There I was, designer gown, sober, filled with hummus and sorrow, realizing I was making a mistake, and by 2006 we were divorced, and happiness eluded me once more, that fleeting butterfly, the hint at the edge of my vision that, once I turned my sad eyes to see, vanished.
ELEVEN
BING BANG BOOM
BEFOREIMADEANCHORMAN,I hadn’t done much improv comedy—I always thought comedy was better when it was scripted, choreographed, “serious.” My agents sent me the script, and I rolled my eyes. Too campy, too ridiculous; I wanted to be taken seriously. As I’ve said, I was a bit of an asshole.
I knew Will Ferrell was onSNLat the time, but other than that I had no real idea who anyone was, including the director, Adam McKay. I went to the audition begrudgingly, because my agents said it was a good idea. All I wanted was to have fun in auditions. It’s not life and death—nothing is life and death in show business. Maybe my less-than-serious approach to that audition helped, because I did well, and I was asked back for a screen test.
So there I was, sitting in a room with three other girls who had also been called back, each of us getting our hair done and prepping to go in. And then it was my turn. At one point we were running the scene in which Veronica and Ron are firing insults back and forthfrom behind the news desk while the credits roll. I liked sparring with Will; I had a great time with it. Then just as quickly we were done: bing bang boom.
“Okay,” Adam said when we finished, “now do a take for fun.”
My mind went blank. A voice in my head was saying, “But it’s fun sayingyourwords! I like saying your words!” By then, I was all too aware that I was in the presence of improv masters—Will Ferrell, who does it perfectly, seemingly without even thinking, not to mention Adam, who basically invented a whole type of improv, being one of the geniuses who created Chicago’s Upright Citizens Brigade, where Amy Poehler, Horatio Sanz, and many other great comics plied their early trade.
But I had never done improv comedy. I’d grown up on a set where you say the words correctly, or you fail. You can’t change even the smallest of things. We had to nail the script every single time.
“Just say whatever you want,” McKay said, looking at me, waiting.
“Well,” I started, with Will next to me. “Last night when we were together… I thought it was just your finger, but actually, it was your dick.” That line came out of somewhere, I guess—my unconscious mind? I’d slept with a guy once, and when I’d said, “You can put it in,” he’d said, “Iamin.” That’s how small his dick was. Art imitates life, I suppose.
Will and Adam lost their shit. Will broke, unable to stay in character. They wanted me for the job.
That wasn’t the end of it, though.
When it came to agreeing on a fee, the studio lowballed me. I’m talking a stupidly lame amount of money. I said no.
“That’s not going to happen,” I said, and hung up the phone. They could go fuck themselves.
At the time, I was renting a beach house in Malibu, on BroadBeach, trying to get away from it all for a bit. My marriage wasn’t going as planned. Apparently, a dry wedding with hummus was not the perfect sendoff for a lifetime of happiness. I needed a win.
I got another call. This time it was Will and Adam.
“We want you. We want you so badly that we are going to take some of our salaries to pay you.” For those two guys to make that offer meant so much to me. Women are almost never paid as much as the men they star alongside, but here were two titans of comedy offering me some of their share. I gratefully accepted.
I was touched, but I still thought this bizarre and over the top movie wasn’t entirely my jam. Then I arrived to set, and found Steve Carell, Paul Rudd, David Koechner, Fred Willard, and Will and Adam. I was working with the best actors I’ve ever worked with in my entire career—except for James Marsden, but we’ll get to that.
It was total dream stuff; I was in heaven.
Adam was no different on set than he was in the audition. He would often say, “Okay, now just do one take for fun.” I still found myself thinking,But it’s fun saying your words. I like saying your words!I tried to watch the others, to see what I could glean from how they did improv. Steve hadtaughtimprov, for fuck’s sake, at the legendary Second City.
Then there was Fred. I thought Fred Willard was the funniest man on the entire planet. There’s a scene in which Fred, playing Ed Harken, is in his office, talking to someone on the phone—we, the audience, don’t know who—and Chris Parnell and I come swerving in with a pressing thing to tell him. Fred holds me off with a hand gesture, and I stand at his desk and watch as he talks into the phone.
“I have no idea where he would have gotten hold of German pornography. But you and I are mature adults—we’ve both seen our share of pornographic materials… Oh, you never have? Of courseyou haven’t; how stupid of me. Neither have I—I was just speaking in generalities. Right, I’ll stop by the school later, Sister Margaret…”
This was not in the script, and it wasexactlymy type of humor. Chris and I had to stand there and try not to crack. I barely made it through.
There I was with these masters of improv: Will, Steve, Adam, Paul, David, and Fred—that’s just how their brains worked. Everything came from the central tenet of improvisational comedy, which states that whatever is said is accepted and built upon, the shorthand for which is “Yes, and…” For me, all this was new. On set I’d find myself saying to anyone who’d listen, “Teach me, Obi-Wan,” but Steve Carell, especially, would just insist that I didn’t need to be taught, that I could do it all by myself, which was such a beautiful act of belief in me. No one sat me down and held my hand and looked lovingly into my eyes and told me their wisdom. They just said, “Fuck you: you know how to do this.”
So I studied what they did and tried to soak in their brilliance, until after days and days on set, my brain suddenly opened a portal and stuff just flew out. I had no idea where these thoughts were coming from. I was wholly unacquainted with the words that were coming out of my mouth. Truly, a part of my mind had unsealed and had grown a new and entirely surprising ability to improvise.
Sometimes when you’re hired for a comedy movie and the man’s the star, he’s supposed to be the funny one, and you’re not supposed to take away from that. This was not the case withAnchorman—I was able to go toe to toe with them. It was a master class I’ve taken with me on all my subsequent professional journeys.
Years later, I’d shootVacationwith Ed Helms. I think it’s one of the funniest movies I’ve ever done, but still I felt my part was written light. The directors listened to me and punched up the character ofDebbie Griswold, Ed’s character’s wife, and I felt like an equal partner to Ed because I got to do my thing. Too often on set, you have to fight for your place with men because they don’t like it when you’re too funny. Another time I auditioned for a movie and I know that I didn’t land the part because I was funnier than the lead actor. At the audition, I was getting bigger laughs than he was and the directors were cracking up at me, not at him. He was not laughing.
Then there’s the flagrant mansplaining of it all. I auditioned for the role of Geneva in a Ron Howard movie,The Dilemma.The movie was to star Vince Vaughn, who I’d already worked with onAnchorman.At the audition, Ron suggested, “Why don’t you guys just improv for a couple seconds right before you get into it?” Given our previous experience together, I was surprised when Vince looked me straight in the face and said, “Do you understand what that means? It means we’re going to make up lines before we get into the scene.”
Come on, bro, are you kidding me right now?I thought.
