Jonah Hill, aka Superbad himself, may play an extreme mama’s boy in his latest movie Cyrus, but he’s in no way into anyone suspecting him of actually being one. Though according to what the hugely funny guy was willing to admit during this interview, having Marisa Tomei as his hottie movie mom was a breeze. Jonah, who’s doing double duty right now at the plexes with Get Him to the Greek, did bristle a bit when I asked him about his breakout stardom possibly redefining leading man physical assets. But even if the chunky charmer confesses to counting on luck more than looks, there’s a thing or two he’s certain he can pull off that a sexy screen idol like Brad Pitt can’t.
Q: You play a grown guy who can’t let go of his mom. Is this character possibly autobiographical?
JONAH HILL: I’m very close with my family, but not—I don’t think—in an unhealthy way! I’ve had friends in that position, but never to the extreme of this. I think that Cyrus, the character, like, may not even know anybody else besides his mom; he might not have any friends or anyone besides his mom. I have a few friends who are close with their family. But it’s never to the extreme where they don’t have friends or girlfriends, or people outside of that relationship. So I think yeah, this is definitely an extreme case.
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Q: Then what’s his problem?
JH: I think he just was kind of raised with a lot of love. But sometimes too much love can be an unhealthy thing, and too much protection and coddling, you know?
Q: Cyrus ventures into some pretty dark spanking-the-monkey territory. Were you OK with that?
JH: I think the point of the movie is that you’re never supposed to know how far it’s gonna go, and I think that’s kind of one of the great things about it. You don’t know from one scene to the next how far I’m going to take it, and how dark or unsettling it might get. But I think it was just a great character. It was definitely different from the other movies that I’ve done; for sure, I can safely say that. But it was a great challenge, and it was really interesting to do something like this.
Q: Did you do stuff that pushed it a lot further than we saw, stuff that didn’t get into the movie?
JH: No. Honestly, the only stuff that got cut out was stuff where you felt too bad for me too quickly. Things like when I went off on my own, when I leave home and you see what I go and do on my own. That was hard, because it was a hard balancing act between feeling bad for Cyrus and feeling bad for John [Reilly], you know what I mean? So that was the only stuff that got cut out.
Q: Like what do you go off and do?
JH: Well, I go off and move into this place, and I kind of have these panic attacks and have a difficult time relating to people my own age. It was stuff like that, but they felt that it was just too much. You just felt too bad for me.
Q: What’s the difference doing a role like this, compared to Superbad and Get Him to the Greek?
JH: For Get Him to the Greek or Superbad, you’re really concentrating on making the audience laugh every few seconds or however often you can, and mixing that with emotion and story. But this was really just about making sure that every moment felt real and true to the character. And if there was ever anything that went against that, even an unlikable aspect of Cyrus as a character, we nixed it.
Q: What’s it been like, going back and forth between talking about this movie and Get Him to the Greek, and how weird is it getting into those two different headspaces?
JH: Yeah, it’s different, they’re totally different movies. But that’s the thing—it’s cool because you get a change of pace and whatnot. Get Him to the Greek is more in the vein of Superbad definitely, and Cyrus is something completely new for me, and it’s truly exciting to get to take that leap and make this kind of movie.
Q: Your career has really blown up in the last several years. Did you expect success to come so suddenly?
JH: I don’t know. I never expected any sort of success! My intention was just to work really hard. I’m very aware that making movies is a privilege and not a right for anybody. Especially not me! I really just am lucky.
Q: How about getting to have Marisa Tomei for your mom in a movie?
JH: Yeah, we hung. And for me, Marisa is such a good actress, and we both knew that we had to adore each other. I mean, it’s not hard to adore her! She’s beautiful and talented and great. But we didn’t really talk about it, like, “You’re my mom, so how weird is that?” We didn’t say anything like that. We just kind of…figured it out!