Cameron Diaz, Keanu Reeves and Matt Bomer talk new comedy Outcome: "Social media makes everybody famous"

This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine.

In a converted aircraft hangar in Santa Monica, Keanu Reeves, Cameron Diaz and Matt Bomer are in front of assembled journalists and influencers. Part of Apple TV’s lavish 2026 showcase, they’re in town to promote Outcome, a scabrous new comedy co-written, co-produced and directed by Jonah Hill. On stage, the trio pretend that Hill – the Oscar-nominated star of The Wolf of Wall Street – has scripted their words, announcing he’s “Meryl Streep versatile” and has “the charisma of Timothée Chalamet”.

In truth, it’s hard to imagine Hill penning this softball spiel. On set, “Jonah would love to give everybody lines to say that are quite funny or challenging or ridiculous or extreme,” Reeves tells me the next day, tucked away in a discreet LA hotel. He’s not wrong: Outcome is a prickly Hollywood satire that bites the hand that feeds.

Reeves plays Reef Hawk, an Oscar-winning Hollywood megastar, recovering drug addict and all-round douchebag, who ducked out of the business for five years to get clean from heroin – only to return just as a blackmailer threatens to leak a career-crushing video. “I just was like, poor Reef, poor guy,” says Reeves, dressed today in limo-black. “He’s not really a bad guy. But he’s kind of an asshole. F**ked up a lot.”

Like his character, Reeves is one of the biggest stars on the planet, thanks to action films like Speed, The Matrix and John Wick. But mellow-voiced and ultra laid-back, Reeves does feel far removed from the anxious, addiction-grappling Reef. “I could understand some of the parameters,” he admits, “but I didn’t really have the experience of that character. I could draw from my life, but it wasn’t biographical.”

When we meet, Reeves has just come off a Broadway run of Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, co-starring Alex Winter, his cohort from the Bill & Ted’s… comedy films. But more often his comic talents have been overlooked. “Comedy is hard!” he exclaims, “especially when you’re not trying to be funny.” Was it a case of, at 61, turning to the lighter side of the film industry because his knees could no longer take the impact of a gruelling action shoot? “I don’t know if it was a reaction to anything,” he says. “I mean, I do love being in comedies.”

Despite being a comedy, Outcome shows how lonely it can be at the top. As Reef reunites with people from his past amid his search for the blackmailer, the film is really asking: how can facing who we were, shape who we are today? “I guess it depends on what you’re looking at and what you can see and can’t see, right?” says Reeves.

Born in Beirut, Reeves’s school years were in Toronto, a “down-to-earth” environment to grow up in. “The grade school that I went to… I always look back fondly on my earlier childhood there,” he says. “It was multiracial. People with money, people without money – there was a real mix of people and it was great. I wasn’t exposed to racism or anything like that. If there were fights, it’s because you didn’t get along. It wasn’t because of where you came from or who you were.And I think in this film, part of it is getting a reflection of self through your friendships – people who’ve known you for a while.”

The people Reef has in his court are best friends Kyle (Diaz) and Xander (Bomer), and Ira (Hill) an unctuous, fast-talking crisis lawyer who firefights high-profile scandals (“Tom Hanks body-slammed his housekeeper,” he yells at one point).

Diaz has known fame for almost as long as Reeves, debuting in 1994’s The Mask opposite Jim Carrey when she was 21 – and turning into one of the most bankable stars in Hollywood, thanks to films like Charlie’s Angels, Vanilla Sky and Gangs of New York. Then, in 2015, she took a step back, marrying musician Benji Madden, becoming a mother and investing in everything from organic wine to wellness (she wrote The Longevity Book, about the art of growing older). A year ago, she returned from her Hollywood hiatus with the Netflix comedy Back in Action.

“You just do what you love and prioritise,” she says, fizzing with energy. “A friend of mine said many years ago, you only have 100 per cent in life to give, and you have to figure out how you’re going to divide up that 100 per cent and what percentage you’re going to put in each bucket of your life. And I think at best, you try to split it as evenly as possible. But there’s always a priority. And for me, it’s my family. So even when I’m doing all these other things, my family is first and foremost.”

Outcome is a sharp reminder of the perils of success. “For me, it was about understanding proximity to fame and public notoriety,” says Bomer, 48 – a Golden Globe winner for his role in Ryan Murphy’s TV drama The Normal Heart, who has yet to achieve the levels of fame that Diaz or Reeves has. “For better or worse, I had a lot of friends who achieved a certain level of success long before I did. So I understood what it was like to watch a friend go through that, and all the trials and errors that we all make when that happens. And so, I think I tried to draw from that.”

Hill has claimed Outcome “uses fame as a metaphor for what we all go through on social media”. Diaz – who has over 12 million followers on Instagram – elaborates. “Social media makes everybody famous,” she says. “Depending on how many likes you have, you can be famous wherever you go. Everybody thinks they are reaching for it. But maybe this reveals a little bit what it feels like on the inside of the extreme circumstance.”

Just as Reef has support from his oldest friends, keeping in contact with those you met before you were famous is crucial. “Childhood friends... I’m still close with a lot of them,” nods Bomer, who grew up in Missouri (and is a distant cousin of Justin Timberlake). The San Diego-born Diaz is another who makes it a point to keep in touch. “I don’t talk to my friends all the time, but we connect when we can,” she says. “[I’ll often say], ‘I’m sorry I didn’t text you for two weeks. I meant to write you back!’”

But perhaps the most wince-inducing moment in Outcome is when Reef confronts his mother (All My Children soap star Susan Lucci), finally realising that she’s a person herself as well as the woman that raised him. “That’s one of the journeys of life, isn’t it?” says Reeves, whose own mother Patricia, a costume designer, raised him after divorcing his father. “You start off screaming for air. Maybe you don’t scream, but as a child you can’t see.”

Since becoming a mother – to daughter Raddix, six, and son, Cardinal, two – Diaz has been struck by this. “As a parent, you go, ‘Oh, I have to wait until they’re 40 for them to see I’m a human being!’”

Whatever the outcome – Hollywood star or not – success can’t be a person’s sole pursuit. “It’s about growth, it’s about self-awareness,” says Diaz. “It’s about going, ‘Who am I and what do I want out of life? What do I have to do? What do I have to give up?’”

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