In the new film Jerry and Marge Go Large, out today on Paramount+, Bryan Cranston and Annette Bening play a real life couple who win the lottery — over and over again for about 10 years. They found a loophole in the math, which they exploited, and used the winnings to benefit their town. The adventure also rekindled their relationship, and Cranston tells ABC Audio it’s just a great story.
“It’s romantic and it just makes you feel good. You think back of simpler times, perhaps in your lives,” he explains. “Small towns have a tendency to think the life is simpler and sweeter and more innocent. And it was nice to do something in this very cynical world that we live in to do something a-cynical.”
Bening agrees, noting, “There’s a lot of lottery stories which are very sad and tragic and terrible things happen to people when people come to them and people want to use them because they have money and all of that. But this one is, it’s just a feel good.”
Bening also wants to make it clear the couple did nothing wrong.
“They were playing by the rules,” she insists. “And since the lottery also benefited from it, it went on for ten years. And they weren’t hiding either, which is interesting. They weren’t hiding what they were doing.”
Then how did they do it? Cranston’s character, Jerry Selbee, was a math genius, says Cranston, a trait he admits he doesn’t share.
“Math was not my strong suit, so it was fun to be able to get in the head of someone who sees that in his mind,” Cranston shares. “He sees angles and geometry and algebraic equations in his head.”
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