Jason Segel & Samara Weaving on Making Over Your Dead Body, Acting in Remakes | Interview
ComingSoon editor-in-chief Tyler Treese spoke with Over Your Dead Body stars Jason Segel and Samara Weaving about their new action comedy movie. The duo discussed acting in a remake, the unintentional comedy of Australian accents, and more. It’s now playing in theaters.
“When miserable couple Dan and Lisa retreat to a remote cabin for a romantic reset, each arrives with a secret plan to murder the other. Their carefully plotted traps and counterplots quickly unravel when a dangerous crew crashes the weekend with plans of their own. As the toxic getaway spirals into chaotic carnage, Dan and Lisa must survive the intruders, each other, and figure out if they want to save their marriage or survive it.”
Tyler Treese: Jason, I was curious what your approach to acting in a remake was, especially of a film that most English-speaking people haven’t seen. Did you watch the original movie, or did you just not want that to impact your performance?
Jason Segel: No, I watched it a bunch. I think there’s actually a real luxury to this experience and that the first movie worked. I loved the first movie, so I always thought, oh, this is pretty cool. You’re going into something, knowing that the story works, that I’ve seen a version of it. That’s awesome.
So I think for us it was like, “Okay, what do we do to make it our own? And what can we enhance it?” Because they’ve done a lot of the heavy lifting already. So, yeah, I was psyched. Like I had an idea of why it would be worthwhile for me to take on the material and what I could bring to it that is different than what the original was. I think Sam probably felt the same for her, of like, “Okay, now we can take this movie and do it through this lens.” So, it was cool.
Samara, your Australian accent is in full display here. Jason’s character calls it “British crossed with the devil” and makes fun of it. So, is it a relief, especially in such a physical film, when you don’t have to worry about doing a different accent, or how does that come into play?
Samara Weaving: Yeah, listen, I’ve tried once before to stay in an American accent, like in between takes. Some people can do it. I just feel really self-conscious, and I feel silly. I feel like people are listening, like judging, and going, ” Why are you doing that?
Segel: Especially if the accent isn’t that good.
Weaving: It’s like you’re like, “Hey, yeah, so are you having…” No, I can’t. No, I wanna just have it between action and cut. For this, I knew that there’d be a lot of improv, and I also just thought that the Australian accent is arguably the silliest accent. It kind of just sounds ridiculous. Shane Gillis has a great bit about it.
So I thought bringing that element into it also would just be really fun to play with and it takes, like you said, a little of the pressure off if we were to improvise something. And there is such a, I was about to say cliche, maybe that’s not the right word, but a lot of like Australian actors in LA who were dating the American director. Like that’s literally my life, and there’s so many of us. So it felt quite real as well.
Segel: Also, my experience of the accent is that it has kind of a hard edge to it.
Weaving: Yeah. It’s gnarly.
Segel: Yeah. It’s like things sound like an insult that are just normal. I could see why it would cause relationship issues.
Weaving: Yeah. I got to just like whip out some really fun Aussie slang that just makes me laugh.
Segel: Like you might say, “Get that, why don’t you?” and that would just be a normal thing. Yeah. “Why don’t you?” And that would be a normal thing to say, but to me it’s like, “What do you mean, ‘Why don’t you?'” I’m like, “Why is this so aggressive?”
Jason, you have some physical scenes with Keith Jardine, former UFC fighter. He’s still in great shape. You’re a tall dude, and he is manhandling you. How was it filming those?
Jason Segel: To reduce my natural strength for the camera was obviously a challenge. But you know, you sacrifice for your art, and I just wanted the movie to feel realistic. There’s a good chance I take all these three villains in a heartbeat, but we needed a longer film.
Thanks to Jason Segel and Samara Weaving for taking the time to talk about Over Your Dead Body.
Source: Comingsoon.net