The Bride! opened the first week of March and bombed. Hard. I have to say, I was surprised by how poorly it did. Especially after “Wuthering Heights” was a smash hit in February; they’re both highly stylized adaptations of classic novels helmed by women filmmakers. Not to say they’re the same, but you’d think the audience for one would be interested in seeing the other, no? Maybe we just have to chalk it up to the power of the cat mafia (iykyk). Anyway, The Bride! bombed weeks ago, so it’s a little surprising that writer-director Maggie Gyllenhaal is only just now appearing on the SmartLess podcast, but so it is. Maggie was the guest for Monday’s episode, and she painted a very glowing portrait of her husband Peter Sarsgaard as some kind of 21st century John Muir. Peter is a nature boy! Which apparently includes bees that he keeps in their Brooklyn home. Or at least he used to, before Maggie accidentally killed them all while he was away filming.
While appearing on the Monday, March 23 episode of the SmartLess podcast, the filmmaker, 48, revealed that while her husband Peter Sarsgaard was away for acting gigs, “all of” the bees that the 55-year-old actor keeps in their Brooklyn, N.Y. home died — and the fatal fiasco was, at least in part, her fault.
While discussing her nature-loving husband — he “raises bees and chickens and taps maple trees” — on SmartLess, hosts Will Arnett, Jason Bateman and Sean Hayes seemed quite impressed with him. “This guy is such a good actor, and now you’re telling me he’s got this move, too?” Bateman, 57, asked. “Christ.”
So, Gyllenhaal shared a story to give the full picture, telling the hosts, “I’ll tell you this just so you don’t feel bad.”
“All of his bees in Brooklyn died,” she admitted of her husband’s pet insects. “And it was because he made a mistake. He made a beekeeping mistake. And he was so upset about it.”
Recalling how she consoled the actor through the deaths, The Bride! writer-director recalled, “I was like, ‘Peter, you were in Switzerland acting and then you went and did another movie in London right away. You were home for one week and your bees died. Like, some people’s only job is doing bees, you know? Like, give yourself a break.’”
Bateman then questioned whether Gyllenhaal had any hand in the bee deaths while her husband was away for work.
“Maggie, did you shirk your responsibilities in babysitting the bees?” he asked the guest, as she replied, “Yeah, I think I maybe did.”
The comedian then joked that Sarsgaard must have left a note behind with care instructions for the bees, as co-host Arnett, 55, chimed in, joking that the actor had instructed, “Don’t forget to water the bees!”
“You’re not wrong,” Gyllenhaal said with a laugh.
Wait, am I crazy (don’t answer that), or are we missing a vital piece of the story here? How exactly did Maggie kill the bees?! What did she do (or not do) that proved fatal, and what was the cryptic “beekeeping mistake” she claims Peter made? (Aside from entrusting their care with her.) Surely this is a flub on People Mag’s reporting, and the conversation continues in the podcast, right? RIGHT? WRONG! Bitches, I was buzzing with insatiable nosiness curiosity, so I listened to the episode to get to the bottom of BeeGate. And… that really is the end of the bee discussion. What the honey hell?! Jason, Will, Sean — not one of you had a follow up question? Even after Maggie conceded that she played a role in beetricide?! Way to live up to your show name, boys. No wonder they lost the new podcast Golden Globe, good grief.
As for the rest of the interview, it’s ok, but nowhere near the best SmartLess episode I’ve listened to. Jason asks Maggie about coming into directing as an actor, which is a good line of questioning from him considering that’s something they share. But then Maggie goes on to say that she wanted to direct so that she could give people the space she felt she wasn’t getting herself, and at that point I woke my dog up from rolling my eyes so loudly. I mean, the sentiment could be lovely and giving and altruistic… but something about the way Maggie said it came off awfully smug, at least to me. Am I being too harsh on her? Don’t forget — she’s a mass bee murderer!
Photos credit: Lounis Tiar/Avalon, Kostas Dimopolas and David Hablützel on Pexels, Getty Images
It sounds like the bees were kept trapped somewhere and they couldn’t eat.
Beds and cats unite to take down The Bride!
I won’t say it’s easy to kill a colony of bees, but it’s not exactly hard either. There are so many reasons a bee colony can die off. I know lots of very experienced bee keepers who’ve had it happen so I’m not going to give her *too hard a time about it. They probably should have had a more experienced beekeeping friend be in charge of the bees while PS was gone. It’s a daunting task if you’re not used to caring for bees.
As for Smartless, my partner turned me onto a couple of years ago and while I like each of the hosts just fine, and I like the people they interview, I got really, really tired of hearing them talk about golf. It seemed like there was a lot of golf talk so I stopped listening. Am I remembering that correctly? Is there still a lot of golf talk?
Sounds like she just completely forgot about them. Poor bees. Especially considering that they could surely afford a temporary beekeeper!
“I killed the bees”, she laughed.
MaggieG is now formally dead to me.
Not for actually killing the bees, because Lord knows, bees are fragile.
But because she fu*king LAUGHED about it.
My brother in law keeps bees in Maine, and the only way I can think of that she killed them was if it was winter and they needed sugar water/some kind of food cake. If you harvest all the honey, you’ve taken their winter food so you have to supply them with something else. It’s not like a daily thing, it would be maybe once every other week or something.
That said, I have a large ish native garden patch that has a huge number of native bees (I love the giant bumble ones), and one of my occasional fears is that someone is going to spray it with a pesticide or herbicide to be a dick. I have heard of neighbors doing that because they didn’t like the “weeds”.
Something about her is suuuuuuuper creeeeeeepy to me. She doesn’t seem sincere in any way, about anything.
Never liked her, or her brother. Something about them has always given me the ick.