Working with a cast that consists of funny characters like Adam Scott, Maya Rudolph, Kristen Wiig and Chris O’Dowd, the comedy can come out like a competition. Scott came into the group of actors fresh from from “Bridesmaids” straight into “Friends With Kids,” with time off-screen resulting in a series of one-ups
“Whenever one of them would say something funny, someone else would come in and say something funnier on top of that because they don’t want the other one to be funny,” Scott said during his interview with HitFix in New York. O’Dowd countered that such behavior didn’t come from a place of hate, but “jealousy.”
And then he and Scott entered into a series of verbal one-ups of their own. It started with someone going to the bathroom. It ends, somehow, with someone peeing into someone else’s mouth.
“Friends With Kids” is kind of like that, with experienced actors like Jennifer Westfeltd, Scott and Jon Hamm going toe-to-toe with the high brow and the low brow. It at times involved children’s bowel movements, but then the mouth-dropping awkwardness of a girl revealing her feelings for a boy and the feeling’s not mutual. It’s parenthood and dating from all its ugly and funny sides.
“With our first kid — my wife and i — we kind of dropped out of society, and disappeared from all friendships…” Scott said, relating his own life experience to the script, “to go off the grid become a hermit with this screaming human…”
“…And a baby,” O’Dowd adds.
Check out our video interview with more talk on the “kid diarrhea rom-com,” O’Dowd peeing his pants and that “ouch” feeling of going for it.
Here is HitFix’s interview with Hamm and Wiig.
“Friends With Kids” is out tomorrow (March 9).