The celebrity game: ‘Gail Daughtry’ lets actors spoof the business and its spoils

“We worked hard on our small budget and schedule to say to a lot of people, ‘Anywhere you can show up, we’ll try to make it work,’” says Wain, the film’s director.

Stars — like Jon Hamm and John Slattery — required a bigger commitment. Zoey Deutch, who plays the title character, tried to talk with Hamm while they were in a hot air balloon, “but he was on his phone the whole time. I later found out he was doing Amy Poehler’s podcast,” she says.

Hamm plays Deutch’s sex pass. She plays a naïve bride-to-be who catches her fiancé having sex with a famous star. She extracts the “sex pass” and heads to Los Angeles where she begins to look for Hamm.

Along the way, she meets plenty of celebrities and hits high-profile landmarks.

Wain says it was important to shoot in Los Angeles, particularly because much of the city’s work has gone elsewhere.

“We felt this movie is about L.A.,” he explains. “It was a huge priority to shoot on location with an L.A. crew. We shot right after the fires and not long after the strike and COVID.”

For Deutch, it was a real coup. The first shoot was six minutes from her home. “I’ve never had that before,” she says.

For some key landmarks, like Chateau Marmont and the Creative Artists Agency management headquarters, they had to use green screen shots or shoot on the fly.

“A lot of the shots are in the center of Hollywood,” Wain says. “We basically just stole (shots) running around guerrilla-style.”

Slattery thought he needed to do homework before shooting started, “but it was so silly it was like, ‘You can’t make any mistakes,’” he says.

Marino says he saw Slattery’s skills when he made “Wet Hot American Summer: First Day of Camp,” which aired on Netflix.

“He was so unbelievably funny in a role, playing it straight,” Marino says.

While “Gail Daughtry” pokes the industry it celebrates, it also teaches lessons.

“A celebrity I know ordered a matcha before a press conference,” Wain says. “And I said, ‘Can I get one, too?’ And they were like, ‘Sure, you can have one, too.’ And that’s called playing the celebrity card.

“Babe Ruth was the home run king because he went to bat many times. And he was also the strikeout king. But you cannot get home runs unless you’re willing to strike out … and that’s what I was willing to do.”

Marino says his vast resume has helped him land Knicks tickets.

“I’ve gotten some really good seats because of shows that I’ve been on,” he says. “The trade-off was they put the camera in your face … and you get to watch a Knicks game.”

The downside to celebrity? Someone might tell you you’re their celebrity sex pass.

“A lot of people say that to my mother (Lea Thompson),” Deutch says, “and it was traumatizing as a child. I would hear people say things like that and think it was funny, and I’d be like, ‘I’m her child and that’s so inappropriate.’”