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Katherine Heigl and Gerard Butler Tell 'The Ugly Truth' Heigl and Butler Discuss the R-Rated Romantic Comedy 'The Ugly Truth'
By Rebecca Murray
Flirt, play games, pretend to be someone you're not, wear sexy clothes that capitalize on your assets - all of this is dating advice given to Abby (Katherine Heigl), a Type-A personality TV producer, by Mike Chadway (Gerard Butler), the host of a local cable TV show who tells it like it is from a man's point of view, in Columbia Pictures' The Ugly Truth. Nothing is held back in this R-rated comedy in which Butler tries to teach the dating-impaired Heigl how to attract the man she wants.
On screen, Heigl and Butler verbally spar over Butler's character's approach to handling the opposite sex. Off screen, the two have a much less antagonist relationship. Together for a press conference in LA to promote the film, Heigl and Butler shared their experiences of working on The Ugly Truth, directed by Robert Luketic (21) and written by Nicole Eastman, Karen McCullah and Kirsten Smith.
Gerard Butler and Katherine Heigl at The Ugly Truth Press Conference
Women have loved you for so long, even in the big male action films like 300, do you think you’re pushing your luck this time?
Gerard Butler: "No, I don’t think I’m pushing my luck. That is something I’d like to do, but I don’t think I’m taking it too far. There is definitely a lot of me in this character, but I think it’s more about being sort of boisterous and fun. I don’t expound those ideals, but I do think that there is a lot of that going on in both men and women - if we’re honest and frank about how we look at each other."
"I think that what is cool is that both of our characters, at the end of the day, we’re human and real. We both have a lot of vulnerabilities. There is a lot of that going on under Mike’s armor. That’s what is so great about this movie. It’s so ridiculous, shocking, and surprising the ways I talk about sex, but at the end of the day women get it. Men get it too. I think it’s right that we see Mike’s character let his guard down. It’s a sex comedy, it’s kind of a romantic comedy, and kind of a love story."
Did you both dance that well before this movie? Did you practice that dance?
Katherine Heigl: "I think it looked so awesome because of the way that they shot it. Did you notice, Gerry, it was all just upper? They didn’t do any wide shots of us spinning around."
Gerard Butler: "I disagree. It was hot."
Katherine Heigl: "We totally went back to the trailer and made out after. [Laughing] We had like 20 minutes to rehearse it, right?"
Gerard Butler: "I took a few lessons because I had no idea what I was doing. I actually had a lesson from Julianne Hough from Dancing with the Stars and that took me a long way along the way. But this lady here was just on it and she had it right away. That’s why it came alive, because to be honest if I was dancing with somebody who wasn’t that great, it would have been a disaster. Katie was on it and I wasn’t."
"Her process is good and mine is bad. [Laughing] I had months to prepare and I still I still forgot my lines But then again, I had a lot to say. In my defense I never f--king shut up in this movie. ‘Blah, blah, blah…’ and then ‘blah, blah, blah…’"
Katherine Heigl: "What was so awesome is that you nailed every joke. It came off effortless. That is just awesome. He is super fun to watch. You’re just good."
When you are talking to each other face to face, how tough was that and were there a lot of takes for those scenes where you have to use the R-rated language? Was it tricky?
Katherine Heigl: "For me I kind of talk like that all the time anyway, so it wasn’t hard. I try to actually rein that in a bit. So that was very freeing for me. I could just kind of be me. I love raunchy humor, I just do, and I don’t know why. I don’t know why. I should probably get a little more sophisticated, but I just think it’s hilarious and it’s what makes me laugh the hardest and the most. I’m not terribly precious about that sort of stuff. Unless you’re going really far, and then it’s still funny."
Was it hard for you being the Scottish guy?
Gerard Butler: "I was in heaven. Back home. One of the main reasons I ended up doing this movie. I was doing another action movie where I was very dark and brooding. But at night I would go to dinner with Gary Luccesi and Tom Rosenberg from Lakeshore and tell dirty jokes. I’d be vulgar and they kept going, 'The Ugly Truth!,’ and I had never read the script. I finally read it and I go, ‘Okay, I get it.’ The weird thing is that it took me a couple of days to find my rhythm. The first day, playing the American accent and that kind of character, I was really nervous. I kept forgetting my lines. Every time I would turn to Katie and had to play with her hair, I was so nervous. Once I grabbed her breast. In the middle of a take I said, ‘Did I just touch your breast?’"
Katherine Heigl: "He just put his hand down, one of those accidental brushes, and it was like…"
Gerard Butler: "It was kind of a Mike Chadway move. I guess it was pretty method. Every time I went to grab her hair, I forgot. And it was because I was really pretty nervous about it, because she’s such a charismatic woman."
Did it take 35 takes before you got the dinner scene [in which she has a huge orgasm] right?
Katherine Heigl: "Hold on. It didn’t take 35 to get it right, it took 35 set ups to film the scene. Which is a different thing. I got that on take one, thank you very much."
So it was a total breeze?
Katherine Heigl: "Oh my God, it was a nightmare. And let me tell you, ladies, these were fake orgasms but… can you imagine? ‘I’m very method.’ [Laughing] That would have been a terrible day!"
Gerard Butler: "I get them all the time! I recognize that!"
Katherine Heigl: "‘I know you’re phoning that one in!’ [Laughing] It’s really just physically exhausting. It’s so much physical movement, the legs dancing under the table, all the tensing up of the body, and by the end of the day I felt like I had done a marathon. I thought I had run 20 miles. Then I went, ‘Okay, no I get why it’s called physical comedy.’ Because it’s so physical and it’s exhausting. No one wants to orgasm 35 times."
[Director Luketic wonders what the child actor playing with the remote control for Heigl's vibrating underwear thought was happening.]
Katherine Heigl: "He probably thought, 'This lady is crazy.'"
Gerard Butler: "He didn’t know there was a connection. He thought, ‘She’s crazy over there! What is she doing? I’m just going to keep playing with this thing.’"
Katherine Heigl: "‘She’s screwed up my take!’"
Gerard Butler: "I go to therapy. I came out the other day and he was sitting there waiting to go in. Now I get it, I went, ‘Of course!’ [Laughing] I have to say, no matter how well this movie does, that scene is going to go down in the annals of history in comedies because it’s a classic scene. I don’t know many people who don’t love it. 35 takes to get it right? Not at all. It’s one of the most brilliant performances I’ve ever seen. She was so, dare I say, bang on. It was incredible. Watching it again last night, you sometimes marvel. It was amazing, just perfection."
Katherine, Izzie is so well known from Grey’s Anatomy. Do you want to find screen characters who are totally unlike her? Do you see Abby as a cousin or a sexier, R-rated version of Izzie? For the two of you, could you talk about what you think this movie says about the battle of the sexes?
Katherine Heigl: "For Izzie, yeah, absolutely I definitely want to go out and explore different personalities of people. But at the end of the day, I used to have this conversation with other actors, I feel like on television it’s really hard to divorce me completely from the role. It’s nine months a year, it’s every day, and sometimes it’s an 80 hour week. It’s the way I walk, the way I talk, the way I dress, sure. It’s going to slip in there. I can’t completely remove that. I thought in the film I maybe could. I don’t think I can. Me is always going to show up in these roles. Something is always going to surface. And so, yeah, they’re not Izzie but there is a distant cousin sort of analogy. I think it will always be a little bit like that, and that’s why I colored my hair. [Laughing] Because that will fool everybody!"
You could say this movie is silly and fun with two disarmingly attractive people, but is it really saying something about men and women today?
Katherine Heigl: "I don’t know. I would hope that it’s an exaggeration of where men and women are at. I can’t speak for men because I haven’t been around a lot of men who act like Mike Chadway. I’ve been around a lot of men who joke like Mike Chadway, but don’t actually believe that. If they do, then they are very good actors and are much more romantic, and much more sympathetic and all those things he sort of lacked. But I know for me, Abby is only a small exaggeration of women now, at least me and my friends. I definitely went the whole make a list [way]. I’m definitely a little OCD. I’m particular about how I like things, and how I want things, and the whole seventh floor room, facing the sun rising, I get that – I get that, deeply."
"I don’t know, maybe it is sort of talking about the differences. But I also think the most important part of the movie was talking about compromise. Despite those differences you can compromise. You don’t have to necessarily completely change who you are to be with someone you want to be with, but you do have to compromise a little bit. You have to let go of a little bit of yourself. There is that fine, fine line between desperate and honest."
Gerard Butler: "I have to say that Katie is deeply flawed in her misunderstanding of the truth of what goes on in a lot of men’s minds. I think that was a way more sophisticated breed of male than I am, which wouldn’t be difficult. We never know, as guys, what the hell women talk about when they go to the restroom. They always go to the restroom together. Likewise, women never really know, and I think this is the first movie that really brings it up and strikes to the heart of it, how guys really think. I swear, I know I’m going out on a limb here and ending my career, but it’s almost impossible for a guy to go, ‘You know what? There are times when I just turn around and look at an ass.’ We do that stuff. Now, we are much more complicated than that as well, and at the end of the day that’s what is beautiful and where the redemption is in the movie. We all, at the end of the day, through our games and our weaknesses and our flaws, are after the same thing. We all want a partner, we all want companionship, and we’re all beautiful and we’re all over the place. It comes together really well."
"I think that the battle of the sexes is the battle of the audiences in this movie. Because it’s so great. It really expounds both values. I think when this stuff is thrown out there it’s so shocking and unexpected. The guys are like, ‘Oh, thank God somebody said that!’ And the women are like, ‘You know what? I knew it! I bloody well knew it!’ That’s why it’s a huge relief that this stuff is put out there. But it’s great the way we play with it here. I have to tell you the script was so phenomenal. That’s another reason it wasn’t hard to just climb into this and do it. It was just there."
Edited by gemini78 - 19/7/2009, 21:10
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