Susan Sarandon hopes to be a fun grandmother like her Tammy character, "without the alcohol and pills".
The iconic actress stars as outgoing pensioner Pearl in the upcoming comedy movie, with Melissa McCarthy taking on the title role of her onscreen granddaughter.
Although the 67-year-old may be considered too youthful-looking to play someone who has two generations below her, Susan was able to relate to her alter ego more than people realise.
"Actually, if you accept the premise that I was 16 when I had a baby, and my daughter was 16 when she had a baby, Pearl would be maybe two years older than I actually am. One of the things about Pearl is that she’s very curious and really has an appetite for life, so she’s not a granny in the way that you would think of a grandmother," she explained to Collider. "I hope she’s the kind of grandmother, without the alcohol and pills, that I would be. She would take you on adventures and encourage you to do things you haven’t done."
The movie follows Tammy and Pearl as they embark on a humorous road trip, encountering trouble along the way. Susan is the star of one of the most well-known car trip films ever made, having appeared in 1991 hit Thelma & Louise alongside Geena Davis. It wasn't until a scene in Tammy started to replicate a much-loved moment in the classic feature that Susan realised the similarities.
"It really didn’t come up until we were doing a photo shoot and they brought out a convertible and the setting was the desert. I said, 'Are you sure you want to go there with this' And they said, 'Oh my god, we didn’t even think of Thelma & Louise!'
"Road trip movies are always a great set-up for catastrophe. I’ve been offered maybe four movies in the last year-and-a-half that had to do with middle-aged couples whose marriages are on the rocks and, for one reason or another, they take a road trip and you see what happens. I think the contrivance of a road trip has been around forever," she explained.