An Interview With Steve Carell & Paul Rudd

In the latest film from Universal pictures, Steve Carell plays a 40 Year-Old Virgin, which also happens to be the title of the film. When his friends find out his secret, they all go on a mission of getting Carell’s character his first sexual experience. Paul Rudd plays David, Carell’s friend in the film, who accompanies him on his sexual journey, while at the same time dealing with his characters own failures in love. Carell and Rudd are reunited after both appearing in the successful comedy Anchorman. These two have the comedic chemistry that is similar to the likes of Martin and Luis, and at times DeLuise and Reynolds from the classic Cannonball run films.

So back in the day, what was your game with the ladies?

Steve Carell: Hang out at the soda pop stand. I was really a bad dater and up until 8th grade I went to an all-boys school so by the time I hit high school I was a bit freaked out about women in general. And the putting on the pedestal part of the aspect of the movie, I definitely did that. I was very weary of women. Especially in high school, as soon as I went from being a friend and started looking at a woman as a potential love interest, I could not even talk to a woman. I was pretty bad. I bet you were a stud.

Paul Rudd: Well, no hardly. But I did buy my senior year in high school, a Jeep. I tried to give off the appearance that I was kind of cool. And I grew my hair long like Michael Hutchins from INXS. So I just relied on external things to try and fool girls.

Steve Carell: Oh, I did mix my own perfume for a girl that I liked. I went to my mother’s perfume on her counter and I mix about 8 or 10 perfumes into a jar and I get it to this next door neighbor and we’re married. No, not true at all.

How autobiographical is this script?

Steve Carell: I will not answer that question. Um, it’s not autobiographical at all. I in fact have 2 children so… No, it was a notion that I had that I brought to Judd last year about essentially the pitch was the poker scene: that sequence where a guy is desperately trying to keep up with these other guys who are telling great sex stories and it quickly becomes apparent that he’s out of his element. And that’s what I pitched to him.

How closely do you identify with that character?

Steve Carell: I identify with him in the sense that he’s trying. He is doing his best to get through life and keep a good aspect and disposition going, and keep his hopes up but I think there’s an underlying sadness to the character, which in fact there is to me as well. I don’t know, I think there’s elements of who I am and who this guy is but the specific one’s I don’t know.

What was your reaction when you saw your first billboard?

Steve Carell: It was surreal. I was driving around with my daughter who’s 4 and she kept asking me, “Why are you on the signs? You look stupid.” And actually, we drove around .We went to the mall last week, and we had been out of town for a couple of weeks. So when we left, none of these billboards were up and when we came back they were every 100 yards. And I kept pointing them out to my wife, “12 o’clock, there ‘s one at 2 o’clock.” So it’s pretty strange, it’s weird. And I love it. No Universal is really promoting it, they’re really behind it.

Paul Rudd: I was just so thrilled that the Universal marketing department actually got it right, they never do. You always see the posters and you’re like, “Ahhh god”. When I first saw the poster I was like, I couldn’t stop laughing.

Steve Carell: It’s pretty stupid. I think I’m going to use that as my headshot.

Did you do any research for your character? Did you talk any 40 year olds who are virgins?

Steve Carell: We were given several case studies by Universal, which we read. Seriously, and there are quite a few case studies documenting middle age virginity and who these people are, and where they live and what are their likes and dislikes. And what we found to be the case more often than none, is that they’re just normal people who for one reason or another never did it. And very similar to the character, at some point just gave up on the whole notion because at a certain point it was harder to, and every time I saw something all these really bad puns start floating into the room, but it was more difficult to keep attempting than to just give up. And so that’s kind of the research we did in terms of the character. In terms of meeting any… not that I know of. And that’s a hard thing. It’s not something you wear on your sleeve. Who know how many virgins we’ve met in our life, it sounds like they’re aliens. It wasn’t based on any, like I know this virgin guy who lives down the street and rides a bike. I’m going to do a movie on him. I hope he doesn’t come because he’ll sue us. It wasn’t anything like that, but we did do some research. And what we found just reinforced what we had originally imagined. Like this is just a guy, it’s not some incredibly damaged human being.

And advice you can give 40 year olds in this situation?

Steve Carell: Apart from see the movie? I’m certainly in no position to give sexual advice to begin with. If anything I’m in need of it.

Can you talk about how you mixed in both improv and scripted material into the film?

Steve Carell: The whole run that Paul [Rudd] does of, “You know how I know you’re gay?” That’s just a perfect of it.

Paul Rudd: We were sitting there waiting for them to set up and Seth and I were just joking around. We just started calling each other gay and talking about why we thought each other was gay. And the crew was getting really upset with us. They were like, “I can’t believe they’re doing this while we’re shooting.” But Judd really encouraged that. But at he same time there was script so as far as what was improvised and what wasn’t I don’t really remember. But the way we would shoot it was not unlike the way we did Anchorman. We tend to go through the scene one time, just shoot it one time and then it was, “Alright, do something different.” And that was literally the direction. And Judd just never cut. We should a million feet of film. And we didn’t know this. You shoot a million feet of film and the film company will buy you champagne for the cast.

Steve Carell: On the last day of shooting, they stopped and the film company wheeled in an enormous tray of champagne bottles.

Paul Rudd: And it was good champagne, not crap.

Steve Carell: We made their year apparently. Well, Jane Lynch, the woman who plays the Manager, her audition was improvised and as soon as her audition was over he sent it to be transcribed and that’s what ended up being in the script. Because she was so funny, and the whole run of her coming on to me, we had the idea for it but she took it to such a different place that it’s nothing that either of us could have scripted for her.

Paul Rudd: That happened with all of our characters. Steve and Judd, when I first got the script the roles hadn’t been cast. And when we started doing rehearsals, whatever came out in rehearsal made its way into the script, including major stuff like character arcs. It was a lot collaborative.

What about the scene where you get your chest waxed? Was that real?

Steve Carell: That was 100% real. We set up 5 cameras, because we knew there would be one take, there was no way of going back and trying to get it again. So we set a camera up by the guys, one over me, one specifically on my chest and one on the waxer. And it was not scripted. We just had an idea of where we wanted it to go. We hired a woman that was an actress/waxer, which in itself scared me because she wasn’t a professional waxer so that was all real. If you watch closely, there’s one close-up where you can see blood actually coming to the surface so that was no CGI. And when I pitched it to Judd, I said it should really be for real, because I thought to see them laughing at me in pain would probably be the funniest part of the scene. It was a fun day. It was a day I both dreaded and looked forward to equally.

You’re working with Charles Rovan on Get Smart, and recently a website talked about you possibly playing the Joker in the Batman sequel. Is there truth to that? If not, would you want to?

Steve Carell: I just heard that for the first time this morning, and yeah I would love to do that. But I doubt that it’s true. He’s never said anything about it, so it’s completely fabricated. But I love it. I love the rumor, it’s cool.

Can you talk about what it was like doing the movie knowing it was R rated and there’s not the slightest thing you can do to make it PG-13?

Steve Carell: Universal insisted just based on the subject matter we felt it was an R rated movie. Universal never blinked at that and in fact asked us to go to earn it. To actually be a hard R, to not pull any punches and to actually make an R rated movie, not try to soften it. But the objective wasn’t to make, “Ooh, let’s make this more of an R.” We just wrote what we thought was the funniest… we wrote for characters, we wrote for the situations, and we didn’t really think that we had to make this dirtier or less dirty. We just wrote it the way we saw it. It was nice in that sense, we never felt like we had to censor ourselves.

This is the first time you’ve carried a movie. How much pressure is there now that you’re the star?

Steve Carell: There was no pressure until you asked that. All the way through shooting it, I kept thinking, “if this is the last movie I ever do, this has been great, just fun,” SO I try not to get ahead of myself at all in terms of what the next thing is. I hope I keep working. I’ve been really lucky just to be able to support myself acting. And just being able to help create and be the lead in a movie is way beyond any expectation I ever had so I’m pretty happy with what has happened so far. SO if this is it, if it all comes crashing down tomorrow, I’m still pretty happy.

So do you have anything else you’re working on now?

Steve Carell: No, not at all. (Laughs) I just finished the first episode of The Office for NBC. It’s coming back September 20th. So that’s the next thing that I’m doing.

Questions? Comments? Email me at edgar@latinoreview.com.