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This interview originally ran on April 8, 2011.
Its being republished following Willardsdeath at age 86on May 15, 2020.
Once you start looking for Fred Willard, you will see him everywhere.
Im trying to think what I saw the other day oh, a sketch on theJay Lenoshow.
So I could watch it objectively and say, Oh, this is funny.
Youve been doingThe Tonight Showsince Johnny Carson.
What was your relationship like with him?He had nothing to do with most of the acts.
Jay Leno is completely different.
Jay will come to the dressing room before the show.
I dont know why.
but he would never call and say, Lets go out for a beer.
I think I did!
That sounds very familiar.
(Note: Fred actually did a Smothers Brothers special in the eighties.)
Regardless, youve been doing this for decades.
How has it changed?
Way back when I started, there were just a very limited number of shows.
There wasEd Sullivan, there was theTonight Show, Mike Douglas, and Merv Griffin.
But now Ive done something onTosh.0.
I didnt even know what the heck it was.
Its really difficult for an actor to turn something down.
Its much more difficult to do.
I mean, I couldnt even tell my wife some of the things he did!
But I enjoyed it.
I was a huge fan of Sam Kinison.
Its funny to hear you say the word fuck!Yeah, I know!
[Cracks up.]
But youve gotta just be aware of that.
Its like being a baseball player: They banned the spitball.
So thats the way I look at it.
So they had what looked like a beautiful mansion behind me, and I was counting shoes.
12,120, 12,121 and then they said, Okay, maybe you lose count and you start cursing.
Goddamn son of a bitch fucking shit!
Which they bleeped, of course.
And I got a call to be in this movie,Salems Lot.
Id read the book.
And I thought,Ohhh, he wants a funny walk.
He wants me to be funny.
So that made sense.
And I said no.
And he said, You were in St. Martins one morning.
And I didnt know what St. Martins was.
And its a Catholic church.
Now, my wife is Catholic, and I guess the producer is Catholic.
We should use him in our movie.
And I said to my wife, My God, I should have been going tosynagoguesfor years!
What was James Mason like?Very quiet, very pleasant.
And they filmed him doing a scene, and they said, okay, cut.
And I look back on that and I say, I think its better that I didnt do that.
I said, Oh my god!
And I had a scene, just me and James Mason!
Given that youve been in the business for so long, who do you think of as your contemporaries?
Cause hes a wonderful actor, and again, I think, much better than I am.
But Eugene Levy is very funny and I just think hes wonderful.
All the other actors I can think of where the hell are they?
Why arent they doing more?
Oh, Jeffrey Tambor, whos a very funny man.
Is there any particular project that youre sad to havenotdone?Remember the movieAirplane!?
And the same people sent me the script forAirplane!, for the Robert Hays part.
And instead of what he should have said Fred, its a lead in a movie, do it!
he said, Fred, if you dont want to do it, dont do it.
I said, Yeah, Id feel better if it went away.
So it did go away.
And I said, oh, whats that?
And he said, its calledAirplane!.
And I went, uh-oh, I made a mistake.
And she says, Fred, if you had done it, it might not have been that successful.
Oh, I loved that show!
And Leslie Nielsen was on; he was a guest star.
or Surely, you wont do that!
Tell me about being the only non-puppet character onDC Follies.We had so much fun on that show.
The work was easy; there were cue cards.
They made life-size puppets that were just phenomenal.
The producers always forgot to get guest stars.
Youre not a particularly political comedian.
Is that one of the reasons you were cast?I dont know why I was cast.
You have a way of talking to the puppets as if theyre real people.
And he said, Oh, hi Fred, I love you on thatDC Follies.
You know, they offered it to me but I couldnt do it.
So if they offered it to him they probably offered it to several other people.
But thats the nature of the business.
And that was from, lets see,A Mighty Wind.
Its kind of a fun catchphrase.
I find myself saying it occasionally myself without thinking.
It was improvised but it wasnt just a like laughfest.
He gave us his outline, and we tried to keep the movie just with our own words.
So it was an actors dream.
And he filmed hours and hours of stuff and then pared it down.
Best in Showwas his most successful, and that did me so much good.
People still quote my lines fromBest in Show.
I hope he does another one.
And Jane and I were both, Turn the camera around?
He never did that before.
He got what he got.
But each outline has gotten a little more full with a few more suggested lines.
He could go in a whole different direction.
I just love working with him.
How much setup do you get for a particular scene?
Do you guys do a lot of character-building stuff beforehand?No, no, no!
And there were actually people in the library wandering in and out of the action.
It was Catherine OHara and me and Eugene Levy.
And none of them said anything.
We didnt know what to say.
And all of a sudden, I thought,Someone had better say something.
And they kind of chuckled a little, then someone said something, then we got into the scene.
And some civilian walked into the scene and I said, Were acting here!
and he said, Oh, sorry but it fit into the scene because we were rehearsing the play.
And from then on, everything was a little better.
Youre in all the local plays.
When I didMighty Wind, Chris said, You probably owned a comedy club.
[Cracks up.]
Yes, because everybody rationalizes their own career.
In fact, Id be happy if he wrote the whole script for me.
Thats the ideal thing.
That is not true, and I dont know where he got that!
But it was very funny.
For the wrong reasons.
But I love Christopher, and hes married to Jamie Lee Curtis, you know.
Jamie Lee Curtis is such an extrovert and very ballsy.
You cant believe that theyre together.
I said, Oh, Im pleased to meet you.
She said, Youve worked with my son-in-law.
And I said, Yes.
And then I also worked with Tony Curtis on a TV series calledLois & Clark.
He was the most effusive, fun guy.
He had trouble with his lines, but told stories about Marilyn Monroe, story after story.
Give me a hug!
And he stood up and grabbed me and hugged me.
So he held a news conference and Burt Lancaster was on the news conference.
And he was my idol.
And he looked at me.
Then he smiled and came over and gave me a big bear hug and lifted me off the ground.
Almost broke my back, you know.
But Ill always remember that.
At first he looked at me like, Whats he saying?
And then Oh, this guys funny!
