Malin Akerman's no stranger to comedy but The Heartbreak Kid marks her first Farrelly Bros movie. Akerman stars as a woman Ben Stiller marries shortly after they begin dating. Just as quickly, Stiller's character figures out, while they're on their honeymoon, that she's not really his soul mate.
Remaking 1972’s The Heartbreak Kid: The Farrelly Brothers did not do a by-the-book remake of the ’72 comedy which starred Charles Grodin and Cybill Shepherd. Instead, this version follows the original up to a point and then goes off in a different direction. “Somebody asked us to make that about five years ago,” explained Peter Farrelly. “They came to us and said, ‘Do you want to do a remake of The Heartbreak Kid?’ ‘No, why would we? It’s classic.’ Then about two years ago someone came back and said there’s a new draft of The Heartbreak Kid because they really did something smart.
It was written by Leslie Dixon and Scot Armstrong at separate times. What they’ve done is flip the original. The original was a very spunky guy who goes on this honeymoon and meets Cybill Shepherd. This one, he marries the Cybill Shepherd woman and goes on his honeymoon and meets a more down to earth girl. It really opened the door for us because, first it of all, it was a different movie. We didn’t just want to remake The Heartbreak Kid as it was. It also helped the likeable factor. In the first one, as funny as it is -- it’s a masterpiece -- Charles Grodin was a cad. He’s just dumping the homely wife for the beautiful girl. Cybill Shepherd is a sociopath. He tells her, ‘I’m on my honeymoon,’ and she’s like, ‘Yeah, I don’t care.’ So there’s a point where you don’t know what you’re rooting for. Once the wife is out of the picture, you don’t really care if they get together. You follow it through because you’re curious, but you really don’t.
This one, the likeability factor helped make it a fuller story for us and permitted us to put our kind of humor on it. If you don’t like our characters, our jokes don’t work. That’s one thing we’ve always known, and we go out of our way to set up these people. Also, you said we departed at a certain point, well actually the first act was the departure. The original opened with them getting married and we felt we had to rewrite the entire opening to find out who he was, what was his background, and really make him likeable. If you like him, we can get away with stuff.”
Feeling a Little Sympathy for Her Character: Akerman explained how she views her character: “She’s not a mean person. She does pull herself back and apologize, so she knows she’s out of control sometimes.”
“Well, that’s the trick,” said Farrelly. “The trick is to love her and then you are kind of annoyed by her, then you start to hate her, then you start to like her again, then you kind of find the sweetness. That was the balance. We never wanted to lose her. We never didn’t ever want her to come to the point where you don’t give a sh-- about her. Even at the end you do. It doesn’t work if you don’t do that. That was the real acting trick there because she has to show us. It’s not what she says or what she does; it’s just in her face. When she’s in bed looking at him like, ‘I love you, Eddiebear,’ you feel like this is a human being and, despite everything, she’s going to be hurt and this isn’t good. We didn’t want to let Eddie off the hook.
There was an earlier draft where she became a racist down in Mexico. She became a complete racist. We said, ‘What are you doing? No.’ That’s too easy because you’re like, ‘F--- her. Go to the other girl.’ We didn’t want that. Eddie should be in a tough position so we dropped that. We always tried to keep her in the game.”
Malin Akerman on Nudity: Is she comfortable doing roles involving nudity? “Comfortable enough,” replied Akerman. “It’s never completely comfortable. I’m definitely not prudish when it comes to those things. If the scene requires it and it’s for a reason and it’s not gratuitous, then yeah. It’s got to be real. In Europe and Sweden we see boobs on TV and it’s not a big deal. Everyone has them, everyone has seen them. Not completely comfortable. It’s not the first thing you want to do. I’m not like, ‘Hey, let me take my top off.’ If the scene requires it, then of course.”
The Strenous Sex Scenes: Malin Akerman confessed the sex scenes took a lot out of her physically. “They were quite acrobatic. Peter actually performed them for me before because I did not understand what he was saying. He’s like, ‘So, Malin, I want you to get on the bed and upside down with your head hanging down and your feet.’ So he got on the bed and showed me.”
Farrelly said it seemed as though Akerman was trying to embarrass him while he was acting out the scenes, and Akerman confirmed that was in fact her goal. “Of course I was. It was really sexy when you did it. They were definitely some crazy positions that I’ve never tried myself and I don’t think I would.”
Farrelly added, “It was funny. It wasn’t like when you’re shooting a sex scene… We’ve never done it before, but when you are I imagine on a regular movie there’s tension. ‘Wow, it’s sex.’ But this was so funny that it didn’t even seem to be about the sex. It was about the humor. We closed the set and just had a couple of people on there as a courtesy, but it really wasn’t about the sex.”
“No, it was too funny,” said Akerman. “We’d call cut and we’d all start cracking up. It was too funny. It’s like you’re in a really funny scene and you just happen to be having sex in it. So that wasn’t the initial thought. But, of course, it is awkward there with Ben and you’re like, ‘So how’s your wife?’”
“By the way, it also got better and better because the more comfortable they got as we were shooting it the more they got into it to the point where they were hitting each other, they’re hitting each other,” revealed Farrelly. “They were batting each other around. They were really whacking each other there. It was fun to watch.”
