Courteney Cox And Greg Kinnear Talk ‘Shining Vale’ And The Show’s ‘Friends’ Connection

2022 is turning into a stellar year for Courteney Cox. Not only has Scream been one of the biggest critical and box office hits of the year, but her new Starz show, the horror-comedy Shining Vale, is one of the year’s most shockingly entertaining shows.

Starring alongside Greg Kinnear, she plays Pat, an author, wife, and mother whose family are trying to escape a past in New York but buy what turns out to be a house with a history of its own. While attempting to write the long-awaited sequel to her successful “lady porn” novel, Pat awakens and connects with more than her passion.

I caught up with Cox and Kinnear to talk about the killer new show, her character’s potty mouth, and filming Shining Vale on the same soundstage where she shot Friends.

Simon Thompson: I devoured the first five episodes of this show. Shining Vale goes all-in right out of the gate.

Courteney Cox: We loved it right from the start. We knew that the show’s creators were incredible; I loved the family dynamic, and I have always been a fan of Greg Kinnear. At the very end of the show, you look back, and there is so much that has gone on. You have these incredible backstories, and you’re hopefully pulling for these people who have moved to get away from problems but end up having more problems than you can imagine.

Greg Kinnear: Doing these interviews, we know that people have seen the first five, but we did eight, and a lot happens in those three episodes. Honestly, where the show goes was so surprising when I read it. Courtney and I had a wonderful time making it together, and the whole crew and cast of this were amazing, but I think we were quietly celebrating when we were making it. When we read where this goes, I remember we got to like episode eight, and it was bonkers, but it all felt very organic for it to grow out of this simple seed planted in the first episode. It’s very well crafted, and everybody worked through Covid when it was hard to do anything, to make it happen. Everybody dove in and worked hard to cultivate a tone and a temperament that feels unique. It was a lot of work, but it was never so much work that it wasn’t fun, so I’m grateful to have had the experience.

Thompson: I was going to talk about tone because Sharon Horgan is part of the creative team behind this and British and Irish people have a knack for handling sharp, dark humor and sexual humor in a unique comedic way. Did that stand out for you at all?

Cox: We would read certain scripts and ask, ‘Is this going to be really over the top?’ It didn’t make sense but then the way it was dealt with, and I don’t know if this is British or Irish humor, but people bought it. When you get that reaction, you go all in. I’m a big fan of British and Irish humor. I think it pushes the envelope in such a subtle way, and I love the sarcasm.

Kinnear: This show is very dry. It’s not a spoof. I have seen horror that’s been a send-up, almost a folly, and that wouldn’t have appealed to me. At the end of the day, I think that kind of dry, grounded sense of a family trying to deal with stuff. Courteney’s character, my wife, is going through something horrible. She’s either dealing with genuine spirits she’s being tortured by, or she’s got mental illness, or she’s at the end of her marriage rope. He’s not quite sure. The character I was handed sees all the parts aren’t working and yet, has this incredible optimism and maybe false positivity because he’s trying to heal everything.

Thompson: One thing I noticed with Shining Vale, being a massive backlot nerd and spending a lot of time on the lots here in L.A., some of this was filmed on the Warner Bros. backlot. Courteney, you’re very familiar with that space because that’s where you filmed Friends. I noticed there were many setups here filmed in the same locations. Were any of the interior shots on the Friends stage there?

Cox: Yeah, all the scenes in the attic were shot on Stage Five, which is where Friends started, so that was cool. It was nice to walk into that soundstage and remember all that. I would see things and think, ‘Those were our dressing rooms’ or ‘There was the one bathroom that everyone shared.’ We moved up to Stage 24, which was much nicer, and we had our own bathrooms, but it was great to be back there. Things were very different this time because of Covid. We don’t even share makeup rooms now. There were a lot of memories, and I still love pulling into the gate of the Warner Bros. lot. Now you can’t recognize anybody because everyone’s wearing masks, but I like having a home base like that.

Thompson: I thought this was the first time you guys have worked together, but it isn’t, sort of. Courteney, you were on Friends all the way through, but Greg, you were in one episode of the show. Did you ever meet on set, or is this the first time that, professionally, your paths have crossed?

Kinnear: No, this was the first time our paths crossed professionally. I did do, I guess what they call the seminal episode of Friends, and it’s talked about over and over again.

Cox: (Laughs)

Kinnear: I had a great experience doing that. This is a true story. Unfortunately, my daughter was born the night before I was supposed to do it, so instead of doing it live, we had to do it in a non-audience way which was torture.

Cox: It was a pre-tape.

Kinnear: Thank you. Courtney knows all the terms. It killed me, though; it really did because Friends was the biggest thing on TV. It was a monster show. By the way, how intimidating is it to start Shining Vale and walk onto a set, and your co-star says, ‘Yeah, we starred a little show here called Friends. Maybe you’ve heard of it?’ I’m kidding, of course.

Thompson: Courteney, we’ve seen you do comedy before, we’ve seen you doing drama, and we’ve seen you doing horror stuff with Scream. One thing I’ve never seen you do before is say f**k quite so much. You say it a lot in this. Was that scripted, or was some of it just releasing?

Cox: (Laughs) No, I mean it’s one of my favorite words, for sure, but that was scripted to the point where I would say, ‘Do you think I would say that?’ I mean, I might even have taken a few out because it’s in there a lot.

Kinnear: I was asking for some to be removed because there was so much, but then they really work on the show.

Cox: (Laughs) Yeah, because that’s how frustrated and stuck she is. It’s just like, ‘F**k!’ There are a lot of f**ks, I’m not going to lie.

Kinnear: The airplane version of the show would be about 12 minutes long.

Shining Vale premieres on Starz on Sunday, March 6, 2022.