HBO Max
This article contains spoilers to HBO Max’s ‘There Is No “I” In Threesome’.
When HBO Max released its latest docudrama, There Is No “I” In Threesome, viewers tuned in to watch freshly engaged couple Ollie and Zoe document their six-month exploration of polyamory ahead of their wedding, but something happens in the last few minutes of the documentary that changes the entire narrative—and viewers are asking how filmmakers managed to pull it off.
The film, directed and co-written by Jan Oliver Lucks, who also happens to be the lead subject Ollie, follows the New Zealand-based couple who decide to open up their relationship. At the end of the film, we learn that we haven’t actually been watching a documentary with real footage of Ollie and Zoe, but instead, the entire film was Lucks reenacting his relationship with an actress playing the role of his partner.
Throughout the six-month period shown in the film, we see the couple explore their sexuality, with both finding a new boyfriend and girlfriend, and even witness the pair engaging in their first threesome. Near the end of the film, Zoe tells Ollie that she has fallen in love with another man and decides to end their engagement.
What Is The Real Story Behind There Is No “I” In Threesome?
Ollie really did get engaged to a woman in 2015, and the pair had decided to enter into an open relationship shortly after, which was the premise of the docudrama. The couple began filming their experiences and had plans to make a documentary with the footage, but when the woman began a relationship with another man, the film project was sidelined. Lucks didn’t want to throw away the project, so he asked his ex-fiance for permission to find an actress to play her and re-create the movie without her.
Actress Natalie Medlock was cast as Zoe and an actor was cast as the man she falls in love with. Everyone else in the film plays themselves.
“We started filming at the end of November 2015, and the breakup happened at the end of May 2016. But at the end of that period, I was a zombie. I had a full-on job as well, plus a girlfriend and a fiance, obviously. So there wasn’t much logical thinking involved at that point. I pretty much just filmed everything and regretted it later,” Ollie told the Los Angeles Times about the initial documentary he was filming.
When the relationship ended, Lucks was convinced the documentary idea ended too. “That was sort of the double heartbreak. Losing my fiance—my creative partner who I loved working with—and this project, which started as such a positive labor of love,” he told the LA Times. “It took about two weeks after the breakup until I had sort of an epiphany [that] I could just follow my path as a filmmaker and cross the line between documentary and fiction. And I think the casting call went out November 2016.”
Lucks admits that his ex wasn’t “really a fan” of the idea, but eventually was “pleasantly surprised” and “laughed most of the way through it”.
The film was released in the U.S. on February 11 and will be released in cinemas in New Zealand and Australia later this year. You can watch the official trailer below.
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