There were a few times where he started to get suspicious, but our counter to that was just to pull all the comedy back, and just sit in court for five hours and listen to the attorneys just drone on. Were there any moments where you thought, ‘We blew it, he knows this isn’t real’? So, I armed myself with a lot of my own thoughts, I had a journal of lines I could say if said this, or didn’t say this, but at the end of the day, you had to throw it all out and go with the flow. I really wanted to get into that world, and there I was, sort of insulated with a lot of good improv artists, and it felt exciting to get in there and play. I didn’t know if I’d be good at it or not, but that style of comedy- Waiting for Guffman is one of my favorite films, and The Larry Sanders Show, and Curb Your Enthusiasm-has always inspired me. I’m not trained in the rules of improv, but I’ve been around enough sets- Anchorman 2, Dead to Me-where they wrote brilliant scripts, but also let us mess around a little bit, so it was something that I always wanted to explore. I was sending up this sort of entitled, petulant, Hollywood brat, which was fun to play. I mean, I felt comfortable in the character, which was good, since I was playing myself. It took me a bit of time to find my footing. There were so many unexpected turns, and I was mentally exhausted at the end of the day you don’t want to be the one that screws it all up, so you have to be focused and sharp every day. And I learned that you can’t prepare yourself-if you’re keeping someone in the dark for three weeks, that’s a long time to be fooling someone. It was a lot of fun staying in this sort of pressure cooker you don’t have access to the outside world, to the directors, the writers you really had to rely on yourself and your fellow actors, which I found really exciting. And if it doesn’t, well, I’m genuinely in mourning for my career.’ So for three weeks, you were working in an improvisational style, on a set that wasn’t supposed to be a set, with an actor who wasn’t acting. We’re surrounding him with scripted, bizarre circumstances and eccentric, sort of weirdo characters, and seeing how he reacts, but it’s never targeted at him.’Īnd I thought ‘OK, well, if we manage to thread that needle, this could really work. We’re creating a hero’s journey for this guy, that hopefully, by the end of it, he has his 12 Angry Men moment, where he unifies us. And I was like, ‘Well, that sounds like a prank show, and three weeks is a long time to mess with somebody.’ And they were like, ‘No, no, we’re not pranking him-we’re keeping him in the dark, but he’s not the butt of the jokes.
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