Patricia Arquette Reveals the Role That Cured Her Overalls Addiction

Patricia Arquette has apparently thought about her own funeral in more detail than most people think about their next vacation, right down to the outfit and snack of choice. It took one costume conversation on Evil Genius to shake that plan loose.

Evil Genius May Have Cured Patricia Arquette’s Overalls Addiction

The reveal came during a Hollywood Reporter TIFF interview, when David Harbour turned the conversation toward Arquette’s well-known attachment to overalls and asked if working on the film had changed anything.

“You kind of cured me of my overall addiction… I used to say I wanted to get buried in my overalls with like a caramel apple. That was my plan,” she said.

It’s a specific enough image that it clearly wasn’t a throwaway line for her. Overalls and a caramel apple sound less like a costume choice and more like a personal identity she’d fully committed to, tombstone included. Then came the shift.

“And then after this movie, I was a little bit like I don’t really know if I feel the same about my overalls,” the 58-year-old added.

In Evil Genius, Harbour plays Bill Rothstein, the accomplice at the center of the 2003 “pizza bomber” case directed by Courteney Cox, while Arquette plays his former partner, Marjorie Diehl-Armstrong.

Harbour explained earlier in the same conversation that the Carhartt overalls were reworked around his frame to nail a very specific silhouette, and that he was drawn to playing a large, potentially menacing man with small, delicate gestures, “almost like he was holding a teacup.”

Watching that version of overalls take shape on screen appears to be what got under Arquette’s skin about her own version of the look. She stopped short of fully renouncing them, noting she still owns a pair that’s baggy and light, but the caramel apple burial plan seems to be back on the table for revision.

Harbour, for his part, wasn’t ready to let the bit go, joking that he’d get the overalls addiction carved onto her tombstone regardless.

Evil Genius also stars Michael Chernus, Garret Dillahunt, and Danielle Macdonald, and premiered at TIFF on September 12.