Those who know Eddie Izzard as an actor and comedian probably think being funny comes naturally to the Englishman. He has made audiences roll on the floor with laughter with his standup routine. He fought for, and successfully won, the love of Uma Thurman in My Super Ex-Girlfriend.
Most recently, Izzard has impressed audiences with his acting skills in the FX show The Riches, now available on DVD. But Izzard takes none of this for granted. Hollywood.com caught up with the star to discuss his road to television and why he loves The Riches.
Hollywood.com: How many times have you and Minnie Driver talked about two Brits playing Americans on American television–and it working so well?
Edie Izzard: We have to thank L.A. Confidential, where two Australians played two Americans in a quintessentially American thing. So we just followed up from those guys and in the end, it’s acting, isn’t it? People see Minnie do a lot of American stuff and don’t realize that she’s English. Also, this is a story about outsiders trying to become insiders and so in that way it works. My oldest son on the show–Noel Fisher is the actor–he’s Canadian. Then there’s Aidan [Mitchell] who plays my youngest son and he spent half of his life in Ireland. Shannon [Woodward] was born in Boca Raton which belonged to the Spanish in the 1600s [laughs]. So a lot of us are outsiders. Also the American dream is interesting because it’s not really the American dream. It’s actually a bigger dream. It’s the world dream.
HW: What’s it like working with Minnie?
EI: I think that Minnie is doing some of her best work here. She’s great. We do 45 minutes of television in seven days, but it’s great to be working up against people who are really at the top of their game and doing some really great stuff. I come from such a curvy route and drama was where I always wanted to get to. I’ve come from street performing, to standup, to here in Hollywood doing drama. The first season I felt that there were some scenes that I got completely right and was loving what I was doing. Then there were other scenes that I was like, “What the hell was I doing there?” It’s going to be a bit like that for me. I’m so not a natural at anything, but I learn stuff–and once I learn it I never forget it.
HW: Do you plan on letting standup go for a while, or will you be going back to that?
EI: No. I’ve been doing it this year. I do it all the time. If people log on to my Web site at eddieizzard.com then they’ll know when I’m gigging. But I’m doing gigs all around because of the writer’s strike I’ll have something that I can go and do. I did 12 Edinburgh festivals. It’s interesting from The Riches point of view. I went through three mediums at the Edinburgh festival. I went through three years of sketch comedy, four years of street performing and I think that it was five years of standup there. I just relentlessly kept going even though I kept failing.
HW: Do you feel like the character found you or you found the character through development?
EI: The character is 60 percent me and Darla is 60 percent Minnie. I think that it starts off with a good basis of the individual with these other things thrown in like the fact that they are travelers, but as time goes on it becomes more and more closer. I think that it’ll edge up to 70 percent. They start writing to your strengths and if you begin to develop more and more strength then they’ll write to those as well. So it’s a mixture of the two, but I think that it comes quite a lot out of one’s personality.
HW: It used to be that television wasn’t something everybody wanted to do, but that’s changed. Why do you think so many actors are doing TV now?
EI: I’ve studied that from the beginning just because I was interested in acting and Hollywood and films, and I think the first three that made it across were Steve McQueen, Clint Eastwood and James Garner. There wasn’t supposed to be a bridge there. I think it’s because the writers were given the power to run the thing. They became the executive producers, so some really good writers said, “Hey, I’m going to write some stuff and produce it too.” Like with The Sopranos, it was like, “Okay, get out there and do edgy, dark, interesting, real life, independent film feeling television. Put it out there.” So they did this and then good actors thought, “I’m going to do some of this stuff.” Then the bridge started going backwards and forwards and it almost feels like a level bridge now.
