Steve Carell has played his fair share of faux newsmen in Anchorman, Bruce Almighty and of course, his stint on The Daily Show. But now, he’s out to prove that he can deliver much more than just the news.
With the title role in the upcoming The 40 Year Old Virgin, which he co-wrote, and the laugh-out-loud lead in NBC’s hit American version of the Brit TV hit The Office, Carell is poised to be the Next Big Thing. Just don’t tell Carell that.
When we visited him on the Culver City set of The 40 Year-Old Virgin, the actor insists he just “fell into” his burgeoning Hollywood career. Stretched out in front of the monitor, he said, “There’s absolutely no rhyme or reason to anything. There’s no game plan. I’ve just kind of accepted every job that I’ve ever gotten. Seriously, I mean I just [do] not turn down anything. There’s no master plan.”
But if there were a master plan, it might go a little something like this: Nab a role in hot comedy and steal scenes from no less than Will Ferrell and Jim Carrey. Then sweet talk your Anchorman director, Judd Apatow, into making your movie next. “I pitched him the idea of Virgin, which he liked and then he took that and pitched it to Mary Parent at Universal, and she liked it, and it just started to snowball from there. It happened very quickly.”
He’s not exaggerating. The duo wrote the movie last summer about, you guessed it, a 40-year-old virgin whose co-workers–played by fellow Anchorman alum Paul Rudd and Seth Rogen–try to help him lose his virginity, and Universal greenlit it the next week.
Carell said his pitch was not “completely off the wall or fantasy.” Instead, he asserted that his character, Andy, is just a normal guy: “There are more people out there than you think who are this person or variations of this person…He’s just kind of shut down that [sexual] side of himself, and he’s turned inward in a lot of ways and he’s made a comfortable life for himself,” including an obsession with comic books, video games, and toys that remain in their boxes.
Until, that is, his co-workers at the electronics store, David (Rudd), Jay (Romany Malco), and the severely tattooed Cal (Rogen), coax him into the dating world. Before he meets Trish, a 40 year-old mother of three played by Catherine Keener, he undergoes a crazy night of speed dating. No, Will Ferrell doesn’t show up, but watch out for cameos from Mo Rocca and Apatow‘s wife, Leslie Mann.
With so many comedians on set, the actors seemed to have conveniently lost the scripted pages. Instead, they improved their way through scenes–with Apatow shouting out witty one-liners to incorporate into the movie. Other people on the set played along, too. An example being when Jay approached Andy about his newly waxed chest, everybody threw out suggestions for an example of an uber-hairy actor: Alec Baldwin, Cousin It, and the list went on and on, with Malco picking a new example for each take to make people laugh.
Sure, it’s all fun and games now, but the “excruciating” waxing experience was no laughing matter. Carell recalled, “I told Judd it has to be real. I mean it won’t be as funny if it’s mocked up or if it’s a special effect. You have to see that this is really happening, and I think it’s pretty clear that it is because my skin gets incredibly red like immediately, and in the middle here, there was a close-up camera, and you could see the blood beading to the surface.” Did Carrell at least take any offers of numbing cream and Advil to soften the blow? “No. See, I wanted it to hurt as much as possible.”
Maybe this form of self-punishment evened out the more pleasurable parts of the movie: Catherine Keener as his primary love interest: “She’s the best actress I’ve ever worked with,” said Carell. “She’s on another level in terms of ability, and just every scene I did with her was just incredibly exciting because she’s an artist I think, and I think she really gives the movie credence because she’s a real actress. She really knows what she’s doing.”
“The title kind of leads people to believe it’s a really over-the-top crazy sex-comedy, but it’s really not,” the actor insisted. “It’s actually a really sweet relationship movie.” But there were still plenty of dirty jokes we have come to expect from a Judd Apatow film. “It’s just raunchy. I don’t know how they’re going to market it because I think it’s both really sweet and grounded and real, and yet there’s going to be that element of raunchiness to it and bawdiness.”
Apatow agreed that the flick is definitely “a hard R.” Although some of the raunchier bits might just end up on the DVD: “I don’t think we’ll have a second movie, but we’ll definitely have a very, very extensive DVD,” promised Apatow. “We’re already nearing a three-hour first cut, so I think there’s going to be plenty of extras for everybody.”
So for now, Carell just has to sit back and see if the audiences who love him from The Office will flock to his films–including Virgin, the indie Little Miss Sunshine and a modern-day version of Get Smart–and make him a movie star. If not, well, at least the job has some perks.
“I just make out with a lot of women, and the fact that I co-wrote it is indicative. I tried explaining that to my wife, too.” Carrell continued, “Actually, this one day, [I came in and said] ‘Uh, just what a tough day of shooting,’ and I was serious. She looks at me and said, ‘You just made out with Elizabeth Banks for 12 hours,’ who’s this gorgeous, gorgeous actress. She’s like, ‘I have no sympathy for you at all!'”
