Married couple Will Arnett and Amy Poehler play a very close (make that creepily close) brother and sister ice skating team in the comedy movie Blades of Glory. The couple briefly worked together on Arrested Development, but Blades of Glory was the first time the twosome were able to work together for any real length of time. Spending that much time together during the day didn’t affect their home life, although Poehler joked that they had to go through an intense ritual of cleansing themselves of their characters every night. Laughing, Poehler said, “Every day Will and I would go into different decompression chambers until we worked it out.”
It’s Good to Be Bad: Poehler and Arnett play Stranz and Fairchild Van Waldenberg, Will Ferrell and Jon Heder’s competitors who don’t fight fair, in Blades of Glory. Poehler says it’s definitely more fun to be evil. “What was fun about our stuff was that we had to look like from the outside that we were all sweet but inside we were rotten to the core. That was really fun to play. …I think Fairchild is kind of mean to Stranz too during the film. It was really fun to play the bad guy because as a woman sometimes you don’t get to do that. You have to be like nice.”
Will Ferrell’s Power of Persuasion: So just how did Poehler and Arnett wind up getting cast to play brother and sister in Blades of Glory? Poehler and Arnett swear it’s all because of Will Ferrell. “We came in pretty much the same time. We woke up one morning and there was a tap at our window…it was a really quiet, lonely tap, and we looked out at Will Ferrell in his bathrobe crying,” explained Poehler, laughing. “Streaming, holding the script,” interjected Arnett. “And he said, ‘If you don’t do this, it isn’t going to happen,’” said Poehler.
According to Arnett there was lots of begging involved. “Please, yeah, please. Begged us to do the movie, and we said, ‘We’re going to need three weeks. We need three weeks to think about this.’” Poehler finished off the joke by adding, “Our salary came out of his pocket.”
Real Skaters Provide Fodder for Comedy on Ice: Poehler admits their characters are sort of based on real people. “I know I based the character of Fairchild on like those really put together, almost like prima ballerinas or gymnasts, like really focused gymnasts, or like the ladies on the top of cakes.”
“You know, there are moments in the movie we’re definitely – inspirational moments that we witnessed watching some skating,” said Arnett. “Luckily the Olympics happened right before we started shooting and as we were sort of prepping and getting ready. I don’t know if anybody remembers last year from Turino, but the ice-dancing couples, the pairs, there was an Italian couple who were incredibly… The guy screwed up. He dropped her and they were about to win it all. They had come out of retirement and they go to their final thing, they freeze at the end, and she won’t let it go, like standing there 30 seconds. And then they go to the ‘kiss and cry’ area. We learned the kiss and cry, they’re sitting there and he’s like, ‘Ahhhh,’ just waiting for the scores. She’s like boring a hole through him. (Pretending to be him looking wide-eyed around the ring) ‘Whoa, wonder how we did?’”
Poehler added, “And the announcer was like, “She will not forgive him.’ We were like, ‘That’s good, we have to remember that.’ Real life drama.”
On the Costumes: “Aren’t they insane?,” asked Poehler. “Our characters in this film always think that they’re on, always think that someone’s watching, hoping someone’s watching - even at home. And so every time we put one of those on, including our hip-hop outfits, really off the mark, we thought they were hip-hop, they were really off the mark, so they always believed that they looked pretty good.”
The Spandex Fittings: “The gentlemen had more spandex in many ways than the ladies, which is a nice twist, isn’t it? Usually the ladies have the spandex,” joked Poehler. “We did a lot of fittings and I had costumes that plugged in and jingled and jangled.”
Arnett explained, “The costuming on the movie was very elaborate and at a certain stage when we were getting ready, before we started shooting, they were doing camera tests and things like that, and we realized after having watched the Olympics that you can’t go too far in this area. Nothing is over the top. It really needed to be pumped up.”
The Stuff We Didn’t See…: The DVD should be loaded with scenes that had to be edited out for one reason or another. “We did get to do a lot of stuff, a lot of stuff that I remember being genius, do you? But we got to play around a lot, we improvised a lot of stuff too so that was fun,” said Poehler. Arnett explained, “There are always going to be things that you do that when you see the final cut of the movie that you miss, and Blades of Glory is not about our journey.” Poehler quickly interjected, “Speak for yourself!” To which Arnett replied, “Obviously it is, but I have to say that.”
Taking to the Ice in Front of a Stadium Full of Extras: Arnett grew up skating in Canada, but Poehler was definitely a novice before starting work on Blades of Glory. Skating in front of a crowd was a real challenge for Poehler. “It was really scary. We were nervous the night before. We were joking that it was the ‘Movie Olympics’. We have such respect for the real skaters because it is so terrifying. We couldn’t even imagine. Going out there and doing that and not being able to screw up and start again. I can’t even imagine.”
The experience was different for Arnett: “As a kid who grew up in Canada, coming out into an arena on skates was just so awesome. It’s like a dream come true. Every day I got to go work at a rink”
“We did have a little thing the night before,” Poehler recalled. “We were like ‘We can do this. It’s going to be really great tomorrow.’ We had to psych ourselves up a little bit for it.” “Yeah, and we sacrificed a goat,” joked Arnett.
