00:00Actually, my nephew went and saw the movie on the opening weekend.
00:02He was like five years old and he didn't even recognize me in the movie.
00:06He was like, I thought Uncle Michael was going to be in this.
00:12I read that during the Cannes press conference,
00:16Benedict Cumberbatch said Wes Anderson discovering and using Michael Cera
00:19must be like God discovering water, which I thought was such a funny quote.
00:25But also, you guys do just seem like a perfect fit for each other.
00:28Was the partnership that natural in person?
00:32It was a great partnership.
00:34I mean, I think I think Wes, he's I think he's a very good actors director.
00:39So I don't know many actors who have sort of had a bad time working with him.
00:42You know, he's fun and it's a very specific kind of narrow bullseye
00:46that you're trying to, you know, work out together as a team.
00:50Yeah, I loved it.
00:51I mean, I you know, but I can't think of many actors who would not have a great time doing that.
00:55And your accent is so fun in the movie.
00:57How did you sort of come up with that?
01:00Well, he's written as a Norwegian character.
01:02Could you imagine falling in love with a man like me, by the way, hypothetically?
01:06You're drunk on three beers.
01:08So it demanded some effort be put toward thinking about a Norwegian accent.
01:14I worked with a woman for a little while, a dialect coach.
01:17And then I also just had some Norwegian friends record all of the dialogue of mine.
01:22I just gave them all of the lines out of context.
01:25So they don't even know what the scenes are or what the movie is.
01:28But what I got from that actually from them was little sounds and little peculiarities about,
01:32you know, certain words and how they kind of sit in a Norwegian's mouth who's not used to speaking English.
01:39Do you like doing accents or do you find that difficult?
01:41I do voices all the time at home and I drive my wife crazy, especially late at night, like when it's bedtime and I kind of can get stuck doing a voice and she's like, bye.
01:51And just has to walk away at a certain point.
01:53I think a lot of people are kind of like that.
01:55I mean, when I was growing up, like.
01:57My house was very silly with my sisters and my parents, you know, there was a lot of voices.
02:02So I think doing voices, especially in like a musical way, is very satisfying.
02:08I enjoy it myself doing it in a movie.
02:10There's a different kind of pressure, obviously, and it's a lot of fun.
02:14Was there any particular scene that was a lot of fun to shoot that you like really enjoyed that day on set?
02:18Well, it all was so much fun.
02:20I mean, I really loved diving into quicksand because that's just an opportunity you never, ever get in your life.
02:27I mean, when I read the script and saw that, I would get to dive into quicksand in the movie.
02:30I couldn't believe it.
02:31What was the quicksand made of?
02:32How did that work?
02:33I kind of want to be a little bit private about it because I just don't want to ruin the magic of it.
02:38It was a brilliant effect.
02:39I mean, I'm sure it's going to be not a secret or anything, but I don't know.
02:43I kind of just want to let it look like quicksand.
02:45How many takes did you have to do?
02:47I did one, just one.
02:48Oh, OK.
02:49Now, we were prepared to do more like we had a quick change for me, you know, but Wes was like, no, that's it.
02:55The only things we did one take of just went very well.
02:58I mean, I did have a chance.
02:59I did get to rehearse it a bit, you know, in sort of the days leading up to it so that I could get comfortable with the whole thing because it's a bit of a stunt.
03:07But it was totally practical.
03:09And I mean, that's what there's no effects in that shot.
03:12Like that shot is just what what we shot.
03:14It looked just like that.
03:15What was the most difficult scene to shoot?
03:17Nothing's like immediately coming to mind.
03:19I will say, like we shot most of the airplane scenes, the private planes.
03:24That was what we sort of started our shoot with, more or less.
03:26Those were all toward the beginning of the shoot.
03:29And those were kind of difficult because the plane got very, very hot.
03:33You became sort of lightheaded in there.
03:35And Benicio is also smoking these like fake cigars in there at all times.
03:39So it became filled with this like horrible smelling smoke.
03:43And that was physically challenging.
03:45You actually like felt yourself getting quite depleted in there.
03:49But that's the only thing I could think of.
03:50Everything was just really a lot of fun.
03:53It was a joyful shoot.
03:55His sets are obviously so gorgeous and the beautiful costumes and such.
03:59Did you swipe anything from set or get gifted anything?
04:03No, you know, Wes basically archives every single thing from his movies.
04:09I think he's got every single thing stored away in some magnificent warehouse.
04:15I'm hoping that one day there will be like an ultimate permanent Wes Anderson museum or something because he has it all.
04:21And, you know, it's such beautiful stuff, especially the costumes.
04:25So obviously he has such like a stable of actors who he comes back to over and over again.
04:29What was it like sort of working with some of them on set?
04:31Well, they're amazing.
04:33I mean, Wes keeps amazing people around and not just the actors, also his crew who are sort of, you know, like tenured at this point.
04:40But yeah, you know, when Wes first sent me the script, he said, this is basically the cast.
04:43This is who's playing this part.
04:44This is who's playing this part.
04:46Yeah, it's a huge part of the appeal of working with someone of his calibers, like the talent that he gets to come out.
04:51And even just for small parts, I mean, he gets Tom Hanks to come do like a five day part in his movies.
04:57It's unbelievable.
04:58Nobody does that.
04:59Nobody gets Tom Hanks and Scarlett Johansson to like show up for a day or two.
05:04Do you like watching your own movies?
05:07I know some actors don't.
05:08I do actually like watching things I've worked on with an audience because it's, you know, it's unique.
05:14And you only get the chance to do that sort of normally like once or twice, you know, and you learn a lot.
05:19Like you really learn how the movie is working because you experience how the ride of the movie works on a group.
05:25And that's like its own kind of thing.
05:27It's its own way of watching a movie.
05:29It's different from watching a movie at home, which has its own, you know, merits and enjoyments, too.
05:34But when you watch it with a group, there's a different quality.
05:37It really becomes kind of like you feel orchestrated as an audience together when it's really well done.
05:42So I do like having that experience, especially if it's something funny or attempting to be funny.
05:47You see where people laugh and where they don't.
05:50And you see if people laugh really hard at something and they laugh so loud that they don't hear the next line.
05:56Things like that, that you just kind of, you know, the movie has a certain rhythm the way it plays for an audience.
06:00And it can be can be interesting to see.
06:03When we were doing the promotional tour for Superbad, like 20 years ago almost or something,
06:09they sent us all over Europe, myself and Jonah Hill and Christopher Mintz-Plaas.
06:13And we like watched the movie dubbed in all these different languages and see how it plays with different countries.
06:19And it's really interesting.
06:20Like, you know, culturally, some things work better in some countries than in others.
06:25Like some countries, that movie just, you know, didn't really land.
06:29Were there scenes in that movie where they worked for everybody or was it?
06:33Like some countries like to watch movies in the original language with subtitles, you know,
06:38and they're like, that's the pure way to do it.
06:40Like France, I think really holds like, you know, the original versions in high regard.
06:46But countries like Italy and Germany dub them.
06:49And the audience there are used to seeing American films like dubbed.
06:54So I think a lot, especially for something that's like a comedy,
06:57it really depends on the quality of the dubbing and the voice acting, you know, whether it's working or not.
07:01So you can't gauge it as, you know, as the actor.
07:05It's like, it's like watching a totally different movie.
07:07Has Barbie sort of changed your career directory at all with it being so massive?
07:13I don't know.
07:14I mean, because that's kind of hard to measure.
07:16Like you don't know what would have happened with it or without it.
07:19That's kind of hard to gauge.
07:20I mean, it did feel like a very big movie to be a part of.
07:23I was happy to be a part of it, especially be kind of on the, you know,
07:26like a smaller ripple in the movie.
07:28Do you get identified a lot in public for that?
07:30Not really.
07:32It's always so interesting what things people recognize actors from, I think.
07:37I look quite different in that movie than I do normally.
07:40So I've never really been approached about it, to be honest.
07:43Actually, my nephew went and saw the movie on the opening weekend.
07:46He was like five years old and with my sister.
07:49He didn't even recognize me in the movie.
07:51He was like, I thought Uncle Michael was going to be in this.
