INTERVIEW: The Cast and Crew of "Party USA" Break Down the Film's Killer Script & Southern Roots
- Olivia Smith
- May 2
- 5 min read
Writer-Director Jared Sprouse and co. give the inside scoop on their zany dark comedy
Party USA is a firework of a film: it’s bold, it’s colorful, and it sure knows how to pack a punch.
The dark comedy describes itself as “a downward spiral of red, white, and blue-collared chaos,” charting a disgruntled retail worker’s (Ainsley Seiger) journey to undo the fallout following an uncovered shift at a party store. Ahead of the film’s premiere, I had the chance to chat with writer/director Jared Sprouse, along with actors Ainsley Seiger (Taylor), Phillip Andre Botello (Damian), and Sharahya Carter (Zhara).
Sprouse said the film began from a place of wanting to “look at the ugly thing in the mirror” and explore the pressures of work culture and corporate power amidst personal grief. “A lot of [the film is] just from my own experience working in hospitality in Atlanta and Georgia over five or six years,” the director explained. “You can have the worst day of your life where you’ve just broken up with somebody and you’re basically there by yourself, and it’s like, ‘Yeah, Mr. Smith, I’ll bring it over to your table,’ and then you just go cry in the bathroom by yourself afterwards. [...] That’s the dark side of customer service that we don’t really see on camera that much.”
These more troubling aspects are delightfully balanced by the Party USA’s ample supply of humorous moments. Carter chimed in about the film’s brilliant presentation of this dichotomy: “It’s talking about a lot of things that are heavy, but you don’t have the opportunity to cry because you get to laugh. It’s like a nice, fine line of absolute chaos that helps you look at things and not feel as heavy, which I really did enjoy.”
Much of the film’s comedy is found in its killer (no pun intended) script. Sprouse’s absurd characters and rapid-fire dialogue provided the perfect sandbox for these actors to play in, thereby immersing audiences in the world of Party USA. “From an actor standpoint, the hardest thing to do for whatever reason—especially from a writing standpoint—is to teach voice,” Botello noted. “I don’t know if that’s something that could be taught. So don’t get such a big head [Botello playfully nudged Sprouse in their shared Zoom frame], but he’s got a really clear voice and that’s the first thing I noticed with it.”
Elaborating on their onset experience, Seiger added that Sprouse put the right amount of trust in the actors. They explained the circle of “trickle-down” trust that moves from director to the cast and passes through the actors’ in-scene dynamics with each other. “It’s always really, really nice not to be put in a box and for set to not feel so authoritarian,” Seiger shared, “Or, conversely, for set to feel like, ‘Okay, I’m going to hold your hand through everything that I want you to do.'”
At its core, Party USA is proud to be a Southern film, capturing the zaniness of small towns in Georgia like the ones Sprouse has called home. The project seeks to fill the gap in Southern comedic storytelling that expands beyond “just some rednecks in the woods somewhere,” in the director’s words.
“My grandparents passed away during COVID, and I went to their gravesites. [...] My last name is Sprouse, which is a little bit unique for a last name, and we found this little church in this little town in the middle of nowhere. Every single grave said Sprouse on it, going back to like, the 1800s and even the 1700s. And you’re like, “Oh, all these people in LA and New York can tell those stories and do all these things, but the thing that sets me apart and the only thing I’m going to be able to do that they can’t is tell a story of something like the people here and the people that I grew up with.’”
Both Seiger and Carter were raised in the South (North Carolina and Oklahoma, respectively) and noted that working on Party USA led them to develop a newfound appreciation for their roots. As a teenager, Seiger wanted nothing more than to break free from her hometown. “I was that kid who watched too many episodes of Glee in high school and was like, ‘Oh, I’m trying to be like them,’” they said. “Like, please let me get out of this place and go to college in New York. My whole life that’s all I wanted: to get out, get out, get out.” After auditioning for five schools across the country, she fell in love with the University of North Carolina School of the Arts—only an hour and a half from her home. Her time at the school made Seiger realize that: “That was the first moment in, I think, my entire life that I really had a new kind of appreciation for where I’m from, who I am, and the people that have made me who I am.”
Carter, on the other hand, left Oklahoma for NYU and was actually living in South Africa during her initial read for the role of Zhara. Filming in Georgia flooded her with memories of her childhood and helped her tap into Party USA’s setting. “There’s just something so nice about the South and somebody calling you ‘Baby’ when they open the door, and older women just treating you nice,” she grinned. “As soon as I landed and people were, like, walking a little slower, I was completely dropped in and just felt a sense of home.”
Seiger: "One thing that everybody who works on a New York set will say when you're shooting on location [is,] ‘New York, she's her own character. She's a character in the show just because the craziest s—t will happen while you're shooting that you have to take into account. In a very different way, and for very different reasons, I do feel like the South is also a character, if you let her be and if you give her the space to be. I think that's what happened on this movie."
With its dynamite script and knockout performances, Party USA is a non-stop, darkly funny gem straight from the heart of Georgia, capturing the beautiful bizarreness of the region. “There’s just something really exceptionally wonderful about getting to work on something that feels so true to your life experience and to what you know,” Seiger said. “It’s always wonderful to get to stretch and do new things, but it definitely, in a lot of ways, really felt like coming home just because I understood the world that I was walking into very intimately.”
Party USA will rescreen at the Tara on Sunday, May 3rd—purchase tickets here. Follow @partyusamovie for more updates.
