One of the greatest things about comic actors is their unique physicality and vocal patterns. What do you think your mannerisms are as a comic actor?
Wow. You know what? As soon as you start to talk about your own mannerisms you are screwed, because if you’re aware of your own mannerisms, or even beyond that, like what makes any one thing funny to people, I really ascribe to the idea that if you start deconstructing it too much, it is immediately not funny. If you start over-thinking it or trying to figure out some sort of formula, it’s math. It’s not anything organic.
What did you want to absorb or hold at bay from the work of Don Adams [comic actor who played Maxwell Smart in the original Get Smart TV series]?
Ah, that’s an interesting way to put it. You know what? In terms of absorbing or trying to gain an essence of the character, it’s sort of what I try to do with The Office, because Ricky Gervais, his character was so well defined and very specific, and I didn’t want to tread his path at all. Don, again, is a really iconic character. You want to glean some sort of essence of that character without doing an impersonation of it. You want to honour it, you want to respect it. But you just don’t want to do a copy of it. Because really, what’s the point of doing it?
And you have an advantage that this is Maxwell Smart’s origin story, which we’ve never seen before, right?
Right. He starts as an analyst. He’s someone who aspires to be a spy, but is now middle-aged and has not gotten to that point and has not been promoted. And, through a series of events that you see early in the movie, he is promoted to spy, and at that point is able to incorporate all these things he’s been working on all along. The one thing that I loved about the way Don Adams portrayed Maxwell is that he is not an idiot.
He’s not a fumbling fool. He’s actually very proficient. In a fight he can handle himself. He can shoot a gun. He’s able to incorporate all these things he’s been working on. He’s clever. He gets out of situations – sometimes counter-intuitively, but he gets out of them. And I think if there’s one aspect specifically that I wanted to take away from the original show, it’s that he’s not an idiot. He’s not a fool. But he’s quirky. He’s very earnest.
Having gone through the situation of taking on a very familiar character once, was there ever a moment with this role that you were reluctant?
No, not really. Especially once all the pieces started falling into place: the director, the other actors, the writers, the way the script was turning out; it seemed very open. Everyone just wanted to make it good. We wanted to make it more exciting, and wanted it to be an action movie as well as a comedy, to add another point to it. But no, I never second guessed it. I was on board from day one.
Action comedy is a new arena for you, right?
Oh, it’ll be my only arena from here on out.
Can you talk about what it’s like to make an action movie?
Honestly, it could not have been more fun. It’s something you dream about as a kid. It is literally like playing in a sandbox for several weeks, and pretending. There are parts of the movie that Annie [Hathaway] and I are hanging off the sides of buildings and rappelling underneath a plane, and having a fight on top of a moving SUV that is also on fire and about to smash into a train. All of these things are a far cry from anything I’ve ever done before. So yeah. As you could imagine, it’s just so much fun.
How far would you go before a stunt person would take over?
Probably the riskiest thing I did was being pulled behind a moving SUV down train tracks. That was a little scary. The stunt people are so good and they really make sure that you’re safe. I never felt that my life was in peril at any point. I think the end result plays as an action movie as well as a comedy.
Do you want to talk about the number of gadgets that Maxwell Smart has?
Sure. Well, there’s the Cone of Silence, and it’s a bit different than in the TV series, but the common thread is that it still doesn’t work. It was built, but it’s absolutely unusable. The Shoe Phone makes an appearance, and a lot of people are asking about the Shoe Phone, because it doesn’t seem to fit with modern technology. And there’s a very clever way in which the Shoe Phone is integrated into the movie – very plausible and makes sense plot-wise. I have this little gadget which you see a tiny bit of in the scene in the aeroplane bathroom. It’s a tiny Swiss army knife that has several gadgets within it, including a crossbow, a flamethrower, and some other things that you find out along the way. So, the gadgets are alive and well.
Get Smart is released in cinemas across the UAE this month
