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How I Met Your Mother Role: Marhsall Eriksen Status: Season 5 Official Site • Photos
Despicable Me Role: Vector (Voice) Release: July 9, 2010 Official Site • Photos
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In Despicable Me (in theaters Friday),Jason Segel voices a character desperately seeking his father’s approval. In real life, he has that and more.
“I have the most supportive parents in the world,” Segel says, trying to stretch out on a West Hollywood hotel room sofa that’s a little too small for his 6-foot-4 frame.
“But I can relate to wanting approval. My father is a lawyer, and I was on that path. I come from a family of lawyers, doctors and money managers. But they want me to be happy,” he says. “The way I got started was so unique. I got seen in a high school play. My parents knew that opportunity doesn’t necessarily ring twice and that I should go after it.”
Thirteen years ago, Segel was a college-bound basketball player. Today at age 30, he is one of Hollywood’s busiest young talents. When he’s not playing the lovable Marshall Eriksen in the popular CBS sitcom How I Met Your Mother, he’s working on films. But becoming an actor was never part of Segel’s plan.
It all started in his 90-minute art history class at school in Los Angeles. “The class was right next to the drama department, so it was purely geographical that this started. I picked plays off the bookshelf and read them during the lectures.”
One of his choices was Edward Albee’s Zoo Story. “The play has a 25-minute monologue,” Segel says. “I quite simply wanted to see if I could memorize that much material. And once I did, I thought, ‘I guess I should perform this.’ Oddly enough, (a Paramount Studios casting executive) happened to come to the production.”
Thus a career was born.
In addition to the animated 3-D family film Despicable Me, Segel has three more upcoming films. In the live-action Gulliver’s Travels, which is due out in December, he plays Horatio alongside Jack Black’s Gulliver. In Bad Teacher, he is involved in a love triangle with Cameron Diaz and Justin Timberlake. And in Jeff Who Lives at Home, he shares the screen with Susan Sarandon and Ed Helms.
He also is responsible for reviving the Muppets, convincing rights-owner Disney that he should write the screenplay for The Greatest Muppet Movie Ever Made. The film goes into production later this year.
“The Muppets truly were my first comic influence. Kermit was the first version of Tom Hanks that I got to know. He’s Jimmy Stewart, the idea of the Everyman, which is what I try to do,” he says.
His latest role as Vector in Despicable Me, about how a super-villain (voiced by Steve Carell) is tamed by three little girls, is Segel’s first attempt at voicing a film character.
The isolating nature of voicing an animated character initially bothered Segel. “Once I got used to not having instant feedback, it was a really fun process. They open the mike and let you riff for two or three hours at a time — a bit self-indulgent, but it’s a blast.”
Also a blast: Weaving personal experiences into his screenplays. Like the nude breakup scene in 2008′s Forgetting Sarah Marshall.
“When I was really young, my mother said to me, ‘When you go out in the world, you’re representing the job I did as a mother,’ ” Segel says. “She wasn’t really happy that I showed my penis. In true motherly fashion, she sent out a mass e-mail to my family saying, ‘I just want you all to know that in Jason’s upcoming film, he has chosen to do full frontal nudity, but please note, it is not gratuitous and is essential to the plot.’ ”
Segel says How I Met Your Mother, which begins its sixth season this fall, changed his life. “I was happy to sign for another year,” he says. “But once I’ve fulfilled what I said I’d do (eight years), I’ll probably move on — although in this economy, you can’t scoff at having a steady job.”
Segel says his character Marshall is “the least like me of all the characters I’ve played. I’m mostly a mix of my characters from Sarah Marshall and I Love You, Man.”
Although Segel has been in several long-term relationships, including a five-year-long stint with Freaks and Geeksco-star Linda Cardellini, he doesn’t feel the urge to settle down.
“The 30s are when men hit their stride. I feel pleasantly old,” he says. “There’s some gray in my beard, but I’m still having fun. But I’m working awfully hard. I guess that’s being a man.”
Posted by Dbiloo on July 7th, 2010. Filed in Video -- Comments Off
10 ‘Despicable’ Anecdotes from Jason Segel
Forgetting Sarah Marshall’s Jason Segel goes dark ‘n’ dorky as Vector, the upstart mastermind giving protagonist Gru (Steve Carell) a run for his title as the #1 supervillain in the world in the animated flick Despicable Me. But in contrast to his dastardly gadget-wielding alter ego, Segel harbors a distinctly un-villainous soft spot when it comes to what Despicable Me is all about: bringing people together and giving families something special to share when they go to the movies.
That said, Segel was chock full of material both naughty and nice when we caught up with him in Los Angeles. Alternately self-deprecating and sarcastic, cheekily cocksure and sensitive, the Judd Apatow protégé held us rapt discussing Despicable Me, the Muppets flick he’s writing, comedy how-tos, his height, being bullied as a child, why he learned the piano, and how he lost his virginity. (Hint: the latter two are related.)
Below, ten of the best bits, from Jason Segel’s mouth to your brain.
On why his role in Despicable Me was more freeing than any live-action character could be:
“The whole thing that drew me to doing an animated film is that you’re freed from the physical limitations of your physical body. All of a sudden you get to be something that has nothing to do with the fact that I’m a 6′ 4″, kind of lumbering dude… all of a sudden I could be 5′ 3″, wear an orange jumpsuit, and be nerdy. You know in real life I’m, like, SUPER good looking.”
On how his own childhood helped him get into character as the evil, nerdy villain, Vector:
“I’ve been 6′ 4″ since I was 12. I was 6′ 4″, 100 lbs. I looked like Jack Skellington. Kids used to stand around me in a circle and one by one they would jump on my back and the rest would chant, ‘Ride the oaf! Ride the oaf!’ It’s true. So you either become funny, which is hopefully what I did, or you become a villain, which is where I got the idea for Vector; he’s a guy who was horribly picked on and this is where he’s ended up.”
On how and why his musical talents first came about:
“I taught myself to play piano when I was 17 to pick up girls… The first thing I did was I found a really not-that-intelligent girl and I told her that I wrote ‘Your Song,’ by Elton John. I was like, ‘I wrote this for you.’ And then I lost my virginity.”
On the hardest part of recording a vocal performance for an animated film:
“It’s very easy to come out and say funny lines that you’ve thought of the night before, but to be on story is the real challenge. So you’re in there for three hours trying to give them material they can actually use. I have a million jokes I could say, but to try to make it on story and valuable to them was something that was a challenge, and I really enjoyed that idea. It’s just you alone, which is kind of awesome — a lot of the time other actors really slow me down, because they’re not quite as good as me.”
On his most despicable moment, which happened while doing a promotional bit for Despicable Me:
“We got to play with the minions a bit, who I think are the cutest element to the movie. We did a little conga line with them. It was a bit awkward, because, to be honest, it’s midgets in outfits. And at one point I had to come up with something funny, and I said, ‘Hey, can I throw this ball off of your head and see if it bounces back to me?’ And one of the guys in the outfits said, ‘You’ve got to remember, I’m a real human being.’ And then I felt really awkward. That’s my worst moment. To date.”
On his celebrity nemesis:
“I think it’s probably Ryan Reynolds, in that we have very similar comedic tastes and all that, and our bodies are so [similar] that it’s basically a rivalry over who can be in better shape. At this point, I think I’m winning.”
The best advice he has on writing comedy:
“Write a drama. I’m not joking. That was the first advice I got from Judd Apatow, and I think it’s why his movies are so brilliant. He told me when I was writing Forgetting Sarah Marshall, ‘I want the first draft you give me to be a drama. We’ll make it funny. It’s going to be funny because we’re funny, and we’re going to add jokes, and the people you cast will be funny. The reason people will see it — and see it again and again or connect to it — is because there’s an underlying drama.’ So that’s the best advice I can give when you’re trying to write a comedy: first write a drama, and then make it funny.”
On his upcoming Muppets film:
“I’m very earnest about the way I approach it. There’s no sense of irony with me, going into The Muppets. I don’t think it’s funny that I’m doing The Muppets. I truly love them.”
On the scene that made him cry in Despicable Me:
“I cried at the end. I’m not a real cryer, but at the end of the movie, Gru — Steve Carell, who did his part to perfection — reads a story to these kids, and part of the theme is that even the coldest heart can be melted by love. That really got me. The movie is perfect.”
On the role that, years ago, he instantly knew he wasn’t going to get:
“When I was 18, I was allegedly really close to playing Dustin Hoffman’s son. I knew I wasn’t going to get that part. I’m like eight inches taller than Dustin Hoffman! I might be a foot taller than Dustin Hoffman. It just wasn’t going to happen. So it hindered me then, when I was playing a boy. Now that I’m playing a man, it’s a bit easier. Girls have heels. Dustin Hoffman in heels isn’t a good look.”
And a bonus one, just because:
“I think recycling is a myth – an Internet myth.” He was kidding, of course. I think. Listen for the voices of Steve Carell, Russell Brand, and Segel (in the body of a 5′ 3″, bespectacled nerd-villain) in Despicable Me, in theaters this week.
Posted by Dbiloo on July 5th, 2010. Filed in Articles -- Comments Off
Jason Segel talks of hit show ‘Despicable Me’
Jason Segel is on a hit TV show (“How I Met Your Mother”) and has a host of movies in various stages of completion – including the new “Despicable Me” – but he recently found the time to appear at a San Francisco comedy event, providing dramatic readings from pop-star autobiographies.
“I filled in for a friend and it ended up being a blast,” he says of his first standup-esque experience. “I did the Jonas Brothers and I think it was David Cassidy – it was one of the Partridges – and Tommy Lee.” Was it difficult to keep the Jonas and Lee memoirs separated in his mind? “Absolutely, they have very similar lifestyles.”
He takes a moment to reflect on the most important life lesson he picked up: “Don’t write an autobiography when you’re still in your 20s.”
Posted by Dbiloo on July 1st, 2010. Filed in Muppets Movie,Video -- Comments Off
IFC to air ‘Freaks,’ ‘Undeclared’
IFC has acquired syndication rights for decade-old Judd Apatow TV comedies “Freaks and Geeks” and “Undeclared.”
“Freaks” will begin its run on the cabler on Friday. The package for “Undeclared,” which will bow in the fall, includes a never-aired episode.
The acquisitions extend IFC’s move into TV comedy (Daily Variety, March 24). The cabler has already greenlighted two new original series for fall: “The Increasingly Poor Decisions of Todd Margaret,” starring “Arrested Development” alums Will Arnett and David Cross, along with “Onion News Network.” IFC has also acquired such laffers as Kids in the Hall reunion series “Death Comes to Town.”
The 18 episodes of the hourlong “Freaks and Geeks,” which NBC canceled shy of completing its first season in 2000 and hasn’t aired since a brief run shortly thereafter on Fox Family Channel, will air at 11 p.m. Fridays with encores on Sundays at 10 p.m. and Mondays at 11 p.m. “Undeclared,” which ran on Fox in the 2001-02 season, has 17 episodes including the previously unaired seg.
“These acquisitions help further solidify IFC as the destination for programming that shares an off-kilter sensibility with its audience, particularly within the comedy genre,” said IFC exec veep and g.m. Jennifer Caserta.
The cast of “Freaks and Geeks” was mostly unknown when the show premiered but features now familiar names like James Franco, Seth Rogen, Jason Segel, Linda Cardellini, Martin Starr and Samm Levine. Series star John Francis Daley (“Bones”) has also become a screenwriter. Apatow exec produced the series, which had Jake Kasdan as its regular director.
“Undeclared” reunited Apatow, Kasdan, Rogen (who picked up five writing credits on the show before his 20th birthday) and Segel, while also featuring Jay Baruchel, Carla Gallo and Charlie Hunnam.
