This past weekend, I went to New York to sit down with the entire ensemble cast of “Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues,” which seems fitting. I’ve had a long history not only with all the various players like Will Ferrell, David Koechner, Steve Carell, and Paul Rudd, but also with “Anchorman” itself.
The first time I wrote about it, it wasn’t even in production yet. It was a script that was in turnaround, and Dreamworks was trying to get rid of it, something that still confounds me now. You can read my set visit report for the first film from a full decade ago, and one of my favorite interviews I ran at Ain’t It Cool was with Adam McKay, Ferrell, and Koechner in a room together. It was pure chaos, and I loved it.
When we sat down this time, there was a feeling of celebration. After all, the first film almost didn’t happen, and now here they all are a decade later making a highly-anticipated sequel. It’s got to be a great feeling, and I just wanted to play a little instead of digging for scoops or trying to get something deep out of them.
Besides, having these four back together kind of feels like it’s as big a moment in comedy terms as it was for superhero fans when The Avengers finally ended up sharing a screen, so it seemed like a natural jump to ask them which Avenger they would see themselves as.
The main thing I love about asking a question like this is that junkets are built to encourage repetition. Over the course of a day, they’ll get asked the same question 50 times, and they’ll have to answer it over and over and whether they mean to or not, they fall into a sort of rhythm where it feels canned. It’s just part of the process, and so the best thing you can do as an interviewer is ask them something that no one else has asked them. It resets their brains, and it guarantees that you’re getting an actual engaged answer instead of the 30th variation on the same thing.
We’ll have the full interviews for you tomorrow, and I think they’re a lot of fun. For now, though, here’s the Action News team, back in action, and I’m glad I got to share it with them.
“Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues” opens everywhere today.