Heat
by Benji Wilson
April 29, 2008
You're Ned in Pushing Daisies. For anyone who hasn't seen it, give us the low-down.
He's a piemaker who can touch the dead back to life - but if the dead person lives for more than a minute then somebody else will die, and if I touch them a second time then they'll die again forever. I guess in the first episode you see me bring my childhood sweetheart Chuck [Anna Friel] back to life and that means I can't touch her again. So it's like lifelong foreplay - if I touch her, she's dead.
Ned's kind of shy and nice. How Ned-ish are you?
Ned talks very quickly and that's kind of how I talk. The more I played him, the more I got to be like him, which is kind of shy and closed off from people. So I'm very Ned-ish in my life. I can't bring dead people back to life or bake pies very well, but he's very similar.
As an on-screen piemaker, have you learnt anything new about pies?
Well, since I've come to England, I've learned that pies aren't just fruit. They can be anything.
You mean you don't have fish pie in America?
No fish pie in America, no.
That is a tragedy!
I know. I've had fish pie. They're actually really good and you wouldn't think they would be. Fish pie! I'm used to, like, strawberry pie or custard pie, but not fish.
Did Anna Friel introduce you to the various English pies?
I did actually have a fish pie with Anna. We shot the pilot and then I came out here to shoot a movie, so Anna and I hung out all summer long and then we went back ans shot the series in L.A. But I lived out here for, like, two months and it was great.
Are you a romantic like Ned?
No. Yeah, maybe. That's one thing I learned from working on Pushing Daisies - there are two things you can't fake on film. You can't killing someone, but you have to, and you can't fake falling in love. You just can't do it, you can't fake it. Unless it's real, it just looks bad.
So you're saying you fell in love with Anna Friel?
That could get me in trouble, but yeah, yeah, I love Anna. She's... we get along, but there's the rest of the cast too: Chi McBride and Kristin Chenoweth. They're not here so I'll tell you how great they are.
Is it true you once played a woman in a movie?
That was the first movie I'd ever done so there were a lot of new things in that movie, and playing a woman was very, very difficult. I lost 25 pounds for it. I have never been so miserable in my life as when I shot that movie. It's hard to be a woman - three hours of make-up and it's a lot of work. I had these prosthetic boobs and I remember walking into the camera test and some of the crew opened the door for me... which they'd never do otherwise.
I hope you open the door for women now.
Yes, of course. I'm a Southern boy, and Southern boys open doors for the ladies.
Source
|
