Weird Things We Can't Ignore About Alison Brie And Dave Franco's Marriage

When it comes to Hollywood's weirdest relationships, it's tough to top Alison Brie and Dave Franco's marriage. These days, age gap relationships are a dime a dozen in Tinseltown, and we've learned to expect the unexpected; we hardly bat an eyelash when "twin flames" drink each other's blood, and we immediately accept that, yeah, Katy Perry and Justin Trudeau make sense as a couple. But most pairs don't let their freak flags fly quite as high as Franco and Brie, whose level of closeness has become too creepy to be couple goals.

The almost inseparable pair are occasional co-stars, and Franco has directed his wife in a rom-com and a horror movie. Brie loved working with her husband on "Somebody I Used to Know," telling Story & Rain, "We were mind-melding even more, almost communicating telepathically about the scenes." However, she wasn't silently zapping one of her favorite pet names for Franco to him via their brain waves when he directed her in "The Rental." On "Late Night With Seth Meyers," Brie said she asked her hubs if he wanted her to stop calling him "honey" in front of the other actors. "He was like, 'Could you call me David Franco? I need you to be professional,'" she recalled (via E! News).

As uncannily connected and enormously enamored as they are with one another now, Brie once told Playboy of her mother-in-law, "[S]he is so wonderful and sweet that our joke for a long time — and it's true — is that Davey's mom and I said 'I love you' to each other before he and I had said 'I love you.'" If you thought that detail about Brie and Franco's love story was bizarre, be forewarned: Things only get stranger from here for the "Together" stars.

Alison Brie's love life could have taken a totally different trajectory. On "The View" (via the Daily Mail), she recalled that "Community" creator Dan Harmon once asked her if she would be interested in going on a date with Jason Sudeikis, which she was totally down with. However, Harmon had to abort his matchmaking attempt when he learned that Sudeikis was not on the market. As for Dave Franco, Brie first saw him at a Halloween party, but she didn't make his acquaintance. After they got together, Brie discovered that she had video footage of both of them being blissfully unaware of each other's presence. "[I]n the back of the video, you can see Dave and his friend dressed as Mario and Luigi," she told W magazine. While this sounds like a scenario straight out of an episode of "How I Met Your Mother," Brie told Interview her relationship history with Franco is more like "Love & Other Drugs" — if you take the title at face value.

Later on, a mutual friend named Jules tried to play matchmaker for the pair during dinner at Mardi Gras. "I have a text from Jules that's like, 'You should hook up with Dave tonight,'" Brie recalled while taking the GQ Couples Quiz. "And I'm like, 'Yes, please.'" Unbeknown to her, Jules let Dave see the text to see if he was also into this plan, which he was.

After that dinner, Brie dropped a doozy of a pickup line on Franco: "I have some Molly." On "The Tonight Show," she summed up what happened next by telling Jimmy Fallon, "It was 48 hours of drugs and sex, a lot of making out."

If you thought the raunchy rom-com start of Dave Franco and Alison Brie's relationship would have been hilarious to witness, wait until you hear about how he popped the question. On "The Drew Barrymore Show," Alison Brie advocated for getting intimate on the first date and shared a photo that was a visual representation of her wild first night with Franco. She had a Mardi Gras mask on top of her head, and Franco had a piece of paper reading "must be 21 to enter" stuck on him. While it's not the most romantic image, Brie scribbled her number on that mask and tucked it into Franco's bag, which is how they began texting.

Franco held onto the mask for years and decided to wear it during his seaside proposal. In a different appearance on "The Drew Barrymore Show," Brie recounted how the magic moment began: "I'm wiping sand off my butt. ... And then I turn around finally, and he's just on one knee in a silver Zorro mask, with a box that is not a ring box." Unfortunately for Franco, Brie didn't recognize the mask, so she had no idea why he was wearing it. She burst out laughing at the scene unfolding in front of her and couldn't stop when she got a good look at the ring, which she described as "a medieval piece of corroded metal." She explained that she and Franco had already discussed her engagement ring and decided that she would have it designed by Irene Neuwirth after getting engaged, but he had wanted something to propose with. Luckily, Brie said yes after ensuring that Franco wasn't joking.

Early in their relationship, Alison Brie decided to plan an '80s-themed costume party for Dave Franco as a birthday surprise, not realizing that he is not a big surprise guy. Worse yet, the guest list ballooned when she tasked two of his friends with creating it because she didn't know everyone in his inner circle at that time. "It turned into sort of a rager at my house. ... The pro football player across the street came over with his crew of guys," she recalled on "Late Night With Seth Meyers." Upon seeing how Franco reacted to the crowd, Brie gave him a marijuana cookie in hopes that it would calm him down. Unfortunately, it didn't help. "It had the opposite effect, where I ran downstairs and had the first panic attack of my life," Franco recalled on "The Tonight Show" in 2017. "And so, I'm downstairs, I'm telling Alison, 'Get everyone out of here.'" The last guest to leave was a guy in a cocaine costume.

At another point, Brie and Franco planned on reliving the beginning of their epic love story by doing Molly together as research for a scene in their Airbnb horror movie "The Rental." But the night they were supposed to take the drug, Franco's position as the film's director called for him to deal with some staffing issues. Because of this, he took such a small dosage that it didn't get him high. As for Brie, she recalled in her Interview magazine conversation with Franco, "I was [my character] Michelle, dancing around our hotel room for the rest of the night, by myself."

Before she met Dave Franco, Alison Brie had no interest in getting married. She revealed to USA Today that she was so dedicated to living a solo lifestyle that she didn't even want pets. While Brie remains steadfast in her desire to remain child-free, she did go all in on matrimony and cat parenting after Franco swept her off her feet. On the "Not Skinny but Not Fat" podcast, she recalled dropping a hint by telling Franco, "Oh no, my phone's open. How embarrassing that you saw that picture of that ring. That's so weird."

But before Franco put a ring on it, Brie had to embrace the two felines in his life. Unfortunately, she probably wasn't his pets' favorite person in the early days of their relationship. "I was staying at her house most nights, and my cats were feeling neglected," Franco recalled on "The Late Late Show" in 2016. So, before he and Brie had started shacking up, he made the unusual move of asking her if his cats could start living with her. When Brie agreed, Franco knew he had found the one.

Brie fully embraced her new role as a cat mom. On "The Kelly Clarkson Show," she revealed that she and Franco enjoy dressing their kitties up in handkerchiefs designed by Tom Hanks' look-alike son, Colin Hanks. "Our favorite thing is to triple spoon with our cats," she added. Like most parents, the couple also has disagreements on how much freedom to give their children. "Lately, I've been obsessed with getting some leashes to take them out of the box. He's like, 'No,'" Brie told People in 2022.

Couples who dress alike often get side-eye from those who don't understand the appeal of looking like twin toddlers or second-grade besties, but that hasn't stopped Alison Brie and Dave Franco from buying the same clothing. Franco and Brie didn't just get "personal" while writing "Somebody I Used to Know" by drawing inspiration from their own lives; they told Vanity Fair that they worked on the screenplay while wearing "matching Palo Alto sweatsuits."

In an Elle U.K. interview, Brie expressed admiration for how her husband dresses and confessed that she goes to "Single White Female" lengths to steal his look (where's Joan Rivers when you need her?). "I'm always kind of copying his day-to-day style in addition to also low-key trying to shrink some of his sweatshirts and sweaters," she said. In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, she and Franco revealed that a sweater that was passed back and forth between them in real life even makes a very fitting appearance in their horror movie "Together." When Brie admitted to tossing some of Franco's vintage purchases in the dryer, he was a good sport about it. "This is intriguing," was all he said — before stating that he'd happily share a toothbrush with Brie "for fun." She, on the other hand, would only be so generous if the fate of their dental hygiene depended on one set of bristles.

Alison Brie has a history of taking off her shirt in public (Alexa, play "One Week" by Barenaked Ladies). She told People that getting nude is something she used to do for a laugh while attending college at the California Institute of the Arts. However, her husband doesn't find it quite as amusing when she strips down in front of other people. "I've spent years talking Dave into accepting my comfort with nudity. He's comfortable with me being nude at our home, but in public, he's more averse to it," Brie revealed.

But being the big wife guy that he is, Franco agreed to give Brie's character a streaking scene when he directed her in "Somebody I Used to Know." When it came time to film it, he had to keep telling her it wasn't quite time to remove her clothes. "I kept disrobing before we were even shooting and Dave was like, 'Babe, not yet, too soon,'" she recalled to News.com.au, adding that shooting the scene wasn't her most recent experience running around in her birthday suit. "I was streaking around the hotel last night before our LA premiere just to get my energy up," she revealed. Her stark-naked stunt served as one heck of a promo for the movie when she shared video proof on Instagram that it actually happened, but in her caption, she wrote that the reason she did it was because Franco had been "feeling anxious about his movie premiere."

In 2023, Alison Brie spoke to Jezebel about her experience shooting steamy scenes with her "Somebody I Used to Know" co-star Jay Ellis — with her husband sitting in the director's chair. "It doesn't make Dave and I uncomfortable. ... "I realize that it sounds wild, but we are actors, this is our job. It's actually not that weird," she insisted (via Fox News). However, there was at least one occasion when she wasn't completely comfortable with what was going down on one of their projects. She called the 2017 movie "The Little Hours," in which she played a nun, "the ripping of the Band-Aid" because it called for Franco to fake intimacy with her, Aubrey Plaza, and Kate Micucci. Brie decided not to stick around on the set when Franco filmed a threesome scene with the latter two women but did tell the Los Angeles Daily News, "[I]t's one of my favorite scenes in the movie. I think it's very sexy."

Brie and Franco have also discussed baring their backsides in movies. The topic came up when she filmed the 2015 rom-com "Sleeping With Other People" alongside her former almost-date Jason Sudeikis. This time, it was Franco's turn to squirm. "He was kind of like, 'I don't know, these scenes are so racy, should you show your butt?'" she recalled on "The Late Late Show" in 2017. "I was like, 'You just showed your butt in a sex scene in 'Neighbors,' and he was like, 'That's comedy butt!'"

Alison Brie told Rough Draft Atlanta that she and Dave Franco share a similar taste in trashy reality TV series (because of course they do). "We're real suckers for 'Bachelor in Paradise,'" she confessed. And while many viewers find reality TV's most awkward kisses difficult to watch, Brie lives for face-sucking that's a slobbery mess. For Franco's sake, we just hope there were no habañeros in the house if the couple witnessed Evan Bass and Carly Waddell's muy caliente Season 3 smooch, which started with the pair chowing down on the hot peppers and ended with them connected via a long saliva string. "You know what traumatizes Dave in terms of making out? Is that sometimes ... we're watching a reality show like 'The Bachelor' or 'Love Island,'" Brie began in an interview with People. In true that couple fashion, Franco finished her thought, saying, "And there's these first kisses that are sometimes a little sloppy or a little awkward. She always wants to re-create them on me."

When the couple switches from reality television to "The White Lotus," the cultural sensation created by "Survivor" star Mike White, Franco gets an opportunity to relax and be a spectator to his wife's antics rather than a participant. Describing what goes down when the show's hypnotic opening credits music starts playing, Franco said during their GQ Couples Quiz, "You would slowly get outta bed and then start doing an interpretive dance all over the bedroom, which would culminate in you taking off your shirt."

Alison Brie and Dave Franco's body horror flick "Together" explores what happens when codependency and a fear of commitment take a dark and twisted turn for a couple (it's definitely one of those movies you shouldn't watch with your significant other). They naturally play the pair at the center of the film, and they participated in what appeared to be some rather bizarre publicity stunts to promote it. There was the infamous video of Brie clipping Franco's toenails in a park, which they were asked about in an interview with KiSS 92.5. All Brie would say about it was, "I will clip Dave's toenails anytime, anywhere."

In another video, they went all "Lady and the Tramp" on a single french fry at a Wendy's, and they were also filmed sharing a single ice cream cone on a picnic table. But some of the freakiest footage showed Franco removing a soaking wet towel from Brie's neck after a workout, sniffing it, and squeezing its contents into his mouth. 

During their press tour, they also had to participate in silly stunts, such as Franco feeding Brie cereal and brushing her teeth while standing behind her for "Hot Ones Versus." Then there were the endless questions meant to test how well they know each other. After Brie guessed that Jessica Rabbit was the first celebrity Franco had a crush on, she refused to accept his actual answer: Helen Mirren. "It was Jennifer Love Hewitt. ... What would you have seen Helen Mirren in when you were a kid?" she said to him. His argument was that she's a true Hollywood icon, and who can argue with that?

Alison Brie and Dave Franco also opened up about their intense experience shooting "Together" while promoting the movie. Franco once shared a little TMI about his wife with Interview magazine, saying, "[S]he pees a lot." This could have posed a problem when prosthetics were used to bind them together during filming. "Obviously we've peed in front of each other before. ... But not while touching skin to skin. That's a rarity," Brie told People of an awkward bathroom visit. Franco added, "I remember in that moment thinking we could not have made this movie with anyone else."

The movie was also physically challenging. Brie told The Hollywood Reporter she smashed her nose up, leaving it black and blue, and Franco's body also took a beating. Rope burns left him with bloody hands, and he collected so many bruises of his own that he started documenting them in a "bruise photo journal." You'd think the pair would want a break from the brutal punishment, but Franco recalled, "[W]e were begging, 'We want more.'"

The couple realized making the movie wasn't going to be a cakewalk, with Brie stating, "[W]e went into the whole experience knowing that it would all end in divorce for us or we would be more codependent than ever." Spoiler alert (about her comment, not the film): "It's the latter," she said.