Jacinda Barrett Gets to Sound Like Herself: Barrett admits it was fun to be able to just use her Australian accent in School for Scoundrels. “It was. It took a little work for me because I’ve never done a part where I was Australian. This was the first time so it took some conscious work because I slip into American. It’s so natural for me when I’m in a movie and also, the cast is all American so I had to remind myself to be Australian.”
Her Onscreen Love Interests – Jon Heder and Billy Bob Thornton: “Jon is such a sweetheart and has such a strong moral code by which he conducts his life. He doesn’t work on Sundays. You will never hear him swear in a movie. He will never have a drop of coffee or alcohol. And then, you’ve got Billy who is totally cool with the alcohol and the swearing. Actually, for me, it was great. I love being in the center of them. Their personalities so fitted the roles, what they could bring to it.
You know, Jon and I had this sort of funny sibling thing going on where I would punch him and be stupid with him and Billy is such a dirty buggar. It was fun. I don’t know if it’s my Australian sensibility, but I like that dirty sense of humor. The first day I worked with him we did that scene where we’re in the café and he’s telling me his sad story about working with the orphan children and how his wife had passed away. We did his side first and by the time we came around to my side, his dialogue was off-camera so he can sort of say whatever he wants. So my final line of the scene was ‘Yeah, that would be great. I’d like that.’ So, Billy, every time would give me a new sexual position that we could be in or some filthy thing that he could do with his genitalia and every time I had to say, ‘Yeah. I’d like that.’
I’d smile and laugh and, ultimately, it feeds the comedy because it is light like that. It is carefree and it gives you a spontaneous reaction - and the crew loved it. They were with it the whole way. I love actors that will go off the pages and just have fun with it, and he’s one of those guys. He’s so talented so it was fun.”
Jacinda Barrett on the Tennis Scene: Barrett swears she’s got some talent when it comes to playing tennis. But whenever the cameras were rolling, she couldn’t even hit the ball. “It’s so embarrassing. We started and they said, ‘Do you want to take some tennis lessons? We’ve got a tennis coach for you.’ I was like, ‘Nah. I’m great. I play tennis all the time with my husband. We play at Griffith Park on the weekends. I’m cool.’ Then when we got to shoot and there was the scene where they serve the ball over to me. I could not hit the ball back! Not once. Every single time, I got stage fright and I couldn’t hit it. And Todd [Phillips, the director] was on the megaphone across the hundred person crew like, ‘Jacinda, all you need to do it hit the ball back. It’s all you need to do. Can you do it this time?’ Every time the pressure would be [building]. ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah, this one. I’ve got it!’ I couldn’t do it. So, finally, we were running so behind they took the ball out altogether and just said, ‘Jacinda, hit,’ and you hit nothing and they put the ball in afterwards with computer graphics.”
Working with a Huge Dog: “My dog is about a tenth the size of that dog and doesn’t have ‘suck me’ written on it (laughing). They brought out like a choice of dogs. When we were doing the tennis scene, they were having some dogs auditioning and there were three dogs coming out with ‘suck me’ on them. I think they were originally thinking of putting ‘suck my d**k’ so they wanted to see what played better. Was ‘suck my d**k’ too many words? They had the dogs come out and they were deciding what color they wanted it written in.”
Perhaps dogs parading by with ‘suck me’ written on them explains why Barrett was so bad at returning serves. “Yeah, that’s why I was so bad. I was distracted. We felt a little bad, but the dog was fine with it. The dog was getting treats all day. It was the most well-trained dog I have ever seen. It could hit a mark better than any actor. There was a little mark that it knew to go to and every time he put his feet right on the mark every single take. It was amazing. It’s fun working with animals when they’re that good…but they’re usually not. They’re usually all over the place and hard to control, but he was a good one.”
