Leslie Mann Reveals Robert De Niro’s Trick for Taking Great Pictures
When Leslie Mann was offered the role in The Comedian of a newly single New Yorker who’s dealing with daddy issues and doing community service because she’s attacked her former boyfriend, she didn’t hesitate. Why? Robert De Niro was the lead. Harvey Keitel plays her preening, controlling papa. And the wardrobe was a bonus. She got to wear a killer Hervé Leger number.
“That’s a good dress! The Hervé Leger. It sucks you in. I was very happy with the way I was going up the stairs. It did its job, the bondage dress. What it looks like without the bondage dress is not that,” she jokes about her body.
But all laughs aside, when she read The Comedian, she was smitten. “It was a great script. And getting the chance to work with Bob — he’s going places,” she quips. “It was a no-brainer for me.”
Of the many things De Niro known for, a ribald sense of humor would not top anyone’s list. Historically, in dealing with the press, his answers have been more gruff nods than complete sentences, and he doesn’t volunteer information.
But when we sat down with De Niro and Mann to talk comedy, we were in for a treat. De Niro plays an over-the-hill comic grasping at the tattered remains of his career and meeting Mann while doing community service after an assault. And she takes a minute to reveal one of the funniest things about her co-star.
“Can I tell her what you do when you take pictures?” she asks De Niro. “When we take pictures, he says, ‘Yabadabadoo, cheese, one two three, yeah, yeah yeah.’ It makes me laugh so hard. I look like such a fool in all the pictures I take with him.”
For De Niro, it’s just a way to make his face look alive and to stay engaged, he replies.
Looking foolish is a prerequisite for good comedy. De Niro does actual standup in the film, and one assumes that the extras were in awe of the legend, laughing on command. “No, I wouldn’t think that,” says De Niro, adding that riffing and entertaining an audience was serious business. And in take after take, telling the same anecdotes, the crowd grew restive and bored.
“It’s different, and it’s not easy. I did a little of it. Not as much as I would have liked. When I was doing the standup, the routines with the extras and some actual audience and part of the crew, the first or second time, they laughed. After, they know the joke. I really needed them to feed me back. I took it for granted that they would. It helped me a lot when I got their reaction,” he says.
To be good at comedy, says De Niro, you have to just not care what people think. “You have to go up and be prepared to fall and fail. The audience is always with the comedian. If someone like me would get up, they’d give me a minute, and if I have a couple of bad jokes, they turn on you,” he says.
The same applies to talk shows, adds Mann, recalling a recent interview that went bad. “It was going really well. It was superfun. It felt like the audience was with me. And then I said something that was a little too dark, and they went, ‘Oooohhh.’ And they just turned on me. It was the worst feeling ever. I was scrambling to get them back on my side,” she says.
The film took seven years to make it to the big screen, changing directors (at some points, Sean Penn and Mike Newell were attached) before ending up being helmed by Taylor Hackford. But the story, at its core, always stuck with De Niro, who in May, plays busted con artist Bernie Madoff in the TV movie The Wizard of Lies.
“I love comedians. I thought it would be great to play a comic who doesn’t give a shit and is funny. That’s a hard thing to do. Art came up with the script. We had one director and then somebody else. Finally, we morphed into what it was. I’m happy we got to the point. A lot of projects do that. I’m happy we got it made,” he says.
Mann, meanwhile, knows her way around comedy. Last year, she co-headlined the coming-of-age romp How to Be Single, and she played Katherine Heigl’s bawdy, hypercritical sister in Knocked Up. Plus, she’s married to prolific writer, director, and producer (and Donald Trump critic) Judd Apatow. Who, as it turns out, isn’t a cut-up behind closed doors.
“You know, Judd is funny. He does funny stuff in his standup. But at home, he’s not cracking jokes all day at home. Iris and Maude are the funny ones,” says Mann of their two daughters.
In the past, Mann has been vocal about being a mom first, and doing maybe a few films a year, if that. When asked about her daughters, she lights up.
“They’re tall and beautiful girls. I’m very proud of them. Maude is in college now and doing really well. Iris is in eighth grade. I’m a proud mom,” she says. “I work once a year. Iris is 14. She’s fine. She does seem like she needs me a lot less. But I think that’s a trick. I think she needs me a lot more. Those teenage years can be tricky.”
Related:
Priyanka Chopra on Feminism and Why ‘Being Bad Is Just Sexy’
Kaley Cuoco ‘Forgets’ She’s Famous, Says Her Makeup Artist
Proud Feminist Padma Lakshmi on Taking Her Daughter to the Women’s March
Let’s keep in touch! Follow Yahoo Beauty on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest.
