Edward Norton wrote the most emotional speech in "The Invite" at home. He rewrote it for days and walked onto the set without ever showing it to his director.
Olivia Wilde wanted it that way.
"She never read that monologue or heard it," Norton said during a Nov. 6 virtual press conference for the A24 comedy. Wilde, who directs and co-stars, pointed the cameras at herself and Seth Rogen and filmed Norton delivering it cold. "So in the film, her crying and that hilarious thing Seth says to me, that's them hearing it for the first time."
"The Invite" is Wilde's third feature as a director, after "Booksmart" and "Don't Worry Darling." It reimagines Cesc Gay's Spanish film "Sentimental." Rogen and Wilde play Joe and Angela, a married couple whose dinner with Hawk and Pina, played by Norton and Penélope Cruz, comes apart. A24 won a multistudio bidding war after the film's Sundance Film Festival premiere. It opened in limited release June 26 and went wide July 10.
Norton said he'd brought few monologues to a set with that much nerve. "I brought it in feeling like I was going on stage in front of the crew, in front of the other actors," he said. He compared Wilde's leadership to making "Birdman" with Alejandro G. Iñárritu.
Hawk started as a blank space
According to Norton, the script gave the four actors outlines, not finished characters. Wilde asked each of them to fill in the gaps with their own lives and observations. "My character's name wasn't Hawk, and there was no story of his wife," he said. "The rugs and the carpets and the bond that they make over interior design, these were all things we came up with."
The name came from Hawk Koch, the veteran producer and former Academy president who Norton calls one of his earliest mentors. Norton said Koch produced "Primal Fear," his first film, and that Koch changed his name from Howard while they knew each other. The name felt so personal that Norton called Koch for permission. "He was wonderful about it," Norton said.
Hawk's near-sensual love of carpets came from the late actor Julian Sands. Norton said Sands made those comments when he visited Norton's New York apartment. "Julian had this sensual relationship with furnishings, especially carpets," Norton said. He added that Sands may have paid for drama school by selling Persian rugs.
Liberation through a hard door
Hawk walks in loud, unfiltered and in love, with Pina and with his new self. Norton said that confidence came at a price. "I like the idea that he's come to liberation through a hard door," he said. "There's been a door of hard experience that's part of what's made him so present and joyful."
Norton also pushed back on reading the film as a clash of opposites. When Hawk tells Joe, "I love you," Norton said, he means it, "not because they're different, but because they're sort of the same." In his view, they're "at a different stage in the journey."
That's where the comedy turns. "I've had a number of people say, 'I laughed so hard, but then I went home and had a good cry,'" Norton said. "Sometimes it's within our closest relationships that we cloister some of the truth of our feelings."
Asked whether he prepares differently for a supporting role, Norton said the distinction didn't apply here. "It's such a quartet," he said. He and Wilde had both seen "Sentimental" and were "wildly inspired by it." Cruz and Rogen hadn't seen it.
Still buying matinee tickets
Thirty years after "Primal Fear," Norton said the career he hoped for "emphatically" came true. He said the real privilege was choosing his own path as an actor, writer, director and producer.
He's also still a moviegoer. Norton said he and his wife recently bought matinee tickets to see Sebastian Stan's "Fjord" at a small arthouse theater. He has been going to movies that way for more than 40 years.
"Over 100 years in, we're still going into movie theaters," he said. "People getting together in a room and watching a flickering light, I don't know why it works on us so well still, but it does."
Quick answers
Who is in the cast of "The Invite"? Edward Norton and Penélope Cruz play Hawk and Pina, with Seth Rogen and Olivia Wilde as Joe and Angela. Wilde also directed.
Is "The Invite" a remake? It reimagines Cesc Gay's Spanish film "Sentimental."
When did "The Invite" come out? A24 opened it in limited release June 26, 2026, and went wide July 10 after buying the film out of the Sundance Film Festival.
