Michelle Monaghan plays the other woman in Bobby and Peter Farrelly's latest goofball comedy, The Heartbreak Kid, starring Ben Stiller. Monaghan's not known for comedies, but the actress was more than willing to just go for it on the set of the Farrelly Bros' comedy.
The Appeal of The Heartbreak Kid: Monaghan finds comedy much more difficult than drama, and enjoyed the challenge of working on a Farrelly film. “I had never really done comedy before, so I was totally game. If you’re an actress in Hollywood and you want to do a comedy, who better to do it with than the Farrellys? But, I’ve got to tell you, you can’t really prepare to be funny. With drama, you can really develop your character over a course of time, and you know what you want to achieve when you’re making the film. But, on the day, you’ve just got to hope you’re going to be funny, and just be prepared to go for it and really push the envelope and improv, or do whatever it takes. So, that was a definite challenge for me.
It was good I had Ben [Stiller] to lead the direction because, as you all know, he goes for it. It was fun. It was a fun bunch. It was a great atmosphere to work in. They create an atmosphere where you’re expected to embarrass yourself. You can try anything, and that’s a great gift when you’re doing a comedy.”
Casting Michelle Monaghan in The Heartbreak Kid: Farrelly has a simple explanation as to why he hired Monaghan for this film. “Michelle had a fair amount of buzz going on, in town. We had seen her in Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. We read her for the Lila role, but as soon as we saw her in that, we thought, ‘She is good, but I think she’s going to be even better for the girl that is really cool and grounded and fun.’”
Monaghan recalls how it all went down. “Oh, I just said, ‘Just hire me for one of the roles.’ I just so desperately wanted to be in the movie.” Farrelly joked that Monaghan was even willing to take on the role Carlos Mencia wound up playing in the movie. Laughing, Monaghan said, “I wanted to play the role of the donkey for a while. I was prepared to do anything. And, it was well cast. It ended up being perfectly the way it should have been.”
Nothing was Too Outrageous for Michelle Monaghan: “No, certainly not in this movie,” said Monaghan. “It’s one of those things where you have to look at a script and say, ‘Yes, I’ll go here with them.’ I’m not too modest of a person. I’ve got a pretty blue sense of humor. So, I’m pretty much game for anything. I couldn’t think of something, off the top of my head, that’s really offensive to me. As far as comedy, you can pretty much go anywhere.”
Working with Danny McBride: Monaghan lavished compliments on McBride. “I love Danny McBride so much. Danny McBride is just about the best guy ever. He is so funny and clever and quick. That character that he portrayed is just really… He’s just always some character. He’s so funny. But I think my favorite line that he has in the movie is, ‘What are you smoking, the devil’s lettuce?’ And he just came out with that. We were like, ‘Oh, sh--! The devil’s lettuce? I’m so going to have to use that!’”
Farrelly added, “McBride made good choices. As written, he’s just the guy who’s like, ‘I don’t know about that guy,’ and we’ve seen it in other movies. He’s suspicious of someone who’s dating the sister or the cousin, or something, and there’s a lot of ways to do that.”
A Decade of Ben Stiller: The Farrellys last worked with Stiller on the 1998 hit There's Something About Mary. “He’s a little grayer, but it works,” joked Farrelly. “He’s been so successful for the last 10 years, non-stop. He just keeps going and going. And he’s been involved with so many movies that have really been good movies. I just think he’s more vocal about what his opinions are, and things like that. Early on, when we were making There’s Something About Mary, if he had opinions, I think he kept them to himself. But now he thinks about what everyone else is doing, and he comes over and tells us his opinions. With him, it’s good because he’s so smart that he’s almost always right about the things he points out. It’s not like he’s just being difficult for the director or something. He really is extraordinarily helpful in making it better and better, so it’s much more collaborative.”
Delivering an R-Rated Comedy: They’re really in vogue now but Farrelly doesn’t think it’s any easier making one now than it was back then. “The beauty about when we made Mary was that people didn’t see it coming. They really didn’t expect it. And so the type of comedy was really explosive and really worked. And then after that movie, once it was a big hit, there was a bunch of those kind of movies, and so it become more expected. It’s not that making them is easier, but getting them to a point where the audience is like, ‘Wow, this is unbelievable! There’s something really fresh about this!,’ is harder than before because there’s been so many of them.”
It’s Okay to Be a Little Paranoid: Remember Monaghan’s performance in Constantine? No? That’s probably because you didn’t watch the deleted scenes on the DVD. Monaghan’s had scenes edited out of more than her fair share of films in the past. “I have been cut out of the films and, at that particular point in my career, I was like, ‘But, am I still getting the paycheck?’ (Laughing) They were like, ‘Yeah, but you’re not going to be in the film.’ And I was like, ‘All right, I can deal with that.’ I did North Country after I had been cut out of Constantine and Syriana, and I had a few scenes cut out of a film called Unfaithful. I remember thinking, ‘Okay, I don’t think they can cut me out of here. I’m integral to the script. If they take me out of here, then that doesn’t make sense, that doesn’t add up.’ It was so funny. Both of those directors were real gentlemen. They called me up personally and said, ‘We’re so sorry. We have to take you out.’ And Francis Lawrence was really dear and he put those scenes on the DVD, so that meant a lot to me. But, the paycheck meant a hell of a lot more (laughing).”
