The sequel finds Liz off to London to speak at a conference, with Jon in hot pursuit. Complications arise when Jon arrives in England and discovers Garfield and Odie made the trip stowed-away in his suitcase.
Getting the Call to Star in a Garfield Sequel: Jennifer Love Hewitt said they were both approached a couple of months after Garfield hit theaters. Meyer said, “John Davis called and I think kind of jokingly said, ‘I’ll see ya for number two.’ I’m like, ‘Ha. I’ll talk to you later.’ We kind of went off and [looking at Jennifer] she was kind of doing her show during production. She was back on her show and I was off doing a movie and it slowly, just sort of trickled down with rumors and, ‘Oh they’re really talking about it. Oh, they actually commissioned Joel [Cohen] and Alec [Sokolow] to write a new one.’ ‘Well, we’ll see…’ Then, just slowly, everything became more real.
The initial script had us going to London for the whole thing, which I was very into but Love was doing her show and we couldn’t work it out. We wanted her in the movie. I say ‘we’ like I had anything to do with it. They really wanted to do it, but I have no power. But, they really wanted to get us. The new twist in the movie was this proposal so they had to change it a little bit and keep it here and have Jon follow her to London. We ended up doing a week in London without Love and then we came back and built a lot of the interior castle here. She did not get to go to London.”
Being Friends Off the Set Helps: Breckin Meyer and Jennifer Love Hewitt have been friends, as Meyer puts it, “forever.” That friendship really helped when it came to capturing the relationship onscreen. “It was really fun,” said Hewitt. “This is the third job we’ve done together. They called about doing the second one, I was like, ‘It’s Breckin and I, right? He’s definitely there?’ because I didn’t know what they were going to do. They said, ‘Absolutely.’ I was like, ‘Sold. Fine. Be there.’ So he was the biggest reason that I wanted to come back and do another one - the opportunity to work together. He’s a really good guy and we have a lot of fun. It doesn’t feel like work when we’re together. It’s fun.”
Meyer added, “It was cool. She was working her a** off on her show doing 17 hour days, five days a week. It was just sick [she laughs], just sick work and then we had to change our schedule a bit so we worked on a Sunday. We worked every Sunday because that’s the only day she had available. She’d do all her work five days a week, have one day off on Saturday, which was usually filled with fittings for our movie, and then she’d come over on Sunday and work with us. It was great for us because I’m doing the whole week by myself with a black beanbag sack [the Garfield stand-in] and then on Sunday, a much prettier sack would come by [Hewitt laughs over that comment] and I’d get to act with you. It was lovely. It was a lot of fun. I looked forward to the Sundays.”
CGI and Beanbag Sacks Versus Real People: After doing scenes alone or with lots of animals, getting the chance to work with Hewitt was a nice break. “It’s always fun when you’re doing the CGI stuff, to actually get to work with someone who is real, who’s there,” explained Meyer. “That was one of the things, also, that was so great about them adding Billy [Connolly] to this.
You know, with a sequel you’re always trying to get bigger and better. Hopefully, better, especially. They went bigger with going to London and filming at a castle and all the London stuff and interiors at the castle and just the animals, so many more animals; bulls and walruses. It was crazy. And with Tim Curry doing the voice of Prince… Then when they added Billy and Ian Abercrombie as Smithie, it was so great to have more people to react to. It was refreshing because you do get a little bit worried that you’re just working with a sack all day, and it was nice to have Love show up and have Billy there.”
Page 2: Talking Animals and an Imaginary Garfield
