It’s not easy to get Babs to agree to make a new film. Despite her appearances in the Meet the Parents series, Barbra Streisand chooses her projects carefully. And she’s the first one to admit that she might have made some diva-like requests before she agreed to star in the new film, The Guilt Trip.
Streisand admitted to NBC New York that she was ready to act again, saying, “It was time to challenge myself again, you know? Of course, I made it very difficult for them to hire me because I kept wanting an out some way. So I made it really hard.”
The main reason Streisand didn’t want to sign on for another project was the distance she’d have to travel to shoot the film. “I really don’t want to go—I never do this normally, right?—I really don’t want to schlep to Paramount. It’s two hours each way,” the Oscar-winner said. “So would you rent a warehouse and build the sets in the Valley no more than 45 minutes from my house? And they said yes.”
The other request? Well, Babs really doesn’t like waking up early in the morning.
“And on these Focker movies, I had to get up early, and I’m not an early bird—and Seth [Rogen, her costar] says, ‘It’s very hard to be funny at 7:30 in the morning.’ He’s right. He has to have a few cups of tea. You have to feed him a little bit,” she noted. “So I said, you can’t pick me up until 8:30 because that’s like a normal time to get up for me, because I love the night. My husband and I stay up until 2, 3 in the morning, so we don’t function that well at 6 in the morning. And they said, ‘Okay.’”
Streisand did all she could to try to get the production team to hire someone else. But when they acquiesced to all of her demands, she made one last plea to Anne Fletcher, the director of the film.
“I said to Anne, ‘Well, would you make the movie without me?’ And she said no. And I felt bad, guilty—another guilt trip, right? I said, ‘Oh, no—she’s not going to have this job, and I want her to work.’”
Thus, Streisand is appearing in the film about a mother who goes on a road trip with her inventor son in hopes of making some sales.
The Guilt Trip is in theaters now.
