Writer/director Adam McKay says that when it came time to cast Talladega Nights, Reilly was someone he really wanted involved in the project. Cast as Will Ferrell's best friend and racing partner, Reilly had to adjust McKay's open style - something the writer/director said Reilly had no problem doing. "He is incredible, a revelation," enthused McKay. "We were amazed at how well he did with improvisation."
John C Reily on Working with Will Ferrell: Although the two may seem like an unlikely pair, Reilly and Ferrell easily slipped into their buddy relationship. “Will and I have known each other for about six years now. I met him through my friend Molly Shannon and we just hit it off right away," explained Reilly. "That friendship bled into the relationship in the movie, I guess. I was almost in Anchorman but I was shooting another movie at the time, so I couldn’t do it. That was a real heartbreak for me because I thought that was the chance to work with Will and Adam. Lo and behold, they put this together and called me. So it worked out good, I thought.
I have real genuine affection for Will. We’re really good friends, besides any kind of like professional relationship. Just as guys, we really like each other and we share a sense of humor. …He’s a really down-to-earth guy, very real. As successful as he’s gotten, none of that has gone to his head. He’s just like he was when I met him, when he first started off on Saturday Night Live.”
The Freedom to Improv with Talladega Nights: “There was a lot – a lot. I mean, when I say that, sometimes it sounds to me like the director didn’t have as much to do with making the movie. But the fact is, because of Adam’s background in improv, he was guiding all the improv. And Adam and Will wrote the script together, so it wasn’t like we were going to offend the screenwriter by throwing out the script. They wrote it, so it was their voice and they were the authority about what it should be. The script was very good. It was very funny, very tightly written. It wasn’t like, ‘This is a mess. Let’s make something up.’
What happens is you get talented people involved and everyone shows up on the day. The script is great and you do that a couple of times and all of the sudden it’s like ideas just start popping up. The funny thing that’s in the script reminds me of another funny thing, or what’s the next step we could take this idea to and Adam was encouraging us. I was like, ‘I don’t know; I’m just trying to get my feet here. How far do I go? This is pretty crazy, some of the stuff we’re doing.’ He was like, ‘Don’t worry. Don’t worry.’ It was like the wide net theory. You just give as much as you can because we can always take it out. But if you don’t go there, we’ve got nowhere to come back from.”
What’s it like seeing the finished film knowing so much of what’s in it was improvised? “I’ve seen the movie about five times now,” says Reilly. “I went to all the test screenings as they went along, for that very reason, because I knew there was enough material out there that he could have made three movies with the amount of stuff that we shot - with the blooper reel and all that. We didn’t have dailies on this movie because we were moving too fast to really watch them. Occasionally we would watch stuff at lunch to see where things were going. But I wanted to see what people came up with, and I knew that if I didn’t go to all the test screenings, some of that stuff just might go away forever. Although with DVD, it’s almost like that’s part of the plan. You can have all the extra stuff for the DVD.”
Page 2: Researching His Role, Taking Laps, and Working with Adam McKay
