by Apatow, Judd
Judd: Do you think he connects to you in the same way, or is he having a different type of experience?
Lena: I don’t know. I only know what he’s thinking when we’re working. When we’re in a scene, I feel like I have a really good sense of what he needs and where he’s coming from. But when we’re just like eating lunch and having a conversation? I have no fucking idea.
Judd: You’ve had a similar relationship with the women of the show, and, you know, we talked before about how, in television shows sometimes, the cast gets crazy after a few years. At a certain point, everyone comes to dislike each other. But for you, it has evolved in such a positive way. I mean, you’ve known Jemima [Kirke] forever.
Lena: Twenty years now.
Judd: And Zosia [Mamet]. What’s that been like, having that bond with all of those women you work with now?
Lena: I think I assumed just because girls can be so annoying, it was somehow going to devolve into one massive catfight. Like you said, that’s what you always hear about television shows: By the end, nobody’s speaking and everyone’s arguing about who gets the best hairdresser. But we all have been through this thing together and we’ve stayed connected. We’re all really different but we support each other’s decisions and there’s a real beauty to it—we’re not best friends, going out together every Friday night, but I know that if I needed something, they would be there in a second. There’s an essential net of support. I also have so much respect for like how each of them is navigating their career in a really different way but totally owning it. Each girl is totally carving her own destiny. Zosia’s writing a feature and Jemima’s making paintings and Allison [Williams]’s playing Peter Pan and they’re each doing their thing and it’s crazy. Allison’s getting married now. Jemima’s married and a mother of two. Zosia and I both bought homes with our boyfriends. It has been this weird journey to adulthood—and by the time the show’s done, we could all be carrying babies around.
Judd: Maybe that’s when the show should end.
Lena: Totally.
LESLIE MANN
(2012)
It’s always fun to do an interview with my wife, Leslie, because she’s always hilarous and we’re often right on the edge of getting into a real argument the entire time. It’s such a tightrope walk when you do personal work—let alone work that involves your wife and kids, and is inspired by your life—and then have to talk about it with journalists. The problem is, Leslie and I have different ideas about how we want to portray the level of truth involved in our movies. I probably lean—out of pure laziness—toward talking about it as if it mostly comes from our lives, or at least an emotionally truthful place. Leslie prefers to say that the majority of what we do has been fabricated. The truth is probably somewhere in the middle, but this does lead to some tricky moments when we try to talk about our work with other people.
Leslie is my muse in ways that people don’t fully understand. When I have an idea for a movie, she’s the person that I kick it around with. When I’m outlining a screenplay, she’s the one who says, Well if you’re going to do this scene, then why don’t you do that scene, too? Many of the scenes I’ve written were Leslie’s idea, but I won’t get more specific than that here because I want people to think they were all my idea. If any of our movies resonate with people in any way, Leslie’s courage to explore these difficult, emotional areas is the reason why. She never thought of herself as a comedian—comedy is just something that seemed to happen to her. Which I am eternally grateful for, because there is no one I love working with, or being with, more.
Empire magazine: How did you broach the idea of making a movie about—I was going to say ups and downs, but it’s really just downs—of marriage at forty?
Judd Apatow: Well, there’s nothing funny about the ups. That’s the whole point.
Leslie Mann: Every other movie is about the ups. Or the end.
Judd: I was just thinking about doing something about family but I hadn’t thought of an idea. Then I thought about how I liked Pete and Debbie in Knocked Up and you could make a whole movie about them….So I told Leslie I was thinking about it while we were on vacation in Hawaii.
Leslie: It was a tense day. The kids were being pains. So it was maybe not the best time to talk to me about it. But we talked about whether it would be a good idea, whether it would be good for the kids.
Judd: You resisted the idea of using the kids.
Leslie: No, I resisted that on Knocked Up. I knew we’d have to use Maude and Iris in this because they were our kids last time. I didn’t want to use them originally.
Empire: What convinced you?
Leslie: Nothing. Judd manipulated me, lied to me, and steamrolled me. He told me he was auditioning kid actors while I was busy doing something, then: (stage whispers) “If it doesn’t work out, maybe we could use the kids….” Three days before shooting he said, “We had no luck finding kids, so we’re using ours.”
Empire: How do you establish what from your personal life can go in the film?
Judd: I think naturally we steer it. There’s way more that could be in there….
Leslie: But you would want to slit your wrists if you saw that version.
Empire: Who decided there should be a scene in which Leslie fondles Megan Fox’s boobs?
Judd: I don’t remember. At some point someone must have pitched the idea….Maybe Megan.
Leslie: Oh, I doubt it. It was you, and you’re trying to put it on someone else. I’m sure Megan would not push the boob touching.
Judd: I would not have pushed it.
Leslie: What is wrong with you? You’re like a dirty man.
Judd: Is that scene dirty?
Leslie: No, I don’t care. But a lot of people seem interested in it….It was your idea. Admit it.
Empire: You two met when Leslie came in to read for The Cable Guy. Judd, you said you liked her straightaway. Leslie, were you aware?
Leslie: Nuh-uh. Jim Carrey wasn’t there, so Judd was reading Jim’s part. I don’t remember Judd at all.
Judd: I had little birds and hearts floating round my head and she didn’t even notice.
Leslie: I had a bit of a crush on Ben Stiller, so maybe that’s why. I was focused on my work. I’m professional. Also, Judd was talking like The Cable Guy. He had a lisp. It wouldn’t have been very sexy….He would send his sister—
Judd: This is a lie!
Leslie: It’s true. He would send his sister to my trailer to tell me about all these dates he was going on.
Judd: She just likes me, so she says nice things. I didn’t send her.
Leslie: He sent her. What was your move?
Judd: I just forced you to be around me more than you wanted to be. It was subtle stalking.
Empire: Do you find the same things funny?
Judd: No.
Leslie: Yes we do! Are you serious?
Judd: We’ll agree on some things. But there’s some comedy I’ll love that—
Leslie: Like what?
Judd: You wouldn’t sit and watch Monty Python movies with me.
Leslie: I love Monty Python movies. What are you talking about?
Judd: But I’ll watch weird comedy all day long and you’ll want to watch Dateline Mystery….I think maybe it’s not that we like different things but I have a higher tolerance for mass quantity. Leslie might want to watch one episode of Louie, but I’ll happily watch nine more. She’ll want to switch to Psychic Kids.
Leslie: That is a good show.
Empire: Is there any comedy you vehemently disagree on?
Judd: I don’t think so.
Leslie: I thought you said we didn’t have the same sense of humor?
Judd: I think maybe you’re not drawn to spend as much time with it as I am. I’m fascinated by how it works or why something’s funny. I watch endlessly. Leslie is faster to switch off.
Leslie: You don’t know me at all. You seriously do not know me. You are so self-involved that you have no clue who I am.
Leslie: Harold and Maude.
Judd: I thought you hated that. I’m joking! Come on, our daughter’s named Maude. So we’re in tune there.
Leslie: Are we in tune or out of tune? You keep changing your tune.
Judd: I’m trying to make this interesting! I’m shaking it up.
Leslie: Shake it up by leaving.
Judd: What are your favorites?
Leslie: I have three: Harold and Maude, Broadcast News, Terms of Endearment.
Judd: Okay, we’re in tune.
Empire: Paul Feig, co-producer on Freaks and Geeks, described you as “a shouter,” Judd. When did that change?
Leslie: Right after that. It was his back.
Judd: I herniated my disk right after Freaks and Geeks, due to bad posture, a car accident, and general stress. Then when Undeclared went down, I was fighting the studio because they wouldn’t let me direct a pilot I wrote….But I realized I was treating this executive like my mother and the other person who wouldn’t let me do it like my father, and I was projecting all my issues onto them. As soon as I made that connection, everything changed.
Empire: You had rave reviews for Freaks and Geeks and Undeclared but terrible ratings. How do you deal with the knowledge that you’re making something good that nobody wants to watch?
Judd: It felt so bad. I had a rebellious streak that it was better to be a cool, indie geek than a mainstream rock star. The Ben Stiller Show was canceled after twelve episodes. Cable Guy didn’t do well. I was doing punch-ups on some movies that were successful, working uncredited on a lot of things that were doing well. I knew what it took, but I didn’t necessarily want to do it in my own work. I got really depressed and kept switching back and forth between [TV and movies] when I wasn’t succeeding commercially in either. At the end of Undeclared, I asked Will Ferrell to play a meth addict who will write your term paper for money. He hadn’t had a big movie yet, just some supporting parts. I thought, This guy should be a movie star but I can’t get a movie made with him, so let’s just put him in an episode. He had a good time, so he brought us Anchorman, which he wrote with Adam McKay.
Empire: Leslie, what was your point of view, watching your husband go through that?
Leslie: It was awful. He was really stressed out and that put a lot of pressure on me. We had a new baby. He was such a nightmare. Just kind of on another planet, stressed-out and unavailable. Obsessing about work…But he’s kind of still like that. I’m really tired of it.
Judd: I could talk for hours about her being miserable about work.
Leslie: Do you know what I did? When his back went out, I went to New York and did this little film with Jeff Goldblum and I had my first love scene with him. So I was really enjoying myself and I felt terrible about it. Judd was literally being operated on—
Judd: On my spine.
Leslie: And I was in bed with Jeff Goldblum! And Jeff is very Method and he wants to rehearse—
Judd: But this as a business can just consume everything. When you have a family, you’re worried. And for Leslie, you’re always auditioning and waiting to see if people like you. Eventually we thought, We should just create our own work.
Empire: So tell us about The 40-Year-Old Virgin and finally getting that success.
Judd: We got shut down after two days. They thought Steve Carell looked like a serial killer.
Leslie: They thought Paul Rudd was fat.
Judd: They thought I was lighting it like an indie. They literally shut it down in the middle of the day. They didn’t even wait….I decided not to yell. That was a turning point. I decided just to listen and not react at all. I didn’t tell them it was insane to shut down a production and cost themselves half a million dollars when they could just call me at night and discuss it. Because I didn’t yell, it resolved itself much quicker.
Empire: How did it resolve?
Judd: We started up again two days later. It was really silly.
Leslie: You made some adjustments. Paul went on a diet. He literally stopped eating. What did you change with Steve?
Judd: Nothing. Steve decided the character would be a little more Buster Keaton–esque. He was low-energy and everyone else was spinning around him. Everything we shot in those first two days became some of the funniest stuff in the movie. It was the speed-dating sequence. So there was no purpose to it.
Leslie: If you look at Paul Rudd in the speed-dating sequence compared to the rest, he’s, like, ten pounds heavier. Then in the rest of the movie his hair looks cute and he’s thinner.
Empire: Then Knocked Up happened….
Leslie: Knocked Up is the story of when our daughter Iris was born.
Judd: Almost beat for beat. From the doctor not showing up to getting the doctor you rejected earlier and asking him to deliver the baby and him being mean to you. We knew it was a crazy story. The last third is almost exactly what happened. Leslie goes into labor and I call my doctor but he’s out of town.
Leslie: But we saw him about three hours before that and my water broke. He said, “No, your water didn’t break, you can go home.” He wanted to leave town and go to a bar mitzvah in San Francisco. So I think he lied to me and said my water didn’t break, which is really dangerous. But he’s such a stupid fucking asshole and I hate him. So we wound up with this guy who had giant hands, like Shrek. And there were complications and he was mad at us and he reeked of cigarettes and it was just horrible. But it made a good movie.
Empire: When did you both first realize that you could make people laugh?
Leslie: I would audition for dramatic parts and people would laugh at me—not ideal at the time—so slowly I realized the comedy world is where I belonged.
Judd: I wanted to be funny more than I was. I realized, when I worked with people, that I could write in their voices. So I could write jokes for Roseanne or Larry Sanders, but I didn’t have my own voice.
Empire: You started as a stand-up. Was your intention to become a performer or writer?
Judd: I probably thought I could become Eddie Murphy….But I didn’t do any of the acting side because I was confident that I was terrible. Even when I did stand-up, I was smart enough to know that I had no life experience or real opinions. So it was more fun for me to write for people who had really strong opinions, because I didn’t care about anything but being a comedian.
Empire: Was the decision to move to writing a conscious one or driven by circumstance?
Leslie: It was a decision made by Jim Henson.
Judd: I auditioned for him for this reality show where he gave cameras to a couple of comedians who traveled round the country. I auditioned with Adam Sandler and David Spade and Rob Schneider. Jim Henson said he wanted to buy all my ideas but didn’t want to cast me because I lacked warmth.
Leslie: From the guy who created the Muppets.
Judd: From the guy who taught you how to read. It hit me hard….But the fact he wanted my ideas was important. I realized Adam Sandler was really fun to watch and be around and I knew I wasn’t like him. I was just a normal guy with some good lines.
Empire: You’ve now worked together many times, but This Is 40 was the first time Leslie was the lead. How was that different?
Leslie: It was just more tiring, but he protected me from all the stresses from the outside world. I don’t know what the budget is or what the politics were. It was just a safe world for all the actors. I was so grateful for that. Thank you, honey. I kind of like you a little bit more again.
Judd: See, we’ve gone full circle. She hated me and then she likes me again. This is my day. This is my life.
This interview was conducted by Olly Richards and originally appeared in the March 2013 edition of Empire magazine.
LOUIS C.K.
(2014)
Louis C.K. is one of those people who are so brilliant and funny and uncompromising that sometimes I need to avoid their work. When I was writing This Is 40, I made a point to never
watch his TV show because I was aware that it was, on one level, about a middle-aged guy with two daughters, and if I watched it, and loved it, I would probably feel like there was no need for me to make my movie. (Only after I locked my film did I go and binge-watch it. I couldn’t love it more.) I also make a point of not watching too much of his stand-up, because he’s so prolific and covers so much ground. Watching him makes me feel like there’s nothing left to talk about, and that everything has already been done, as well as it can be done, by Louis. He has raised the bar for all of us.
It is worth noting that we conducted this interview in Louis’s kitchen in New York City and, as we spoke, he made me a delicious dinner of steak and beans. For a moment, I felt like I was one of his kids, and I came away thinking, They have a pretty good situation there.
Judd Apatow: I was reading an article about you recently and I saw that you had an experience a little like mine—as a kid, I worked at a radio station, and you, somebody got you a job at a TV station?
Louis C.K.: Yeah.
Judd: I had a guy like that, too. He ran the high school radio station and treated us like adults. He was the cool guy. He would curse and he went to NYU with Martin Scorsese and taught film at the high school and he made me think that you could do anything, even as a little kid. So I had a radio show and interviewed all these comics. And I’m wondering what that was like for you to have this teacher who said, I’m going to hook this kid up.
Louis: In junior high school, I did nothing but drugs. I got in trouble all the time. I was a messed-up kid. And then in my first year of high school, I stopped all that and became a good student, but the problem was, by then, all my friends from junior high school had dropped out—like, every one of them. Five of my friends dropped out of high school after one year. And there was this kid Neil who lived a block from the high school and everybody would be there, at his house, partying every day—from nine in the morning, when his parents left for work.
Judd: Where did Neil’s parents think the kids were?
Louis: They couldn’t control it. Both parents worked. I mean, everybody I knew was getting high and nobody could do anything about it.
