Between my time on set, my panel moderating duties at Comic-Con, and a recent press day for “Kick-Ass 2” in New York, I feel like I’ve had a pretty good chance to ask the three main stars of the movie any and every thing I wanted to.
I decided to try something different when I sat down with Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Christopher Mintz-Plasse. If you somehow don’t know the name of the character Mintz-Plasse is playing in the sequel to the cult hit “Kick-Ass,” I should warn you that there’s almost no way for this interview to be 100% safe for work. Even beeped, I think you’ll get the idea.
Of the three main returning cast members, I think Mintz-Plasse is the one who really had to push into a whole new direction here. He’s growing as an actor these days, and a lot of it just comes from experience. He has an idea of what he wants from his work now, and what he thinks he brings to something, and he seems happy to demolish any sort of niche that people want to put him in as an actor.
I love being able to startle someone out of the sort of hypnosis that sets in at a certain point in the day doing junket style interviews. You’ve got a parade of faces, and everybody wants something specific from you and a lot of the questions you’re asked are going to be the easiest safest softballs of all time, and I don’t really blame actors for getting lulled and kind of kicking into autopilot.
When you can shake someone out of that mind-set, though, you tend to get something fun and genuine, and I hoped that my first question would have the same impact on both Chris and Aaron Taylor-Johnson, who returns as Dave aka Kick-Ass. You’ll see Chris at the top of the story, and I’ll embed Aaron for you here. As you can see, they both seemed thrown by the first question, but in the best possible way. It’s fun to see them realize, “Oh, wait, I haven’t answered that ten times so far.”
The film hits theaters this weekend, and I’ll have a review for you just as soon as we’re allowed.
It is a shame that we’re not going to also have an interview with Jim Carrey for you this week. I wish he didn’t decide to sit everything out. I think the points he’s trying to make about guns and violence are absolutely part of the character he’s playing in the film. I think it would have been a very strong way to start the conversation for him, and he could have taken advantage of access to every press outlet that covers entertainment, all at once.
Oh, well. I’ll have my chat with Chloe Grace Moretz for you tomorrow. They were holding the press day for “2 Guns” at the hotel at the same time, and she was eager to get downstairs to see Denzel Washington, who she just finished working with in “The Equalizer.” It’s amazing to see how much she changes between each of our interviews.
“Kick-Ass 2” is in theaters Friday.