THE SPECIFIC ALLURE OF ALISON BRIE

In a town that's known for being jaded, the actress is beloved and bewilderingly optimistic, a joyful spirit with girl-next-door energy. But that doesn't mean she isn't ambitious.

- BY HALIE LESAVAGE PHOTOGRAPHS BY JONNY MARLOW

Loewe jacket, boots

As Alison Brie laces up her rental shoes, she gives a wink-wink and provides an out. “We really don’t have to do this,” she says. We're seated side by side on a cracked leather couch at Highland Park Bowl, L.A.’s oldest operating bowling alley. A quiet, youngish couple and their two elementary schoolers flank us on our right; three adult children and their parents, bickering over who goes first, on our left. They're all here for an afternoon of low-stakes competition and landmark tourism, pure fun. Brie and I, on the other hand, are trying to make fun out of a work-mandated interruption to the actress-writer-producer’s leisurely summer Friday in June.

The actress, 42, had gone on a walk that morning with her mom. She'd spent some time collecting and cutting videos from friends and family for a surprise virtual birthday card that “Davey”—as in Dave Franco, as in her husband, as in her costar in many movies, including their latest codependency freakout, Together—will open on his 40th birthday, the following week. Later that night, they'll meet up for a dinner date.

But first, a game of pickup bowling with me. I wish the hostess had given us the lane the young family is using—for the extra hint of privacy and also for the bumpers. But we're here. We should at least give bowling a shot, for the bit. We don’t even have to try. We can be a little silly, check the box, and move on to the actual agenda: digging into the jump scares and scarily realistic resentment that made Together the “fucked-up date-night movie” everyone had to see this summer; how she really felt about playing a dependent but bitter partner alongside her actual husband of eight years; what all her genre hopping and hyper-productivity says about her talent.