Will Arnett was at the CBS party for the Television Critics Association promoting his new fall show “The Millers.” I got a chance to sit down with him one on one, before anyone else found him, so I got the basics about his new sitcom and then asked about his role in the new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie.
There’s been a lot of fan controversy about the Michael Bay produced update, from Bay’s comments that the Turtles are aliens to Megan Fox going redhead as April O’Neil. Arnett plays Vernon Fenwick and explained how the comic book character was elaborated to give him a juicy role in the film.
“He’s a character who’s in the comic and in the Turtles mythology,” Arnett said. “He’s sort of a lesser character. He’s a cameraman who in the comics has a more adversarial relationship with April O’Neil, Megan Fox’s character, but for our purposes, Vernon is still a cameraman who’s helping April, works with her. He’s her cameraman and he’s kind of a solo artist. He does his own thing and as April starts to try to figure out who these vigilantes are, who these turtles are and gets involved in the story, she recruits Vernon.”
Vernon Fenwick fans, what do you think? Is Michael Bay raping your childhood by making Vernon a sidekick for April O’Neil? How about if Vernon ends up helping the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles in the final battle?
“He’s reluctant at first,” Arnett continued. “He just wants to get his paycheck and do the easy job and eventually he comes through and starts helping her and goes along for the ride in helping the turtles vanquish the Shredder.”
Participating in big action scenes with turtle actors in performance capture suits doing martial arts was a thrill for Arnett. He described the style director Jonathan Liebesman is aiming for.
“The action is very real and feels [like] we’re used to seeing through the Bourne movies, action that feels really real and hard hitting, like ooh, that looks like it hurt type stuff, and we do that.”
We’ll be back with more Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles news after we help Vanilla Ice write his ninja rap.
Fred Topel is a staff writer at CraveOnline and the man behind Shelf Space Weekly. Follow him on Twitter at @FredTopel.
