Long Shot Trailer: Charlize Theron and Seth Rogen Live Out Every Kid’s Babysitter Fantasy
Many a child has dreamed up a fan-fiction-style storyline in which their cool older babysitter wakes up one day to realize that the 8-year-old they’re paid to hang out with on Friday nights is pretty cool too. In the upcoming film Long Shot, Seth Rogen lives out that impossible fantasy, somehow finding himself on equal footing with his childhood babysitter, played by Charlize Theron, once they’re both adults and he’s (mostly) past his awkward phase.
In the rom-com, as seen in its first trailer, released Friday, Theron is U.S. Secretary of State Charlotte Field, with the sitting president’s endorsement for her own presidential run in the next election, while Rogen is Fred Flarsky, a journalist who gets reprimanded by his editor for being “a little too much.” In a twist of fate, they both end up at the same party, where Field vaguely recognizes “Flarsky,” the nerdy tween she used to babysit. The chance meeting turns serendipitous for them both when Field later proposes bringing him onto her campaign team to help punch up her speeches—much to the chagrin of her campaign manager, played by June Diane Raphael—since he’s a skilled writer and already knows her fairly well (or, at least, her high school self).
Thus ensues a montage showing Flarsky accompanying Field on state visits around the world in an attempt to get to know her as an adult. They share a platonic “seven minutes in heaven” on Air Force Two, discuss their sexual preferences while surrounded by Secret Service agents, and swap clothes so Field can have a rare night of letting loose at a rave—because she’s somehow less noticeable in a neon jacket and flat-brim cap than in one of her usual sheath dresses.
In a refreshing riff on Hollywood’s tendency to pair average men with gorgeous women who, in the real world, would likely be way out of their league, the obstacles facing Field and Flarsky stem mostly from that very disparity. At one point, Raphael’s character points to survey data showing that Field’s constituents would not approve of a romance between, say, Kate Middleton and Danny DeVito. At another, Flarsky’s requisite sensible friend, here played by O’Shea Jackson Jr., explains, “It’s Pretty Woman, but she’s Richard Gere and you’re Julia Roberts,” which hopefully foreshadows a grand finale in which Field sweeps Flarsky off his fire escape and into a life of grandeur.
Watch the full trailer for Long Shot, here:
The film is set to open May 3 and also stars Alexander Skarsgård (as the prime minister of Canada), Bob Odenkirk, Andy Serkis, Ravi Patel, and Randall Park. It was written by The Interview’s Dan Sterling and The Post’s Liz Hannah, and directed by frequent Rogen collaborator Jonathan Levine, who helmed 50/50 and The Night Before.
