Just Friends - Ryan Reynolds interview

RYAN Reynolds discusses the making of Just Friends, his own experiences of High School, an embarrassing date of his own and what it was like to don a fat suit. He also discusses his career to date, including diverse roles in The Amityville Horror and Smokin' Aces. He was speaking at a UK round table (late on a Friday afternoon)...

Q. Director Roger Kumble is quoted as saying that High School still haunts us all. So what haunts you?
Ryan Reynolds: I think that there’s a number of things from High School, such as bullies, the ruthless betrayal of your own body and that whole horrible puberty thing. I was so short and small in stature when I was in High School. It’s just that constant low-grade depression that comes with going to High School. You’re always feeling just slightly threatened the whole time. So that still haunts me.

Q. Were you ever stuck in “the friends zone”?
Ryan Reynolds: I believe that to be something that almost everyone can relate to at some point. Typically it happens in High School. I was the friend to a girl named Yale who I was absolutely in love with and that pain definitely still haunts me.

Q. Did you ever get lucky like your character?
Ryan Reynolds: No because by the time I was 10 years out of High School, which is right now, I was engaged. So I feel like I did luck out but in another way.

Q. Do you think there’s any way out of the friends bracket for teenage boys now?
Ryan Reynolds: I think it’s a matter of being yourself. I know so many guys who are charming, sophisticated and funny and then they just lose all of that around women and completely bottom out. It’s because there’s not a tremendous amount of self-worth going on that they’re promoting within themselves. A lot of guys kind of put on a show and I think they end up looking more and more like a jackass than they did to begin with if they were just being themselves.

Q. So did doing a film like this help to exorcise some of your own demons?
Ryan Reynolds: Yeah it was like reclaiming some horrible nightmare from High School. I definitely related to the character being so sensitive because I was very sensitive in High School and very open. I hadn’t yet learned to be guarded and defensive around people because you learn at an early age and spend the rest of your life trying to unlearn it. It was fun to go and be that vulnerable, sweet kid again even though we kind of laugh at him.

Q. Your character goes through a series of disastrous dates. Have you ever had one?
Ryan Reynolds: Most of them [laughs]. The worst wasn’t exactly a date but I was in love with this girl named Michelle and we took the same bus ride home every day. One day I got the nerve to talk to her and we actually ended up having this chat which made my month. But as I was getting off the bus I don’t know why but I decided to look back at her and give her this odd sort of suave look. I sort of liken it now to a young Ricky Gervais. But I just paused in the doorway trying to act cool and the door closed on my backpack. I stepped down but the backpack stayed up and the bus started to leave! I had to bang on the side of the bus until the driver stopped, opened the doors and the backpack fell down onto my head before finishing in its rightful place. I never, ever took that bus ride again. It was always the long way home because I did not want to see this girl ever again. I’m blushing just telling that story.

Q. There’s a lot of physical comedy in this film. Is that something you enjoy?
Ryan Reynolds: It’s fun because it’s so silly; each day you just find a new and amazing way to humiliate yourself while shooting. The stuff with my brother was very much my family. It wasn’t in the script but it’s how my brother and I are together. He’s on this trip with me and we did it on the plane while I was asleep – he slapped me in the face.

Q. Did you get any cuts and scrapes while filming?
Ryan Reynolds: Well I just finished two action movies in a row where I walked away almost completely unscathed and I hurt myself more on Just Friends than any other thing I’ve ever done. The first day that I wasn’t in the fat suit we shot an ice skating scene and I separated my shoulder ‘cos I’m like the only Canadian that can’t skate! So that sucked. And then obviously the endless amount of slapping. Every time you see a slap in the movie it’s real, we didn’t pull any punches. So every time you see one you have to imagine that we’ve shot it in 18 different takes, from every different angle.

Q. Did you do your own stunts?
Ryan Reynolds: Yeah pretty much. Most of them were just falling down. The only thing I didn’t do was the sled slipping over because I’d be dead. But minus 50 was the worst it got when we were shooting in this town so just leaving your house in the morning was a stunt.

Q. Was the fat suit an enjoyable experience?
Ryan Reynolds: Well you get in it and suddenly you have this whole new catalogue of facial expressions. I loved that so I just sat in the mirror singing Wilson Phillips’ Hold On all the time. I was so begging them to get that song but they said it was too old because it was like 1988. I wish I could have done a whole movie in it. Although it was a pain in the arse to get on – five hours at the longest and three once we got really good at it. And then two hours to take it off which was the worst because I’d been working since 4am and I was watching the sun come up again, wanting to go home.

Q. What did you think when you first saw yourself in the mirror?
Ryan Reynolds: I loved it. I remember standing outside one day and a woman walked up and asked me if Ryan Reynolds was inside. I thought “you have no idea”. I thought that was cool and the guy that designed the suit was incredibly flattered that she didn’t know it was me.

Q. You pick quite a wide variety of roles, so how does preparing for this sort of role compare to preparing for something like The Amityville Horror?
Ryan Reynolds: Usually when it’s a drama I work before. When it’s a comedy I’m like let’s do it! The dramas require a lot more preparation. Having said that, The Amityville Horror was more of a genre movie so it didn’t require too much research, it was basically stepping into a footstep. Smokin’ Aces, my next film, was months and months of living with FBI guys, hanging out with them. I spent two months with an SAS agent who is now just a private contractor going to Iraq and back. He taught me all the weapons training. My fingers will never be the same, they’re all screwed up now from working those guns.

Q. Do you have a preference for what roles you try and do, or are you content to keep mixing it up?
Ryan Reynolds: I have the luxury of not being at that level of fame where you just do one thing and that’s it. I can choose different genres which is really liberating.

Q. And I suppose working with an ensemble cast like Smokin’ Aces – which includes Ray Liotta, Andy Garcia and Ben Affleck – helps to raise your game as an actor?
Ryan Reynolds: You always have that little moment of doubt when you’re driving to work that first day when you go “okay, I’ve got this big huge scene with Ray Liotta today, wow, I don’t think…” But it’s sort of like playing baseball or something, you suddenly hit one out of the park and realise you can play in this league. And then you get into the real sort of creative depths of it. But when you work with great actors or great directors it elevates everything. It changes everything too. Sometimes you have to pick movies so far in advance that by the time you actually get to shooting you don’t want to anymore because you’re so changed from each experience. So after Smokin’ Aces I really re-thought everything about how I approached my career and my work. So that experience has been really special. I think Joe Carnahan is going to be the new great amazing director.

Q. So it’s very good fortune for you that he dropped out of Mission Impossible 3?
Ryan Reynolds: God I know! This never would have happened if he hadn’t bailed out of that.

Q. What do you look for when approaching films?
Ryan Reynolds: Usually it’s just a somewhat coherent story. It’s amazing what kind of shit gets made. You can read something and go, “wow, I didn’t know we could do another Police Academy movie”. But I usually look for something that is challenging for me, or something that I can latch onto. There’s no specific story that I want to tell.

Q. You had to wait for your breakthrough as an actor, so your career is really a tribute to persistence paying off. Are you happy with where you are now?
Ryan Reynolds: I was never not happy with where I was. But there’s always room to go much further. At first I was happy just to be a working actor – just to be able to do that and play in that league was a lot of fun. But it’s only in the last couple of years that I’ve grown a little bit of ambition. I didn’t used to like ambitious people but I suppose if you have a pulse in this industry you’re going to have to eventually.