She's one of the funniest ladies on the silver screen: Bridesmaids star Kristen Wiig talks about weddings, sex with Jon Hamm and THAT particularly disgusting scene.
As you wrote this movie, does that mean you are actually a very bitter ex-bridesmaid who has had a ton of bad wedding experiences?
Am I? No! I haven’t. Sorry! It’s mostly fictional. My friend and writing partner Annie (Mumolo) has had a few bad experiences, but I have been pretty lucky and not had any crazy wedding experiences. However, I can relate to being in my late 20s and early 30s and feeling like all my friends were suddenly settling down. At that time, I was having odd jobs and going to auditions. When I went back to my hometown and visited people that had houses and babies and cars I would wonder “What’s wrong with me?”
It seems quite daunting that when you are asked to be a bridesmaid you end up having to pay out thousands of dollars for a dress, presents, shoes, the bachelorette party etc.
It’s a terrible tradition. It sucks that it’s just expected. Annie (Mumolo) was once involved in a wedding – she was a bridesmaid - and she couldn’t afford to go to the bachelorette party! She got an email saying, “We’re going to Miami, everyone pitch in $3500”. She couldn’t afford it in the end - it’s terrible.
So the idea for this movie just came from you two talking about that?
Kind of. The film was like her experiences amplified by a thousand.
Was there a lot of improvisation in the movie, on top of shooting the script?
We rehearsed for weeks before we started shooting, and did a lot of improvisation in rehearsals. All of the cast are amazing improvisers, so why not let them do what they do best? Melissa (McCarthy) and Wendi (McLendon-Covey) are from The Groundlings and they are two of the funniest people I have ever seen on stage. To be able to go, “Just do your thing” when the camera is on them is so cool.
It must have been really hard not to laugh during shoots!
Well, we did laugh quite a bit. We ruined a lot of takes through laughing. You didn’t get to see that part, luckily.
The great thing about being so involved in your own film is that you can influence all the casting. Were you instrumental in casting Jon Hamm?
Yeah, he was probably the only person on a very short list. We had talked about it and it was kind of a no-brainer. We needed a really funny, good-looking guy who could play a terrible douche-bag, but who also had that quality where the audience think “Yeah, he’s a douche but I get why she keeps going back.”
Was it strange having to do those slightly full-on sex scenes with him? Wasn’t it the first day of shooting or something?
That was actually the last day of shooting, so in some ways it was very sad. It was the 51st day out of 51. He is a very close friend of mine, so I thought it was going to be weirder than it was. Anyway, if you’ve seen it, you’ll know it’s not like the most romantic sex scene. Whilst filming it, we were just making each other laugh, and he was throwing me around the room…We had so many different takes and choices to choose from!
Chris O’Dowd plays such a sweet character as your character’s other suitor, Rhodes. So in the end it is better to go with the slightly nerdy, less debonair guy, right? Geeky guys are hot these days. Do you agree?
I’ve always liked geeky guys. I don’t know why. There’s something about just being yourself and not worrying about what people think which is attractive.
It seems as though when one thing is going badly in your life, 10 things happen that are bad. Everything seems to be falling apart in Annie’s life, all at the same time.
Well yes, for Annie, losing her job and getting kicked out of her apartment… that’s a lot to go wrong.
Do you relate to any of those things? Have you had weird and terrible jobs, like before you were on Saturday Night Live?
I think most actors have. When you are acting or trying to make a living in any of the arts, you have to survive somehow – especially by waiting tables. I’ve waited a lot of tables, it’s the best way to go on auditions, as you can have someone cover your shift and you also get to talk to the public which is great for character ideas, when you are writing.
What’s the worst job you’ve ever had? Was there a point where you thought you had hit rock bottom before you got that dream job?
I’ve had so many terrible jobs. I only did it for a couple of days, but probably working at the Farmers’ Market was the worst. I had to give out samples of little peaches. Before that, I used to work at a store where I had resigned saying “I’m going to make it!” I was asking a customer “Would you like a white peach or a yellow peach?” when my old boss walked past…
What do you love about working with your co-writer, Annie Mumolo?
I’ve known Annie (Mumolo) for such a long time and we’ve written a lot together at The Groundlings – which is a sketch, improv group here in L.A. It has never been work for us. It has always been fun. We worked on this script for four and a half years and we’ve never got in a fight or argued about anything. If she likes something and I think it should be something else, or I like something and she has a better idea, it’s fine. There’s no ego involved, and she makes me laugh more than any person in the world.
What was Judd Apatow’s contribution to the screenwriting process?
He contributed lot. We started writing the script about four and a half years ago when we would turn in ours drafts to him and he would write up notes. He was really good at saying, “This is really funny, but what if this happened or what if that happened? Send me three different versions of this scene.” At first, we were overwhelmed, and thought that we were just going to be writing, writing, writing – but I think Judd was trying to make us see that there’s knowing what you want, but there’s also being open to the notion that something better could come along. Both Judd and Paul (Feig – director) pushed us to find things in the movie and script that we were afraid to go to. Judd really finds some great stuff: the dress shop scene with the food poisoning was his idea.
I can see how that came from the mind of a man. Girls cannot be that gross, surely – or can they be that gross?
Well, Judd did say to us, “What if this happened?” but we were the ones who wrote the scene. Girls can be that gross too. Girls get drunk and they swear and they sleep with people they don’t know very well… ‘Girls’ in general, not me!
Did you want to break that mould then, of stereotypically nice non-gross girls in movies?
No, it wasn’t a conscious thing, or a statement we were making at all. All that stuff comes after the movie comes out and people have seen it, but we didn’t think about that when we were writing it.
What did Universal say to the, “I’ve pooped my pants in the street,” scene.
Well, I guess they were okay with it! It’s in the movie. I don’t know specifically what they thought about it. It’s so funny to watch Maya Rudolph slowly go down in the middle of the street, and then wave the cars by, when she has finally given up! That got one of the biggest laughs in the movie.
As this is the first Judd Apatow women’s movie, how is that expectation for you? Is that pressure?
I try not to think about the expectations. He was so supportive of the script and he really wanted Annie and I to get our points of view accross. I think we all see it as a comedy and even though it’s a mostly female cast, we never really saw it as a girl movie.
Was anything that was pitched too gross for you? Would you ever say no to anything?
I think it depends on the project and the scene. The good thing about Judd and Paul is that they always wanted us to feel comfortable.
Was there anything especially torturous that you wrote into the script, that you felt particularly bad about making the rest of the cast do?
I guess when they had to puke on each other’s hair, maybe I felt a little bit bad, but they actually liked it. It was fun! We really made them throw up. That was real vomit.
How much is Saturday Night Live a big influence on this movie?
I think doing the show and doing the movies is just like using two different muscles because the show is so fast, it’s live, it’s sketch – which is a different kind of performing, in a way. I think it helped in the writing though, because with sketch writing, you’re sitting down and you’re thinking, “Okay, we want to get as many jokes as we can in this four minute sketch,” and then it’s done. When you write a movie, it’s obviously over 120 pages, but each scene was a mini-sketch. In that way, Saturday Night Live influenced the writing a little bit.
Do you see yourself as part of a bigger community, now, of funny women?
Yeah, we’re definitely part of something… coming from SNL especially, the women there are their own little group – the SNL ladies – whether it’s people who are on the show now or people who have been on the show. You do feel that sense of community.
Do you think that, as you are so funny, it might come from your European heritage? You are Norwegian, I think?
Part. Not fully. Not 100%. I’m kind of a mutt. I’m English, Irish, Scottish and Norwegian. Each grandparent is 100%, so I am technically one quarter of all of those things, but my last name is Norwegian so I feel I am more Norwegian. I haven’t been to Norway, but I want to take my dad, Jon, there, either this summer or next summer as his parents are from there.
How do you pronounce Wiig in Norwegian.
“Veeg”. It’s like Paul Feig.
You guys are related! So were you always funny growing up? When did you know that you had a talent for comedy?
Sometimes I still wonder! I don’t remember really consciously thinking that. I hated getting up in front of the class and talking, I was terrified. I would miss school if I had a book report – which always turned on me, because then you’d have to go back next week when everyone else was done and do yours. I just hated talking in front of people. I think I was funny with my friends, people that I knew very well. Even now I will meet people in a social setting and they will be surprised that I act, because I’m not one of those people that is always on.
Do you want to stay in comedy for your whole career or are you interested in trying something else?
I don’t know. Maya is an amazing actress. She can do both serious and comedy at an expert level. I thought she was amazing in Away We Go and I would love to see her do more stuff like that.
We also loved Paul. How was it working with Simon Pegg and Nick Frost?
We all got along so well. I’ve been big fans of theirs for a long time.
It seems there are a lot of people who worship aliens in certain areas of this country.
Yeah, I lived in Tucson, Arizona for a little bit and there were people who would go and look for UFOs every night. We don’t know what’s out there though, do we?
Finally, Bridesmaids is left a bit open-ended. Did you intentionally write it, leaving it open to sequels?
I wouldn’t say that. We didn’t wrap it up in a very nice bow because I like when movies don’t…
Bridesmaids is out on DVD now - or enter to win your own copy here!
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