Will Arnett is in Melbourne this week promoting his new movie, Blades of Glory, and I was lucky enough to get an interview. Despite this being my first in person celebrity interview, mixing up my SNL cast members and giggling like a school girl at everything he said, it ended up being a pretty good interview. You can download it here, stream it or read it below.

Will Arnett Interview Transcript:

Will Arnett: How’s it going?

Liam Marcon: I’m good, how are you?

WA: To be honest with you, I’m half in the bag.

LM: Been doing a lot of these today?

WA: Yeah, it’s just I’ve been smoking a lot of crystal meth.

LM: *laughing* That probably doesn’t help.

WA: No it doesn’t. I thought smoking crystal meth all night would help.

LM: You should’ve smoked it today.

WA: I know, I know, everybody has been saying that to me. “You should’ve smoked today…”

LM: *laughs* Anyway… most people know you from Arrested Development…

WA: Yes, except for my parents who know me from the hospital where I was born.

LM: Apart from them. Recently you have been in a slew of movies recently, and you have several coming up in the next year or two. How’s the transition been from a regular series to movies and different characters?

WA: It’s been remarkably easy. *laughs* In the sense that, you go work on these things only for a few months and then your out and on to the next thing, and so that’s kind of interesting. I do feel like sometimes you do start do get a bit of a repour going and some momentum and then it’s over. You know, and sometimes it takes a little while to get that momentum. So I realised that on movies that you have to hit the ground running.

LM: Yeah, now…

WA: Are these all fortunes from fortune cookies. *referring to my thinly cut note cards*

LM: *laughing* I just cut them a bit thin.

WA: I like it.

LM: So, your new movie Blades of Glory, with Will Ferrel, Jon Heder, and your wife. First off tell us a little about the movie and your character.

WA: This is Blades of Glory… Blades of Glory… Blades of Glory? Oh right, Blades of Glory is the story of two gentlemen who are banned from skating for life and they come back. They find a loophole that allows there to be the first ever male pair. My wife Amy Poehler and I play the brother and sister former pair champions, Stranz and Fairchild Van Waldenberg and we are not happy on them coming in and stealing the limelight from us.

LM: Of course.

WA: Yeah and why would we be. Who could expect us to be happy about that? Nobody’s gracious under those circumstances. I think we represent all that is awful about people who are obsessed with celebrity, so we go out of our way to try to destroy them. I have to say in time it’s revealed that little by little we have a somewhat incest-rious relationship that’s somewhat improper. So it was really fun to do that, be the goofy villains.

LM: Yeah, that must of been weird having your wife play your sister.

WA: Yeah we tried not to think about it to much we just kind of do it. It was more difficult playing the dumber of the two, because she started to get the impression that she was in charge. *laughs*

LM: So that’s not the case in real life?

LM: Well it is now.

LM: Will Ferrel and Jon Heder two hilarious guys. How did you like working with them?

WA: Great, real great, great guys. Really fun set, really fun movie. Right from the top Will is the top dog, and he sets a great vibe on set and a funny guy, funny performer, and such a good honest guy. To be honest I kind of look up to him and take my cue from him, and if you could be half as nice as him you would be alright. But also super funny and Jon is such a nice and genuine guy. It was a very loose set, we improvised a lot on the movie. Amy and I particular had the opportunity, they let us kind of do what we wanted and we abused that privilege.

LM: Sounds like fun.

WA: Yep.

LM: I’m guessing, since your Canadian you already knew how to skate?

WA: Good guess. Yeah, I grew up in Toronto and I played Hockey when I was a kid. I didn’t figure skate at all, so that was… We always thought figure skating was for dudes it’s not cool, but I got to say I have an incredible respect now for what they do, they are for real athletes and I had a few days, especially when we first started training, I had many mornings that I would wake up and I would be very stiff. But I think that’s natural for guys.

LM: *laughs*

WA: But anyway… *laughs* sorry it’s been a long day.

LM: That’s alright.

WA: I realised that these guys are major athletes, they are big guys doing very acrobatic moves on skates and it’s just I can’t say it enough. I probably complained a lot while training, because our trainers would say, “Do that but better”, and I was, “What? Can’t we just take a break?”

LM: I know that feeling. One of my favourite lines in the movie is one of yours . When you are lying on the polar bear rug and you refer to Will and Jon Heder’s characters as freaks.

WA: *laughs* Yeah, yeah.

LM: Did you get to keep that rug? Because that was very cool.

WA: I wish. That was such a… *laughs* That was one of the first days that we were shooting up in Montréal. Going on to that set and we started blocking that scene onto a different part of the set, and I noticed that rug and I was like, “I got to get on that rug, I’m sorry can we change this whole scene, I got to get on that.” Once we started shooting on that rug it really informed me actually with the rest of the movie, to be honest.

LM: That’s pretty cool. You have another Will Ferrel comedy coming up, Semi-Pro.

WA: Semi-Pro, it’s about the world of basketball. Specifically the American Basketball Association which in the 60’s and 70’s was really like the wild west of the sports in the states. Run by all these entrepreneurs you know, boom or bust type guys, who wanted to compete with the NBA and ultimately did merge a few teams into the NBA but it was a really loosy goosy league and sometimes they couldn’t pay the players and they didn’t fill the stands. But it was all show, and that was the league that brought showmanship into the game. So in this movie Will plays a player-owner of a fictitious Flint team. All the other teams are real but this fictitious Flintropics, because the joke being that Flint Michigan is decidedly un-tropical… and un-topical. I play a former player who is the colour commentator for the team. It was a lot of fun, it was just a lot of fun. I had a moustache the whole time, it was ridicules.

LM: Actually just before I came here, I saw a clip of you on Jimmy Kimmel.

WA: Oh yeah.

LM: You had the fake moustache and golden roller-skates.

WA: The moustache wasn’t fake (in the movie), just to point that out.

LM: I was a little disappointed you didn’t have it on now.

WA: I know. I would’ve loved to have worn that. Actually since I did that Jimmy Kimmel thing I kind of realised that I wanted to wear that fake moustache more.

LM: *laughs* Yeah

WA: *laughs* I thought about like going to weddings wearing a fake moustache, because wouldn’t that be weird if you went to a wedding and saw a dude and were like, “Wait is that moustache fake?” *laughs*

LM: *laughing* You wouldn’t want to bring it up in case you were wrong.

WA: *laughing* In case you were wrong. It would really kind of put people off. It would really disarm them if you showed up like that. *laughs* I would love to go and have an audience with the queen or something and have on that moustache, it would be great.

LM: *laughs* She would probably take that as an insult or something.

WA: Probably, but I would also curtsy.

LM: *laughs* I was looking at all the movies you have got coming up, and I have been hearing a lot of good things about, On Broadway, the small independent film.

WA: Yeah that’s a small independent film directed by a writer/director friend of ours, Mine and Amy’s, and he’s an old friend of mine and a really talented guy. He wrote a movie I had done years ago in Boston called Southie, about Irish American gangs in south Boston. I mean you look at me and you think gang movie of course.

LM:*laughs* Of course.

WA: I have that hard edge. That tough guy look. Anyway he wrote and directed this movie called On Broadway. It’s a really sweet little movie, and I hope finds a life. It’s really difficult now… it seems to me that a movie like that in the 90’s when independent film was all the rage, it would’ve found a home much easier back then. Now it’s a little more difficult to break through I think, which is too bad. I hope it finds a life somewhere it’s a sweet movie.

LM: So do I.

WA: Yeah. I just came into it… I was only there for a day or something. Just a little bit on it, but it was fun man. I love working with friends and people that I like, as apposed to people that I hate.

LM: *laughs* I heard you like air guitar.

WA: Love it. Yeah I have been playing air guitar for years now. My parents gave me my first air guitar when I was six. It was just a beat up little thing but I used to just strum away at it in my room. For days on end. *laughs* Yeah I do like air guitar and I thought about competing at the highest levels. I have contemplated going to Finland for the air guitar world championship. I have pulled it out a few times on a talk show in America called Conan O’Brian.

LM: Great show. I saw you on it, very funny.

WA: Yeah. I have done it a 3 or 4 times on there. I used to do it only to one song which was the theme song to Law & Order, but I have retired that for the most part.

LM: To try something different?

WA: Yeah. I’m trying to move into different areas. You know as an artist your always looking to stretch yourself and as an air guitar artist it’s no different.

LM: *laughs* Have you tried the video game Guitar Hero?

WA: Oh I have. I own 3 Guitar Hero guitars. Two wireless and one… one um…

LM: Wired?

WA: Oh yes. Wired. Myself and… I turned an actor friend of mine who’s on the American version of the Office onto that game, and he quickly rose to become a Guitar Hero virtuoso. He’s really good at it, and there is another guy Fred Armisen on Saturday Night Live who is excellent at it. He’s actually incorporated Guitar Hero into his show… sometimes when he does a live show. I can’t do that, I’m not that good. Have you played it?

LM: Yeah I have, I’m not very good at it though.

WA: It’s pretty awesome though, right?

LM: It’s a lot of fun, yeah.

WA: I have just gotten recently… I got a Wii. By the way I should point out, I’m a loser. I’m 37 and my Dad never played video games when he was 37.

LM: That’s alright our entire audience are losers.

WA: Oh thank god. So yeah I play Wii, I play Playstation 3. How excited are you for the new GTA?

LM: Oh I love that series.

WA: Right?

LM: Nothing like beating up some hookers.

WA: Oh it’s the best! And also playing that game was good.

LM: What about Hot Coffee? *laughs*

WA: *laughs* Yeah, Grand Theft Auto the new one comes out at the end of the year. We used to play that… second season of Arrested (Development) I used to go straight home for work and play Grand Theft Auto all night by myself. Fucking hell man… calls me up, “Hey you know when you’re on the back of the bike and those Russian dudes are chasing you. How do you get up the ramp without dying?” *laughs* You know?

LM: Yeah it’s a great game. You mentioned Fred Armisen. You have a movie coming out with him don’t you… or am I getting SNL cast members mixed up? Brothers Solomon?

WA: Oh Will Forte.

LM: Ah Will Forte.

WA: Will Forte wrote a script, one of the funniest scripts I have ever read.

LM: It looked great from the trailer.

WA: Yeah. Look again, it’s a goofy movie but it’s actually oddly really sweet. I love dumb characters. I find dumb and confident to be a fantastic combination, but in this, Jon Solomon the character I play, he’s dumb and he’s not so much confident as he is naive, and he’s confident in that naiveté. But he’s very positive, he’s not a villain, he’s not villainess in anyway. He’s a very positive, optimistic guy; both of these guys constantly have revolting grins plasted on their faces.

LM: Like all dumb people do.

WA: Yeah. *laughs* Like dumb people do. *laughs* Yeah it’s a funny movie man, a lot of really hard, funny jokes in it.

LM: I’m guessing your friends with a lot of the cast members of SNL?

WA: Yeah.

LM: Because your also working with… Andy Samberg.

WA: It should be noted my social life in New York revolves around SNL. Because it is the all encompassing SNL when your on it. I’m not the show. I constantly point that out to people. I’m not on the show, even though I’m always there. You know it’s a very demanding job for Amy so there is a real fraternity there. So we do spend a lot of time there, but I knew all those guys, Andy Samberg, Akiva and Yorma. I knew all those guys when they were just Lonely Island, doing sketches and they did a pilot and they used to do things on the internet. So I knew them before they came on the show and they asked me to come and do a few days on Hot Rod and I said yes and I’m happy I did it, it’s a funny movie. Although I do play quite a huge dick in the movie. I saw the movie a few weeks ago and I thought dumb is one thing but I got to layoff playing a dick for a while because he was like a world class dick.

*wrap up signal*

WA: This better be good Liam, this is the last question.

LM: Alright last question.

WA: Think about it.

LM: Alright I will go with: Any chance we are going to see you doing something different from comedy like a drama or maybe Will Arnett the action hero.

WA: *laughs* Look the people want it. Obviously. They can’t wait for me to take over the Die Hard series. No actually I don’t have any desire to do anything all that serious and I don’t think anybody wants to see me do that either, or cares one way or the other. But I will say I am working on a script and I don’t know if it will end up getting made, we are working on this script, the Ambassador. It’s a movie I’m producing, that is really about the ultimate ugly American who goes to Europe and he’s sent over there like a Trojan horse to kind of fuck everything up with U.S and European relations, but he goes too far because he is so dumb he goes too far, and the U.S government tries to kill him but he’s to dumb to kill. Then in the third act it sort of becomes like the Bourne Identity and we really wrote… Mike Schur a really funny writer who writes on the Office, he wrote a pretty hardcore action movie at the end. So we might not even do that, if that ever happens it will be fun. You know, like I’m in a car chase and I don’t even realise it. There’s this guy shooting at me and I’m like, “Go around! God.”

LM: That sounds like a big hit.

WA: Yeah.

LM: Well thanks for the interview.

WA: Thank you man, pleasure to meet you Liam.

LM: Pleasure to meet you too.

WA: Yeah, thanks so much.

And there we go. I had a great time doing the interview and Will was a really cool and funny guy. Don’t forget to check out Blades of Glory, only at the movies from the 21st of June.

Fun “Fact”: Will Arnett sits on my cool wall just behind Bruce Campbell. Now that’s fucking cool.