Jonah Hill Get Him to the Greek Q&A

He says you guys are locked in.
Jonah Hill: "Yeah, he’s f--kin’ great, man. You’ve got to get him to be himself. That’s sort of the trick that I’m learning through this movie. A lot of people that go through really classical acting training don’t understand our type of movie because it’s so improvisational and loose. If you just prepare to say your lines exactly how they were written, it’s going to throw you off because I’m immediately going to say something that’s not in the script and you’re going to have to react completely differently than what you planned on doing.

So I think Sean, I kind of have to ask him questions and then when he’s angry at me, I’ve kind of got to really make him angry at me is the idea. So he’s supposed to be angry at me. I’ll do something to really piss him off while we’re shooting, and then he’ll start yelling at me for real. He’ll start screaming at me."

What does it take to make Sean Combs angry?

Jonah Hill: "I just interrupt him a lot and sort of ask him questions that have nothing to do with what he’s talking about. This is while we’re filming. Then I’ll ask him questions as my character to his character. He finally just gets frustrated and starts yelling at me, and it’s really funny. That’s what we end up using in all the cuts and stuff, put it together."

Does he know you’re doing this on purpose?

Jonah Hill: "I think now he’s starting to pick up on my methods. I do it a lot though. I plan on being a director and when I do that, I think you really have to f-ck with people. You have to make them feel what you’re trying to make them feel.

If you’re trying to make someone happy, you gotta try and make them happy. If you’re trying to have a normal conversation, you’ve got to have a normal conversation. If you’re trying to make them sad, you’ve got to make them sad. I think that’s how you get real performances out of people."

By torturing them?

Jonah Hill: "Absolutely. Stanley Kubrick made Shelley Duvall go crazy during The Shining. It’s like one of the best performances ever. Maybe he shouldn’t have gone that far, but I love that movie."

Have you had any Hollywood experiences with crazy people?

Jonah Hill: "With Sean. He’s taken me out a few times. He’s forced me, he’s kidnapped me into going out to nightclubs and sh-t with him. It’s interesting."

What do you do, sit there and watch him be Puff Daddy?

Jonah Hill: "You call him Sean. That’s the funniest thing is I’ll go with my friends and be like, 'How’s work?' 'Oh, I did this scene with Sean.' They’re like, 'You sound like an idiot referencing as Sean. He’s f-ckin’ Puff Daddy or P.' It’s like you sound pretentious immediately going, 'Sean was really cool, he’s really mellow,' but when you sit and talk to him, he’s totally smart and locked in to what you’re saying."

How dark does this movie get?

Jonah Hill: "[...]I mean the guy is a drug addict and that's sad. He's obviously using something to cover up thinking about things from his actual life. Any time that happens to me I think that's a real dark thing to come from. I think it's less sad than someone who's like, 'I'm a sad guy,' than someone who's like, 'My life is f-cking awesome,' but you can tell that they're really sad."

"I think...like Danny McBride who's a good friend of mine, they're humor comes a lot from that, I think. It's like, 'I'm totally together. I'm the sh-t,' but deep down they're just an emotional wreck. To me it's better to be like, 'I'm pissed about this,' or 'I'm sad about this,' than to be like, 'Everything is fine.' It seems like so Stepford Wifey to be like, 'Everything is normal. There's nothing wrong with my life. I'm perfect.' But then inside you're just freaking out."

"I think that rock stars, and a lot of time movie stars, that's a lot what Funny People is about: how famous people or how people look at a movie star or a rock star and they go, 'Oh, man, they have no problems. They have money. They're famous,' but it's like, 'These people are, too, and they f-cking hate themselves and are desperate to maintain some form of people telling them that they're special and narcissistic.' There are no real friendships or love in their life and that's f-cking sadder than someone with no money working a normal job."

Has Russell Brand changed at all since Sarah Marshall?

Jonah Hill: "No, because Russell was super famous in England already. I've said this in an interview. Someone asked me about it for a magazine that he was in. I said, 'Russell acts famous in the best way possible where you don't hate him at all.' If I acted like a famous guy you would hate me because it'd be so weird. He doesn't act famous like a douche. He acts famous like he knows that people are looking at him, but he's saying hello to everybody. He's like old school famous people. Normal people, when they get famous in acting it's really like off-putting in my mind, at least. I get very judgmental of that, but with him he is this grandiose figure and you wouldn't want him to be anything else. That's his thing. Either you do that or not."

"I almost find it a hard time because I'm technically the lead of this movie and for me it's not in my nature to go around, like, 'What's up, guys?' But I have to do that to set the tone. It's weird. I'm not used to that and you're supposed to do that as the lead actor of a movie. You're supposed to be the guy who's going up to everybody and making sure that everyone is in a good mood but I'm kind of the guy who sits down and hangs out. I'm not really good at that yet. I'm trying to force myself to be like, 'What's up, everybody,' and I don't know how. I've had times where people look to the lead actor, and I've never really noticed it before, but they really look to me to set the tone of what the environment is like at work. I'm just sitting around bullsh-tting with Nic or Judd or something. But it's really my responsibility to kind of go and have conversations with everybody and make people laugh and stuff. I'm trying to settle into it and I hope that I get better at it."

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Get Him to the Greek opens on June 4, 2010.