Open this photo in gallery:
In Is This Thing On?, Will Arnett plays a family man who turns to stand-up comedy to work through his divorce and other issues.Jennifer Roberts/The Globe and Mail
For an actor best known for playing world-class jerks, Will Arnett was in decidedly friendly territory last month during a stop in his hometown of Toronto. Sitting in a hotel suite just a stone’s throw (perhaps a dead dove’s throw?) from The Oxley gastropub, which the actor has a stake in thanks to his friendship with local restaurateur Jamieson Kerr, Arnett was all smiles as he prepared for the local premiere of his new film, Is This Thing On?
The screening wasn’t Arnett’s first hometown-hero’s welcome – he’s been making victory laps in the city for years, celebrating everything from Arrested Development to his many successive sitcoms – but it did mark the first time the actor was celebrating a lead dramatic role, and one which cast him as a good guy, no less.
Directed by Arnett’s long-time buddy Bradley Cooper, Is This Thing On? casts the actor as a family man who, in the midst of contemplating a somewhat amicable divorce from his wife (Laura Dern), turns to stand-up comedy to work through his issues. But while the film, which Arnett co-wrote, centres around Manhattan’s comedy scene and is loosely based on the real-life story of comedian John Bishop, the stand-up subculture is only there as background to the particularly unfunny business of marriage.
Ahead of the film’s release next week, The Globe and Mail sat down with the eternally gravelly voiced Arnett to talk about life’s greatest punchlines.
From 2019: Alessia Cara, Will Arnett among those honoured at Canada’s Walk of Fame
You trained as a dramatic actor, and I remember reading interviews with you years ago in which you longed for securing that big, meaty dramatic role while starring in so many comedies. How does it feel to finally have that opportunity, and to have the comedy world itself be a springboard into it?
If I’m being honest, I think I forgot to pursue it. Life just kind of happened. When I left Toronto in 1990, I had the idea that this is the kind of stuff that I wanted to do, drama, but then everything just went in a different direction. It’s the way that life goes. What were our dreams when we were 20, and where are we now? My life went some ways that were beyond my wildest dreams, and also just different. I shot this movie when I was 54, and I guess I didn’t think it was a possibility any more. That’s okay, it’s not like the world owes me anything. Nobody is throwing me a pity party, though maybe myself.
But then you heard this story based on John Bishop …
I thought it was a great story, but it wasn’t by design. I’m not that smart. It wasn’t like, now’s my chance to dig in! The first few drafts of the script would have been this stripped-down, vulnerable role that I ended up playing. But once Bradley came in, it shifted. Once you bring in a guy like him to direct it and rewrite it, then it was like, oh this is for real. I probably should have had more of a goal, but I was just kind of going with it.
The film takes an interesting trajectory, because I assumed – knowing that it was based on John – that there would be this arc of stardom. Oh this guy is going to meet an agent soon, and then get on television. But it’s much more grounded than that – the comedy is there to serve the larger story of this guy’s relatively small life.
Early on, my co-writer, Mark Chappell, and I had a couple drafts where you’d say that my character would go in that direction. Bradley was always fairly intent on not telling that story, though. The success comes in his discovery of who he is, that’s how he changes as a person. Not to go on to comedy stardom. The success is he’s able to go, “Man, I had life all wrong.”
Open this photo in gallery:
From left: Will Arnett and Bradley Cooper at the world premiere of Is This Thing On? in New York. The two co-wrote and co-starred in the movie, and Cooper directed.Slaven Vlasic/Getty Images
Your character has an onscreen friendship with the character played by Bradley, who appears as this actor who never quite makes it. How much of your real friendship bled into that?
We’ve been friends for over 25 years, and when Bradley was like, “Should I play this character?” it was for sure, because we do have such a shorthand. That lends itself to that relationship, that dynamic. We never rehearsed that dynamic. We would workshop things to understand the characters, almost like a table read, but we wouldn’t talk about it. And that was a luxury, because we do have a dynamic, and we knew that, on the day, we won’t be trying to recreate it, it’ll be what it’s going to be, and every day will be a little different.
From 2016: How Canadian actor Will Arnett perfected the small-screen jerk
Bradley was also the camera operator here, so that must up the level of intimacy.
Bradley’s right there in my face, a foot away from me, talking to me as we’re doing it, and telling me: no acting, strip it down, be this guy. It was scary. And yet, I trust him so much. I think there were moments that I wanted to kill him and moments that he wanted to kill me. Not really, but we had these frustrating moments. He’s like demanding … and now that I say, “demanding” there will be some headline of “Bradley Cooper demanding! They’re killing each other!” But in that way of every day having to dig deep and never a moment where you could have your foot off the gas – it was daunting. If I’m being totally honest, people ask me, “Oh, what are you doing next?” Like I have some design. But I don’t know what I’m going to do. We just finished this. I’m nervous at the prospect of doing something in this way without Bradley.
So would you ever flip the script and direct Bradley?
Oh man. I’ve thought about directing, and now having done this and seeing what it takes, the capacity that you have to have … I think to myself, would I have what it takes? Do I have this gear? I don’t know.
When you were working on the stand-up scenes for this film, you were out at clubs four, five times a night for weeks on end working through material. And that reminded me of the prep work that the actors in Judd Apatow’s Funny People went through. It feels like it could be traumatic, in a way.
I went on the same track that my character does as a comedian, stepping outside of his comfort zone. It’s funny you mention Funny People because that was a film that I wasn’t familiar with but a lot of people have drawn parallels. And Jonah Hill actually reached out to me to say that he saw the film and thought it was cool. How it was a great representation of what comedy does to the soul. He was sweet about it. But stepping out was scary. But it was scarier actually acting in the film.
Is This Thing On? opens in Toronto on Dec. 19 before expanding across Canada on Jan. 9.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
