Jason Biggs Discusses Directorial Debut, Playing Against Type With Untitled Home Invasion Romance

You know who Jason Biggs is. The actor has been a mainstay on our screens since the one-season Fox sitcom Drexell’s Class in 1991. But he really rose to prominence in 1999’s American Pie, when playing the sexually-curious Jim Levenstein made Biggs a household name and launched a career that continued with projects like Orange Is the New Black and Outmatched.

Now he’s back for the action comedy Untitled Home Invasion Romance. But there’s a twist this time, and not just because the movie finds Biggs stepping behind the camera as director. “It felt a little unexpected,” Biggs tells Den of Geek about his decision to make Untitled Home Invasion Romance his directoral debut. “I don’t think that people would necessarily associate me as an actor with this kind of material.”

The film stars Biggs as Kevin, a husband in a rocky marriage who plans both a romantic trip to his wife Suzie’s (Meghan Rath) childhood home upstate and a stunt to show her his worth. Kevin has hired an acting buddy (Arturo Castro) to pose as a home invader, hoping he can fight off the threat and reignite Suzie’s love for him. But when Suzie proves to be perfectly capable of taking care of herself, her complicated past comes to light, forcing both partners in the marriage to rethink their relationship.

“Originally, I was offered this project just to play the role of Kevin and I’ve been looking for something to direct,” says Biggs. “This came across to my agent, who is Meaghan’s as well, and he called me and said, ‘I have this indie you’ve been offered to act in, and I think you’re going to like it, but I think you’re going to want to direct it.’ And he was right.”

A veteran of Being Human and Hawaii Five-0, Meaghan Rath certainly knows how to play a character in high-pressure situations. But as even Kevin’s surprised to learn, there’s a lot more to Suzie than one would assume, and synthesizing those layers presented an irresistible challenge for Rath.

“There was a lot of discussion about the tone for her, especially because there were moments that are very comedic on the page,” Rath explains; “but we decided that we should play it as grounded as we could because of this crazy turn that she takes. You don’t want to seem broad, you want to be able to believe Suzie. Jason and I spent a lot of time going over the moments we wanted to bring out and the colors in the character.”

Part of the challenge comes from the fact that Suzie is at the center of the film’s twists and developments. While Kevin clearly wants to save his marriage at the start of the film, Suzie is more ambivalent. But when Kevin’s home invasion goes sideways, Suzie becomes a very different character, all of which drew Rath to the part.

“She’s confronted with not just this invasion, but she’s also in the house that she grew up in, she’s in a familiar environment, and she’s meeting old friends. All of that brings out different parts of her, and that was exciting for me to play. I strangely related to this character,” Rath says with a smile, before assuring “That’s not to say that I would kill anyone…”

“But it’s not off the table,” points out a laughing Biggs.

It’s a good thing that Rath could relate to her character because she even had to portray some of Suzie’s more action-packed scenes. “That is actually all me doing the stunts, except for a scene where Suzie’s jumping out of the canoe,” she says. “The last week and a half of our shoot, our entire crew was struck by a terrible flu. It took out most of them, including the entire stunt team. And so I had to do almost all of it. It was fine because I have a background in action and I love the rush of it. And, you know, stupidly, I feel very safe and protected on set.”

“You should never get hurt on set. Especially not a Jason Biggs set,” Biggs adds.

It’s not the first time that Rath’s thrown herself into an unexpected role. She portrayed the Legion of Super-Heroes‘ resident genius Brainiac 5, a character usually played by her brother Jesse, in two episodes in the fifth season of the Arrowverse series Supergirl. How did Rath play a beloved superhero who had been defined by her own brother?

“I did what he was doing,” she says. “I didn’t do an impression because what he did was very specific. But he’s a massive comic book nerd and I’ve had my entire life informed by that. All I had to do was ask him literally every question I had and he guided me.”

Biggs also has a nerdy credit on his IMDb, having voiced Leonardo of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles between 2012 and 2017, and he also had some feedback from family, but not in quite the same way.

“I didn’t do a whole lot in terms of affectations or anything. I might have gone up a few octaves higher than usual,” he recalls. “But my kids have watched it. They usually don’t care about anything I’m in but that they really, really loved that. The other day, they asked me to do Leonardo. And I said something and they’re like, ‘No, that’s not the voice!’ I didn’t know what they meant because I literally didn’t change much. But they insisted I changed it.”

The story just goes to show that Biggs is committed to upending the expectations people have of him, even if those people are his own children.

Untitled Home Invasion Romance is now available to rent on all major digital platforms.