sort of mines a lot of unspoken things between couples. There is a level of romance in it, and there’s a level of, what did these people do that we could do differently?

I read an interview with Anna where she said you did a lot of live singing. Were you singing live for almost everything?

Almost 94 percent. The car scene wasn’t live because it wouldn’t have worked. Part of “Moving Too Fast” wasn’t live because it was a lot of moving locations and a lot of bike riding and then ferry riding and tiny little clips here and there… Almost every other part of the movie is live. You can’t tell a story that’s only told through song without singing it. You could go into a recording studio with a couple of days of rehearsal and stand with headphones on your head and a microphone in front of your face and try to manufacture all the emotions that you might feel when you film it a month later. Or you could film it in the moment and build and try new things and you can only do that by singing that live.

I think we come in with different sympathies between Jamie and Cathy. It starts out with her singing alone where you are predisposed—

To hate this guy?

Yeah. I was wondering how you approached that.

Of course I always want to make Jamie likable. I think Jamie is likable. He’s incredibly relatable. When someone is relatable is when they’re likable. The whole first half of the movie when he’s just this excited young kid who’s jumping up and down at the thought of success and is just totally in love with her and all of these great things. You see that that’s who he is at his core, and then you see fame and prestige push him to a different, darker place. Even when he’s talking to his friends and he’s like, you know, I see all these girls but I can’t do anything. It’s fine. It’s that exposure that pushes him. It’s being so ingrained in this other world and then having a wife that’s so self-deprecating and probably asks him every five minutes if he still loves her and thinks she’s attractive and doesn’t find herself those ways, eventually that’s going to catch up to you and that’s going to change your mindset. Unfortunately, Jamie takes that tiny step across the line. That’s all you have to do and then you’re suddenly in a whole new playing field. Once he crosses that threshold there’s no going back. That also doesn’t mean that he’s proud of himself. He definitely feels regret. He’s really confused and scared that he’s allowed himself to go to this place and he’s trying to figure out why he let himself do this and also trying to rationalize it and make it okay because he likes it. He makes the right decision eventually, and he breaks up with Cathy because there’s no way that’s going to end well. Not to say that she pushed him to do that, but the fact that the relationship was never really healthy and really communicative, the whole not listening thing, just eventually took it to a dark place.

You’re doing Jason’s Parade in concert. What do you like about singing Jason’s music? What are its challenges? What are its pleasures?

In this score the challenges are the dynamics and the places it goes dynamically, but it’s also very easy because he writes very conversational and he lets you really make it your own. It’s very open to interpretation but at the same time incredibly specific and all the notes are colored with symbolism, but at the same time it’s not overwrought. There’s so much musical theater now where it’s like [singing] and then the stars will open wide and I will finally meet my destiny journey. Like no, none of that shit. It’s all colloquial and so it feels very natural and the ebbs and flows and the sort of rhythm of it all is very natural and the storytelling elements within the song are very engaging and that’s something that doesn’t happen a lot. Where you can really have a full arc of a song and have somewhere to start and somewhere to go and places in between. I think he’s a very talented guy.

You said you had “Moving Too Fast” in your audition book. What makes it hard?

I mean it’s really high and there’s a lot of run on singing so breath control is very difficult. It’s also very manic so you can tend to lose track of your mechanics and of your breath and you can kind of spiral out of control so the song really requires you to have a large amount of control just to be able to get through it and it’s five and a half minutes too. So it’s a roller coaster.

Was it a challenge when filming to find your place in the song because there were so many cuts?

Yeah, luckily, those little cuts in that song were all very young, excited, ambitious and also like two seconds long. We would pre-roll and amp up and maybe do a few lines before and then get into the shot and then roll out of the shot. You kind of get a little bit before and a little bit after, but in film a lot of the storytelling is done by the camera, so for those little tiny cuts, those moments I had to be present and I had to know what I was saying, but it wasn’t my job to tell the story in those little moments. When I realized that was quite helpful then I wasn’t trying so hard and I didn’t feel like everything was on my shoulder because it’s a solo or whatever. Then you get into the long, if I didn’t believe in you, which is in a seven-minute shot, one long shot. That’s the polar opposite, and then it is all on your shoulders.

How many takes of those were you doing?

We did 14 of that song, and we used take 12.

There is a disconnect between Cathy and Jamie built into the work, and how did your off -screen building a relationship with Anna affect the on screen?

It did and it didn’t. The fact is, we only worked together for three weeks, and we had our own lives. We tried to get to know each other as quickly as well as we could. I will say Anna is a brilliant actress, but she’s a fairly quiet person and when she does sort of speak up she either something really smart or something really witty. It took me a little while to kind of crack the nut that was Anna Kendrick. I never quite made it all the way in. Because I meet you and I’m like, let’s be best friends. We were different in that way, but the second we stepped on set she gave 1000 percent and more and she taught me a lot. It was a very eye-opening experience for me.

How so?

Just by watching her. She didn’t like say, now you do this. She would never do this. When you get to be that intimate with someone who actually knows what they are doing and is very smart and understands how the camera works, I very purposefully was watching her, because I knew I was going to get some good lessons just from the experience. And I did. We shot in three weeks and I know what we shot when and I can see throughout the movie my own personal growth. I can see it. I’m like, Oh, we shot that early, oof. Oh, man, that was that last scene that looks great. I finally realized that stillness in that moment.