Believe it or not Will Arnett was a Lego fan from childhood, fact.
“I went through two stages — building Lego in my own childhood, and then ‘helping’ my younger brother build stuff when it was no longer ‘cool’ to be building Lego,” smiles Arnett.
“I mean, there’s nothing cooler than an 18-year-old dude who’s building Lego. You can imagine how well my love life was going.”
With his performance as Batman in the hit film, ‘The Lego Movie’ he is building enough credits at the moment its as simple as building Lego just like he has done since childhood. Yes, his two sons will inherit all of it. Lucky kids I say!
One of Melbourne (Australia’s) leading newspapers, “The Herald Sun” interviews Arnett from Legoland which is a few hours out of L.A
“No, no, no … this is not my first visit to Legoland,” winces Arnett.
“I would say I have been here four or five times. My kids love it.”
Somewhere, Archie and Abel, Arnett’s two sons with ex-wife Amy Poehler, are “making someone’s life miserable”.
“You see the kids that come in here and there is this rumbling din — this freak out, and my kids will no doubt be adding to that.”
So far in 2014 the Lego Movie has pulled in more cash in the US than any other film, and there is a reason for it. The film is simply unreal, we know its not out yet in Australia but if you are thinking of taking the kids, do it! They will just love it. You can bet that you (as parents) will probably love it even more.
As Arnett says, “there was really no negative at all in saying yes to this role”.
Giving voice to “one of the most iconic superheroes of all time” presented its own epic challenge for him.
“When we were thinking about how to voice him, we thought the more serious Batman took himself, the funnier he was,” says Arnett, who gave Batman a spot-on Christian Bale-ish growl.
“It made me laugh if you had him doing really boring everyday things. Even the way he talks to his girlfriend, just saying, ‘How’s it going, babe?’ And he still sounds like he’s disassembling a bomb.”
SPOILER: (There’s a particularly hilarious scene which involves Batman partying with Han Solo and Chewbacca on board the Millennium Falcon.)
Originally the actor having come from Canada set out to play a host of serious roles and its turned out he has gone the other way.
He played a weird figure skater in 2007’s hilarious Blades of Glory. His pretty awesome role as Devon Banks in 30 Rock, and the role that he is best known for as a filed magician Gob Bluth in the cult television show Arrested Development.
He explained that he couldn’t get a serious role and fell into Comedy. “When I was in my early 20s, I suffered from that thing that a lot of people suffer from in that you want to be taken seriously,” he says.
“So I thought, yeah, I’m going to be this really deep, methods actor and I’m going to do lots of stuff that people think is really cool, and deep, and people are going to take me seriously. But it turns out, nobody took me seriously and I needed to make a living.”
He lent his voice to a host of commercials which he explains is good business. Hardly any made it past the pilot phase which caused him to deal with depression and instead of working on his acting skills he ended up working in a bar for period of time.
“Five nights a week, you’d find me there drowning my sorrows,” he says.
“Perhaps if I’d put as much energy into auditions as I did into drinking, I may have gotten a decent role sooner.” (These days, Arnett says he rarely drinks, putting much of his energy into exercise. “I can’t get into trouble that way.”)
He explains his role in “Arrested Development” saved his career.
“For some reason, it speaks to a certain group of people who appreciate it, and the people who do appreciate it, really appreciate it,” he says.
“But the great thing about fans of the show is that they have been very vocal about their enthusiasm for the show. If nothing else, it’s the fans who have kept the show alive.”
The show lasted three seasons, got axed and then came back a year later due to high demand.
“We always hoped that the show would appeal to a broader audience, but it attracted a particular kind of audience,” he says, adding there’ll be another season.
“You never go into something thinking, ‘Oh, let’s make this a cult hit!’ We wanted to make it funny, and hopefully everybody will think it’s funny. It really hit a very kind of specific mark.”
At 44, Arnett reckons he’s learned to stop sweating the small stuff.
“If I’ve learned anything at this stage in my life, it’s that you just have to laugh,” he says. “When you’re on your deathbed, looking back at all of the stupid things that you worried about, if you could just enjoy yourself and have a good time, I think you would go off quietly with a smile. That’s how I’m looking at it anyway.”
The Lego Movie opens this Thursday across Australia.
Source: Herald Sun
