‘Welcome To The Fishbowl’: Sheryl Glubok’s Screwball Comedy Goes Swimmingly At Bentonville Film Festival

A road trip from Denver to Telluride sounds delightful, what with all that gorgeous mountain scenery. But it turns madcap in Welcome to the Fishbowl, the film directed by Sheryl Glubok which just held its world premiere at the Bentonville Film Festival in Arkansas.

Natalie Gold (Succession), Jeremy Swift (Ted Lasso, Downton Abbey), Marin Hinkle (The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel), and Sendhil Ramamurthy (New Amsterdam) star in the comedy which Glubok describes as a “contemporary screwball.” In Bentonville, the filmmaker told us, “It looks at gender relations. It looks at social situations through a comedic lens… It’s my first feature at the age of 50-plus. And so it’s a little bit my story, just a way to look [at how] it’s never too late to live your best life.”

Glubok patterned one scene after the classic comedy Bringing Up Baby, starring Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant (remember the “Swinging Door Susie” jailhouse absurdity?). Grant, though born in Britain, played American in Bringing Up Baby. Swift, from Stockton-on-Tees, England, gets to maintain his native accent in Fishbowl.

“He almost attempted an American accent for a minute and I was like, ‘We want to hear you as a British,’” Glubok recalled. “He plays a narcissistic literary legend. He is phenomenal. We know he’s a comedic genius from Ted Lasso and Downton Abbey.”

Gold stars as Elizabeth Ford, modeled to a degree on Glubok, who co-wrote the script with Donald Rae.

“My character is a wife and a mother who is in her 40s and wakes up one day as a writer and realizes, ‘I have been doing things for everybody else my whole life. What do I want? Who am I?’” Gold told us in Bentonville. “And through a kind of screwball series of events, finds her own voice and her own happiness.”

Hinkle adds a twist as an executive with a romantic link to Swift’s literary man.

“She’s worked hard as an editor, very powerful one in New York City and [Gold’s character] worked for her but left town and moved and raised a family. I’m ready to shift my life and say goodbye, sell my work and office and move on,” Hinkle explained. “I’ve had a love affair for years with Jeremy’s character and I’m ready to let go of that too. So, there’s kind of a moment where everybody’s got an obstacle and they’re trying to figure out how to get through it and then comedy ensues.”

Welcome to the Fishbowl was shot in Colorado, at 21 locations.

“I love location-based filmmaking,” Glubok said. “I worked on Sling Blade in the early 90s when I was coming up and that kind of set the tone for me. Having a location informs the characters… like that vibe in Alexander’s Payne’s films. So, it’s really a love letter to Colorado.”

Swift couldn’t attend the Bentonville Film Festival. “He’s having FOMO, but we talked to him this morning,” Gold shared. He evidently missed out on a fun premiere.

“It was great… We had a sold-out house,” Gold told Deadline. “We had a beautiful audience. We got to see it with people laughing.”

“Different age ranges” were in the audience, Hinkle said, “which is wonderful. Different kinds of people from different backgrounds. It felt like it was very a pure response.”

“Since I’m from Arkansas, it was really beautiful to have the premiere here,” Glubok commented. “It was amazing. It was a very warm and loving audience.”