There’s divine casting, and then there’s divine casting.

In the case of Bill Murray, who plays the Almighty himself in The Phoenician Scheme, it’s the latter. “I don’t know that we chose Bill to play God,” writer-director Wes Anderson tells Entertainment Weekly, pausing to gleefully add, “possibly God did.”

Jokes aside, Anderson says the casting was a match made in heaven. “What I will say is when Bill walked onto the set in his robes and his beard, he could barely move. And yet he seemed very comfortable, and he occupied his throne in a relaxed manner. It just didn’t seem that he was faking it. We knew very quickly he was going to be an informal God who is creating without making a show of it.”

The film follows Benicio del Toro’s wealthy businessman Zsa-zsa Korda, who appoints his only daughter, Liesl (Mia Threapleton), a nun, as sole heir to his estate. As Liesl, Korda, and his tutor, kooky bug lover Bjorn (Michael Cera), embark together on a new enterprise, they come up against several bonkers assassination attempts, presumably from Korda’s many enemies. Each time, Korda enters a sort of liminal space —a black and white heaven —where he experiences moments of personal growth and introspection. Here, he encounters Murray’s God… among other things.

“I think some of the most important changes in Benicio’s character Zsa-zsa are taking place during these sort of visions that he’s having as he repeatedly dies, or keeps getting assassinated,” Anderson explains.

To create this heaven — a first for an Anderson joint — he knew he wanted it all to be real. “We wanted it to all exist in front of the camera, to not use computer visual effects, to have it all be there,” he says, adding, “and so we made something kind of like a 360-degree stage, a set of clouds painted, sculpted, and we created a sort of Biblical troupe for these scenes.” (Other members credited in this troupe include F. Murray Abraham, Charlotte Gainsbourg, and Willem Dafoe.) 

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“I think it’s sort of the way biblical settings and characters were portrayed during the Renaissance, I think that’s really what we’ve done,” Anderson adds. “I mean, we’re so familiar with the Renaissance representation of stories from the Bible, and ours is the black and white version of that.”

The Phoenician Scheme, which was co-written with frequent Anderson collaborator Roman Coppola, also stars Riz Ahmed, Tom Hanks, Bryan Cranston, Mathieu Amalric, Jeffrey Wright, Scarlett Johansson, Richard Ayoade, Benedict Cumberbatch, Rupert Friend, and Hope Davis. The film is now playing in theaters.

Mindy Kaling is just happy Ben Affleck hasn’t sued her.

The multi-hyphenate sat down for a conversation as part of the Paley Media Council Series on Thursday, and she revealed that Affleck isn’t the biggest fan of her career-making play, Matt & Ben, about Matt Damon and Affleck’s time as roommates cowriting Good Will Hunting.

Kaling wrote and starred in the play back in 2002, and it landed her a writing job on The Office. “I played and [her friend Brenda Withers] played Matt Damon in a fictionalized version of a time of strife in their relationship, with a creative difference,” Kaling said, according to The Hollywood Reporter. “It was them writing Good Will Hunting and it takes place over a course of like one day in their lives.”

Greg Daniels, who created The Office and is also behind upcoming spinoff The Paper, saw Kaling in the play and offered her a job on his staff.

During the earliest parts of her career, Kaling said that she’d never met Damon or Affleck, but that has since changed — and it turns out that Affleck isn’t that into the play. “Ben Affleck is to this day the most fun role I’ve ever played,” she said. “For the record, he’s not, like, crazy about it.”

“He’s like such a good sport but he had a Christmas party a couple of years ago and I remember going, and he’s like, ‘You still owe me residuals from that play you did,'” she continued. “But he’s nice — I would have sued.”

Representatives for Affleck did not immediately respond to Entertainment Weekly‘s request for comment.

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Kaling wrote more extensively of her experiences writing and starring in the play in her first memoir Is Everyone Hanging Out With Me? (and Other Concerns).

The creator of Running Point and The Mindy Project hasn’t performed on screen in six years, but she also spoke at the Paley event about a possible return to acting. “I miss it, and I would like to write or co-create a show for me to act in soon,” she said. “I would love to do [something like The Mindy Project] again…that’s the thing that maybe in the next couple years, when I launch a couple other things that are earlier in the pipeline, that would be something that would be fun to do again.”