Interview with Ryan Reynolds - January 6th, 2006

Promoting: Just Friends
Venue: The Soho Hotel (I think)



ViewLondon(VL): How did you get involved in the movie?

Ryan Reynolds (RR): It was something that (director) Roger Kumble brought to me, plus I just loved that whole concept of “You can’t go home again.” That’s something that I can definitely relate to. I’ve tried to go home numerous times and it’s not easy, so I loved that concept. I was shocked that no-one else had jumped on that idea yet – the whole Friend Zone thing.

VL: Can you describe the Fat Suit experience? How was it for you?

RR: It was fun. I liked that the Fat Suit wasn’t so over the top, it wasn’t gigantic or anything. It was integral to shaping that character. It was a five hour experience to get it on – there was a team of people working on it around the clock and I felt like they would have to put scaffolding on me to get it on. But it’s weird – any time you have a kind of appliance on your face, it suddenly avails you of about 20 new facial expressions so I was loving that. I was loving just experimenting with it, playing in the mirror.

VL: There are several hilarious supporting performances in the film, particularly Chris Marquette, who plays your brother.

RR: He’s great, yeah. My brother in real life – he and I had that dynamic. And Roger rather trepidatiously let us do this, like, slap fight stuff. I mean that went on in my house – I had three older brothers. And in the movie, every slap is real. I mean, we didn’t pull any punches. So by the time we finished shooting our faces looked like some sort of diseased pancake. It was really violent. But I just love when something like that happens – it looks so out of place for this romantic comedy to have this, like, hardcore violence, but for some reason it just cracked me up.

VL: I thought at the time that it was great “slap acting” but obviously you’re prepared to suffer for your art.

RR: Oh yeah, it was all absolutely real.