From finding love and getting lucky on the big screen as The 40 Year-Old Virgin to micromanaging the laughs at The Office on TV, Steve Carell clearly has an MBA in funny business, earning a slot as one of the presenters at this year’s Academy Awards. Hollywood.com caught up with Carell for some serious talk about getting laughs.
Hollywood.com: Are you feeling any nerves about making your first appearance at the Academy Awards?
Steve Carell: Oh, not at all. I mean, there’s nothing to be nervous about. I just go out and read a card.
HW: How about any sympathy butterflies for your friend, Jon Stewart, who’s hosting?
SC: Am I nervous for him? You know what? I think that he’ll handle it marvelously. He’s just a smart guy. He’ so intensely smart that I don’t think that he’ll have any sort of problem with coming up with volumes of material to entertain people, and he’s also a very good improviser, and so he will adjust and roll with whatever happens during the evening.
HW: Any lingering resentment that The 40 Year-Old Virgin isn’t up for Best Picture?
SC: He says ironically: “I was shocked.”
HW: Your film and Wedding Crashers brought back the R-rated comedy for grown-ups. Are you going to keep on trying to make those kinds of films?
SC: No, not necessarily. I’m just going to go where the work is and try to keep busy. That was sort of the genre that we were trying to write the movie within, but it’s not something that I’m planning on making an entire career on.
HW: Is your chest hair back to normal after that infamous scene at the waxer?
SC: It took about a month to get it back to the way that it was previous to “The Incident,” as I like to refer to it as. About a month, and then it came back and it looks exactly the same as it did before. It was incredibly uncomfortable when it was coming back. It was a series of ingrown hairs and rashes and bloody pores. It was a mess. Ask my wife. She didn’t enjoy the process of the return.
HW: Did you know when you were doing that scene that that was going to be the one that everyone would talk about?
SC: Not at all, no. In our minds we just thought that it was something that would be funny. I pitched it to Judd [Apatow, the writer-director] as something that I thought would be amusing, sort of a tribute to the Pretty Woman makeover scene, but no. We had no idea that it would sort of be a centerpiece.
HW: The producers of The Office said they learned a lot from what you did in that film and have applied it to make your TV character Michael Scott more relatable and even lovable.
SC: Well, I looked at the first six episodes as sort of getting to know this character, and you don’t want to give away too much too soon about any of the characters. So it was sort of our choice to not really reveal much of any sort of vulnerability or pathos so early on, and to just sort of paint him as this guy with an enormous blind spot socially, and registering his sort of discomfort and love affair with the camera that was suddenly on him. But this season now that character has become more familiar with the camera crew, sort of easing into his role as the host of this show and the star of it in his own mind, you start to see other facets of this character. So that’s sort of the progression, and we were hoping that it would continue further so that we could show more about all of the characters.
HW: Are you at all worried about being pigeonholed in terms of the comedy roles you play?
SC: Not at all. I’m not worried about being pigeonholed, because I just try and do things that I think are good. I’m my only barometer in terms of what I think will work, and you can’t please everyone. That goes without saying–and especially comedically it’s very hard to please everyone’s sense of humor. Without getting too much into a discussion about humor, it’s a very abstract thing and very subjective. So I’m sure that some people find The Office incredibly funny and others might not get it, but that’s fine. That’s why there are so many choices.
HW: Is there any talk about having Ricky Gervais appear on the show at all?
SC: Not to my knowledge, no. I don’t know if there’s been talk. I don’t think that the show is real high on stunt casting necessarily, because it sort of takes you out of the reality of this Scranton office, and to try and figure out why there would be this English office manager suddenly in Scranton might be a bit of a stretch, but you never know. You never know how worlds can collide.
[Note: Shortly after this interview, it was announced that co-creators Gervais and Stephen Merchant would write an episode of the American version of The Office next season.]
HW: Does the fact that the show was able to take some time to build an audience and a following make it more meaningful to you that it’s now a hit?
SC: I suppose so. I think that just the fact that we’re getting attention isn’t necessarily more meaningful necessarily, but the fact that we’re beating the odds at this point is great, because I’m really enjoying it. That’s not a lie, either. Every single person in the cast and crew and writing team–it’s a labor of love for us. We really, really enjoy it. We’ll meet at people’s houses and watch episodes.
HW: Shows that can only have a positive effect on your comic timing.
SC: I think that it will only add to it.
HW: Is there anything that you don’t miss about your stint The Daily Show? Those interviews must have been tricky to pull off.
SC: That honestly was the hardest part of it. My first real piece was really difficult, because when I started it was really before Jon had put his imprint on the show. The real pieces tended to be a little bit more mean-spirited than they eventually became, and that just wasn’t in my makeup. I didn’t think that was fun. I didn’t think that was anything valuable. I didn’t like going out and making fun of people. They turned into something better than that I think, and the way that I sort of tried to adjust that was to put the impetus on myself to be the idiot, as opposed to the people that I was interviewing, and that way we could sort of capture their reactions to me and that would be equally as funny because they were like, “Why is this complete ass interviewing me?” So we could create real pieces out of that. It’s hard because essentially you are improvising all day and you’re playing a character all day and sort of pretending to be someone that you’re not with people who aren’t in on the joke. So it was a difficult thing. I’m sure that it’s a lot harder to get things done now. I’m sure it’s harder to get people to respond naturally because they know the show and are familiar with the content, and so they sort of play along with you.
HW: You have joined Ben Stiller, Owen Wilson, Will Ferrell and Vince Vaughn in the movies’ hottest, coolest comedy clique–any plans to collaborate with any of those guys again?
SC: I hope to. I don’t have any definite plans to, but I would love to work with any one of those guys. I don’t know if I’m a part of that fraternity, but if I’m a junior varsity member I would be happy.
HW: What’s the most interesting piece of fan mail that you’ve gotten recently?
SC: I don’t tend to get a lot of fan mail. No. There haven’t been any nude pictures sent to me, or groupies. I don’t think that I inspire that kind of devotion.
HW: Not even from Jon?
SC: Oh, I’ve been down that road already. I know what that looks like. I don’t need any pictures. I have that burned into my memory.
HW: So there’s no Steve Carell Fan Club?
SC: If there is, I haven’t been invited to any of their meetings.
