Jason Segel is here to absolutely stunt on your nearest and dearest buddies in the trailer for director Gabriela Cowperthwaite’s Our Friend. The film, written by Brad Ingelsby, follows the journey of Segel’s Dane Faucheux, who moves in with Casey Affleck and Dakota Johnson’s Matt and Nicole Teague and their kids when Nicole is diagnosed with terminal cancer. Our Friend is based on Matt Teague’s 2015 Esquire essay “The Friend: Love Is Not a Big Enough Word,†which recounts the real-life experience of Faucheux putting his personal life and career on hold to offer support to his best friend’s family during the last year of Nicole’s life.
While the trailer highlights the warm, sweet moments in their journey, Teague’s essay offers a more raw, bare-knuckles look at the messy, painful business of dying, and the gift that is a friend willing to join your family in enduring it. But, you know, they probably can’t front-load too many of the awful moments; it is a trailer after all. Our Friend will arrive in theaters (provided that is an option, given pandemic restrictions) and on-demand January 22.