Interview: Bridesmaids
A Chat With Kristen Wiig and Wendi McLendon-Covey
By Ryan Mazie
May 5, 2011
Where you ever told while writing the script to incorporate more male characters?
KW: Not really. No. That also wasn’t a conscious decision. I know after the fact, people analyze the movie and think a lot of things are deliberate, but we just wrote the script and hoped for the best.
Kristen, you and Maya Rudolph obviously have great chemistry. You riff off of each other really well. Is there any competition to make one another laugh and break out of character?
KW: We did a lot of laughing. We weren’t intentionally trying to make each other laugh, but I remember the scene at the shower where we have the really serious fight and start talking about her bleaching her asshole, that was totally improvised. We were yelling at each other and were kind of looking at each other like, “Are you gonna laugh, because I am going to start laughing,” and then the scene was over and we just started laughing. It was like, “What were we talking about? Could we try that again?”
Maya and I instantly clicked together when I started working with her and we definitely have a second language with each other.
WMC: They cannot not be funny. So in between takes, for me it was just entertaining to sit by and eavesdrop on their conversations, because everything they say is funny. They’ll start talking in different voices, start singing, a dance number might break out (laughs). Those disjointed conversations that you can have with someone you are really close to, no one else can follow them, but those two are…I want a web series from you!
KW: That’s what’s next!
When was the first time someone told you “Hey, you are pretty funny, you should go into comedy”?
KW: I remember going to a birthday party when I was little and someone told me I was weird. I do remember that and it traumatized me, now I realized it’s a compliment. I really don’t remember. I mean, the Groundlings was the first place I found my voice in that way.
WMC: I remember in the first grade, this big, mean girl decided that we were going to be friends. I was real small, sickly pale, and I had this big bully friend. She was really mean, and I figured out the way to make her not be mean, was to make her laugh. So I used it as a protective device.
KW: Like when she was mean to other people?
WMC: No, when she was mean to me. Like to protect my own self. And to avoid getting a spanking. I had to jolly my Mom out of it.
KW: I wish you had video of that.
WMC: I’m sure I was so annoying. I felt like I was Bobby Hill on King of the Hill (laughs). How funny he thinks he is … it’s sad.
Kristen, coming from a sketch comedy background, do you enjoy playing these sustained characters?
KW: It’s so hard to compare, because they are just really two completely different worlds. Sketch characters last for three minutes, they are usually broader, especially with SNL. It’s live and so fast. After the commercial you are playing a completely different person, and with this, it was like, “We are shooting this one again?” (laughs). You get many more opportunities to do the same scene over and over which is also good so it is two different muscles.
From doing sketch comedy to a feature-length film, do you find yourself having to change your comedy style?
KW: I think what is funny is funny and depending on what type of character you play, you just have to get in that zone.
WMC: I think you do change it a little, though, because a sketch is just three minutes long.
KW: It’s like joke, joke, joke, joke, joke.
WMC: You have to be big and broad and get the point across and goodbye. For this you have got to be--
KW: Stretch it out (laughs).
WMC: You have to be more subtle for the reality of it. What was the shoot? Fifty days?
KW: Fifty-one.
WMC: So she has to live with the character of Annie for 51 days. And she is kind of a sad-sack (laughs). Poor Annie’s life is falling apart as we know, so that’s kind of how you have to spend the majority of your day for 51 days as being that person of (gives grave look).
Bridesmaids is late actress Jill Clayburgh’s last film. What was it like working with her?
KW: Oh, that was beyond an honor. She is so funny in the movie. I think there were maybe two or three scenes that got cut with her. She was remarkable. It was a highlight of your career.
Now Kristen, I have to ask you this question, because this will be my only chance to ever ask it. But what was it like to motorboat Helen Mirren on last week’s Saturday Night Live?
KW: Uhm, it was warm. It was – yeah, something I can brag about at dinner parties.
WMC: Now wasn’t that the highlight of your career?
KW: Yes, that was the highlight of my career. That was the highlight.
Continued:
1
2
3
|
|
|
|
Print this column
