Film festivals are always pretty tightly scheduled. Sometimes they’re scheduled so very tightly that you have to interview someone before you see their movie. Premature premieres tonight at SXSW 2014, but my interview with co-star Alan Tudyk was scheduled for this afternoon. That’s hardly ideal, but hey, it’s Alan Tudyk… he of the beloved “Firefly,” the cult series “Dollhouse,” and the co-star of such recent hits as 42 and Frozen. We’re willing to make that work.
The trailer for Dan Beers’ comedy Premature is right below me now, and it’s a funny one, about Rob (John Karna), a teenager who gets trapped in a Groundhog Day of his very own, with a twist: his worst day ever resets every time he ejaculates. Alan Tudyk plays the college admissions counselor from Georgetown who holds Rob’s fate in his hands, but who has a peculiar character trait that always gets in Rob’s way. Check it out for yourself and find out more about Alan Tudyk’s character, the many mystery illnesses that killed his wife, the dangers of doing racist improv in the Jackie Robinson biopic 42, the dances he invented for Frozen and what he learned from playing the villain on “Dollhouse.”
Alan Tudyk: This is my first interview about this movie, so you have to be gentle. Or be patient. Be patient, I mean.
CraveOnline: Well, my first question was about premature ejaculation, so I’ll just cross that off…
Right, right, right. Wow, I guess that’s right. I guess that would be a question.
You’re going to have to get used to that.
What would that question be?
I don’t know. It would be rude to just say, “Tell us about your experiences with premature…”
Ejaculation….
Yeah, I’m not sure. Although this is an appropriate interview because we’re doing it before I’ve been able to see the film.
Oh, so it’s a premature interview.
It works out great. The trailer looks great.
Yes!
It makes it look very, very funny. I hope it’s apt. I hope it isn’t really dark and brooding and they’re just trying to trick you into seeing it.
[Laughs.] There’s a lot of pain in ejaculation. It’s 50% blood, 50% semen.
Alright! Let’s get this thing kicked off. Let’s start there.
In this movie you play a college admissions officer?
Yes.
You represent to the hero of this movie the whole future. It’s one of those big interviews, the Risky Business interview, everything rides on it.
Yes, exactly. Everything he’s been working towards in his high school career, every course he’s chosen has been designed to elicit a positive reaction from the Georgetown admissions counselor.
And I assume it goes over very, very well at the beginning of the film and the movie ends after about 20 minutes.
[Laughs.] It doesn’t. It doesn’t go so well.
Oh no…!
As you can see [in the trailer], my character cries. My character is very upset. My character is very emotional because he lost his wife ten months prior, and they had met at Georgetown just as his parents had met at Georgetown, and it triggers the memory, which causes me to cry. And as it is a sort of Groundhog Day except with ejaculation, premature ejaculation, whenever he goes back he tries to go a different way but it always sets me off. I’m just an emotional paradox.
It’s interesting to have a character to have a character whose existence, in some respects, is based on a joke. A recurring joke.
Right.
But it’s such a sad joke…!
It is and it isn’t. I mean, I guess it’s sad. Once you know that we’re all going to die you sort of accept that death happens. So it ten months ago, eh…
“Get over it.”
Get over it. Ultimately there’s a bigger theme in here about who you’re meant to be with in life, and definitely he feels like he lost his soul mate, so what does that say? It adds another layer. But it’s funny to watch somebody you know is going to cry, cry. You just don’t know when they’re going to cry. You just watch them get triggered. I love jokes like that where you know the punchline and you’re just waiting for it.
I imagine most if not all of your scenes in this movie take place pretty much in that one office?
No.
Really?
I guess half of them, and then I come back at the end of the movie.
But there’s a lot of the movie where you’re just resetting. You don’t even have to change costumes or anything.
No.
So I imagine they could burn through that whole thing pretty quick.
There’s a lot of outtakes. We even had a lot of time to kill the wife a few different ways, because I describe how she died. In the movie version she died from lupus, which is a very serious disease with a funny name. It’s just a funny name.
I watched a lot of “House,” and “It’s never lupus,” if you’ll recall. That’s what get triggered in my head.
It’s never lupus. They think it’s lupus and it’s never lupus?
It’s never lupus. So her death wasn’t scripted?
It was scripted. Originally it was scripted, yes. Originally it was scripted as cancer, which I said is a bad idea. Dan [Beers] agreed with me. So I recommended lupus, and then we did lupus, we did… I don’t even remember.
Was it all tragic, sad, dying in a hospital deaths, or was she ever, like, hit by a falling meteor…?
Yeah, that sort of thing. Yeah, there was one where she never died at all, where it looked like she was going to die. We were driving, it was rainy out, the roads were slick, and I was taking a turn a little too fast in the car, and I couldn’t really see and I had to hit the brakes. She said, “Damn it, you’re always driving so bad. You’re awful at this.” She said, “I’m sick of it. I haven’t been in love with you for years.” And then she got out of the car and I haven’t seen her since.
At a certain point we were just having fun. It was a lot of fun to do. I have to say. I think you’ll say that in every movie, “We had so much fun!” But this one…
Obviously you’re good at the improv thing. Which I say as a non-actor, “the improv thing.”
The improv thing!
But I’ve heard about how that was a really big part of you getting a role in Knight’s Tale, was your improv in that audition.
Right.
Do you just sit down with a notebook the night before and write idea after idea, or are you very extemporaneous?
With that one I don’t remember planning on… Honestly, I don’t do a good job planning for improv. I think I would do a better job if I did. I always wait for somebody to give me permission to do improv. I feel like, for most actors, now, it’s part of the process to get the job. If you have the improv that makes everybody laugh the most. Which is sometimes a good thing and sometimes it’s a bad thing. [Laughs.] As long as the humor is in keeping with the story.
I was thinking about how you had this great role in 42. And there’s this scene where you’re yelling out the most horrifically racist insults over and over again.
Yes.
And I was thinking, that must be a potential gold mine for improv, but at the same time, do you want to be the guy who came up with that racist thing?
Right.
What was that like?
I was paid by the n-word, which leant to me saying it more often. No, Brian Helgeland, the writer/director, asked me to do it, to actually improv some stuff. So it was more for Jackie Robinson, so that you could get a real reaction from him to see these things. Because he knew what was in the script, and the things that I was saying were not in the script. Chadwick [Boseman] was upset. Truly upset. So you got that.
But it was weird, people on the day, from the audience, there were some racists coming up to me, some white guys saying, “Hey, you weren’t saying my favorite one! Call him this! Call him that!”
These people were on the set?
These were extras.
Did they know what movie they were in?
Some black guys told me too. A couple black guys told me something like, “You didn’t mention fried chicken once!” Oh, but then I did mention fried chicken.
So it all worked out.
So it did work out, but that was actually a line. The fried chicken line was not mine.
You say Chadwick was upset, and obviously that was the goal. You were trying to help him with his performance. But did you have to smooth things over afterwards?
Actually when we first met, right at the beginning of the movie, he said, “Hey, I’m Chadwick. I’m playing Jackie, and I’m not going to talk to you. I want to say hello but I’m not going to hang out with you. I’m not going to.”
I get that. That’ll probably help me also. Then after that scene he was very nice. I think he understood. After that entire day or two of just screaming out in the hot sun all that awful shit, it was painful for everybody. And it was very painful for me. [Laughs.] I don’t know. He saw it and he was very generous. Yeah.
Are you worried that that’s going to end up on your lifetime achievement reel someday? Just racist insults intercut with “Firefly,” “Dollhouse” and Frozen?
Like that’s the catchphrase? I hope not. I don’t know, maybe.
Tell me about Frozen. One might imagine as a layperson that, as one of the stars of Frozen, you are currently bathing in money. You have it on a roll of toilet paper in your house.
Yes, of money.
How is that affecting you? Wreck-It Ralph was a big success but Frozen is a breakout. Frozen is ridiculous.
[Thinks.] It’s great? Because you’re not in it, I mean you’re in it but your face isn’t a part of the movie, it’s not the type of thing that when you walk down the street people go, “There’s the Duke of Weselton! There! Right there!” and taking pictures with children.
You could wear the costume!
I could put a toupee on and do the whole dance scene.
It’s such an animated character, and you’re a talented physical actor. Was that all the animators or did you offer them these moves?
Oh, a lot of that was improv. But when the improv is those very suggestive things, like, “Like a monkey with the face of a chicken I fly!” So then when you watch the thing he’s doing a chicken-monkey dance.
Did you ever say something specifically because you thought it would be impossible for them to animate it?
No, no, no. Whatever came out came out. A lot of the time you don’t even remember what you said until you see it again. It’s just whatever comes to your mind.
What else have you got coming up? You’ve got Premature, but what else is coming?
I had something I really had a blast doing. We’re almost done with it, this season of “Newsreaders” on Adult Swim. It is a spin-off of “Childrens Hospital,” Rob Corddry’s company Abominable Pictures did it. Last season it was great, it was one of my favorite shows, and the guy who played the host quit, and they called me, and now I’m the host of “Newsreaders.” It is so much fun. It’s a news show, a fake news show closer to The Onion than anything else. I’m Reagan Biscayne, the host of “Newsreaders.” It will be out of the summer.
And then I did a couple of other movies. One called Welcome to Me, with Kristen Wiig, and I just finished one called Shangri-La Suite, and another one called Tell with Robert Patrick, whom I saw last night. I play a bad guy with Robert Patrick. That was pretty fun.
I’m not going to ask you about whether there will ever be anymore “Firefly.”
Right.
Because although we all love it… practicality. But… more “Dollhouse?”
No. [Laughs.] I think there’s less chance of more “Dollhouse” than of “Firefly.”
I think it was really starting to pick up. Every episode got better and better. I wanted to watch more of it.
Yeah.
I also remember when I was watching that show, and they cast you as “Alpha,” I thought to myself, was Joss Whedon challenging you? You got to be the funny guy in “Firefly” but now you have to be the most badass motherfucker.
Yeah.
Did you have a talk with him about that?
He just… I don’t know. I don’t know how long he’d thought about that choice before he asked me. [Laughs.] He’s told me that, after I’d read… I think we were doing Anthony & Cleopatra at his house, you know he does those Shakespeare readings?
Which I have never been invited to.
I haven’t been to one in a while. I don’t even remember who I read, but he said that he knew that I could do that role after that or something. Hell if I know. It was a fun role. It was difficult. I learned a lot though. I learned that, because in the way that I was introduced in that show I was the funny guy who turns into the badass, being the funny guy is a lot easier. That’s what I learned. I have endless ideas about how to fall down a flight of stairs and be a fool…
But falling down a flight of stairs and being a badass is a little harder.
Yeah. Or throwing someone down a flight of stairs. I haven’t done that too often in life. I’ve fallen down plenty of flights of stairs.
I think you’re owed a couple of pushes.
Yeah?
After falling down so many times yourself, you’re owed.
[Laughs.]
William Bibbiani is the editor of CraveOnline’s Film Channel and co-host of The B-Movies Podcast. Follow him on Twitter at @WilliamBibbiani.
