JENNIFER ANISTON: Wasn't he great in his salsa? That's what was so great about this job is I just laughed the whole time. Cracking up is fun, but you're not supposed to.
BEN STILLER: The salsa thing was, I just took classes for a while and worked with a choreographer and tried to be as good as I can possibly be. Which, of course is not that great, so luckily that worked for the script. It's fun to have something specific to work on. The racquetball scene was one of those things that we shot it all day and the first hour you thought, "This is great. This is gonna be so cool." Then after an hour of playing racquetball - most people don't play for more than an hour, even professional racquetball players - those last 11 hours of the day were just torturous and horrible.
I think it is fun to have specific things to work on. Especially in the context of a movie like this where the guy's trying to be good and he's not really that good. That takes a lot of pressure off. You know you just try as hard as you can and know your best won't be good enough, which will be good for the movie.
JENNIFER ANISTON: I, however, was supposed to be a really good salsa dancer. I took two [classes]. I was supposed to take more but I didn't. It was good. Thank God we got that. We had two days in New York shooting and then the next bit for me was all of the salsa dancing. And it was five days straight. My feet looked like raw meat. It was just disgusting. I don't know how those dancers do it, but it was so much fun. Then right after we shot those six days, I broke my toe. So thank God we took care of all of that stuff. I limped through the rest of the movie.
How did you break your toe?
JENNIFER ANISTON: I stubbed it. It was stupid - absolutely ridiculous. I stubbed it on an ottoman that no longer is there and that was five months of that. But it was fun. I loved learning how to do it. I think it is an incredible dance and it was fun. And the ferret, as far as that, the woman was like, "He doesn't bite." She kept saying that. That was a mislead. But it didn't bite me for sure and I did manhandle it quite often. But Ben just had that unfortunate moment.
Are you ever sent scripts where you are asked to play the femme fatale? Would you play one?
JENNIFER ANISTON: I absolutely would play one. I am trying to think... Yeah, there have been, but they were not great.
How did you two work on getting that onscreen chemistry?
JENNIFER ANISTON: I don't think you 'get' that. I think that just has to be there.
Did you think about that?
BEN STILLER: I don't think about that. I know that at the end of the day, you hope that there is something there that works. It is fun to watch them together and you believe them as two people who would be in a couple, or be attracted to each other, or are just fun to watch together. But you can't just go for that result. There is nothing you can do about it.
I knew that we both kind of enjoyed each other's company and laugh together and have fun together. Jennifer is just a great person to hang out with and is [an] extremely giving, fun, good person. But as far as how that translates to what people are watching on the screen, it is like anything else with what you are doing as an actor. I don't think you can be thinking about that because you can't control it. It is something you can't force.
JENNIFER ANISTON: You'd probably get a review [where] you'd hear something like it was a very self-conscious performance.
BEN STILLER: It's something that you can't force, so often you just have to hope that it's there. The director is sort of aware of watching what's going on and trying to foster whatever it is between the two actors while it's happening.
PAGE 3: A Naked Hank Azaria, "Friends," and "Starsky & Hutch"
ADDITIONAL “ALONG CAME POLLY” RESOURCES:
Interview with Hank Azaria and Debra Messing
"Along Came Polly" Photo Gallery
"Along Came Polly" Trailer, Credits, and Movie News
