Michael Cera Talks Working with Wes Anderson on 'The Phoenician Scheme'

Actually, my nephew went and saw the movie on the opening weekend

He was like five years old and he didn't even recognize me in the movie. He was like, I thought Uncle Michael was going to be in this

I read that during the Cannes press conference, Benedict Cumberbatch said Wes Anderson discovering and using Michael Cera

must be like God discovering water, which I thought was such a funny quote

But also you guys do just seem like a perfect fit for each other

Was the partnership that natural in person? It was a great partnership

I mean, I think I think Wes, he's I think he's a very good actors director

So I don't know many actors who have sort of had a bad time working with him. You know, he's fun and it's a very specific kind of narrow bullseye that you're trying to, you know, work out together as a team

Yeah, I loved it. I mean, you know, but I can't think of many actors who would not have a great time doing that

And your accent is so fun in the movie. How did you sort of come up with that

Well, he's written as a Norwegian character. Could you imagine falling in love with a man like me, by the way, hypothetically

You're drunk on three beers. So it demanded some effort be put toward thinking about a Norwegian accent

I worked with a woman for a little while, a dialect coach, and then I also just had some Norwegian friends record all of the dialogue of mine

I just gave them all of the lines out of context, So they don't even know what the scenes are or what the movie is

But what I got from that actually from them was little sounds and little peculiarities about, you know, certain words and how they kind of sit in a Norwegian's mouth who's not used to speaking English

Do you like doing accents or do you find that difficult? I do voices all the time at home and I drive my wife crazy, especially late at night

Like when it's bedtime and I kind of can get stuck doing a voice and she's like, bye and just has to walk away at a certain point

I think a lot of people are kind of like that. I mean when I was growing up like My house was very silly with my sisters and my parents you know there was a lot of voices So I think doing voices especially in like a musical way is very satisfying

I enjoy it myself doing it in a movie. There's a different kind of pressure, obviously, and it's a lot of fun

Was there any particular scene that was a lot of fun to shoot that you like really enjoyed that day on set

Well, it all was so much fun. I mean, I really loved diving into quicksand because that's just an opportunity you never, ever get in your life

I mean, when I read the script and saw that I would get to dive into quicksand in the movie, I couldn't believe it

What was the quicksand made of? How did that work? I kind of want to be a little bit private about it because I just don't want to ruin the magic of it

It was a brilliant effect. I mean, I'm sure it's going to be not a secret or anything, but I don't know

I kind of just want to let it look like quicksand. How many takes did you have to do

I did one. Just one. Oh, OK. now we were prepared to do more like we had a quick change for me you know but west was like

no that's it perfect things we did one take of this went very well i mean i did have a chance i

did get to rehearse it a bit you know in sort of the days leading up to it so that i could get

comfortable with the whole thing because it's a bit of a stunt but it was totally practical and um

i mean that's what there's no effects in that shot like that shot is just what what we shot

it looked just like that what was the most difficult scene to shoot nothing's like immediately

coming to mind. I will say like we shot most of the airplane scenes, the private planes

that was what we sort of started our shoot with more or less. Those were all toward the beginning

of the shoot. And those were kind of difficult because the plane got very, very hot. You became

sort of lightheaded in there. And Benicio is also smoking these like fake cigars in there at all

times. So it became filled with this like horrible smelling smoke. And that was physically challenging

You actually like felt yourself getting quite depleted in there. But that's the only thing I could think of

Everything was just really a lot of fun. It was a joyful shoot

His sets are obviously so gorgeous and the beautiful costumes and such Did you swipe anything from set or get gifted anything No you know Wes basically archives every single thing from his movies

I think he's got every single thing stored away in some magnificent warehouse

I'm hoping that one day there'll be like an ultimate permanent Wes Anderson museum or something because he has it all

And, you know, it's such beautiful stuff, especially the costumes. so obviously he has such like a stable of actors who he comes back to over and over again what was

it like sort of working with some of them on set well they're amazing i mean west keeps amazing

people around and not just the actors also his crew who are sort of you know like tenured at

this point but yeah you know when west first sent me the script he said this is basically the cast

this is who's playing this part this is who's playing this part yeah it's a huge part of the

appeal of working with someone of his caliber is like the talent that he gets to come out and even

just for small parts. I mean, he gets Tom Hanks to come do like a five day part in his movies

It's unbelievable. Nobody does that. Nobody gets Tom Hanks and Scarlett Johansson to like

show up for a day or two. Do you like watching your own movies

I know some actors don't. I do actually like watching things I've worked on with an audience

because it's, you know, it's unique and you only get the chance to do that sort of normally like

once or twice, you know, and you learn a lot. Like you really learn how the movie's working

because you experience how the ride of the movie works on a group

And that's like its own kind of thing. It's its own way of watching a movie

It's different from watching a movie at home, which has its own merits and enjoyments too

But when you watch it with a group, there's a different quality. It really becomes kind of like you feel orchestrated

as an audience together when it's really well done. So I do like having that experience

especially if it's something funny or attempting to be funny. You see where people laugh and where they don't

And you see if people laugh really hard at something and they laugh so loud that they don't hear the next line

things like that that you just kind of you know the movie has a certain rhythm the way it plays for an audience And it can be can be interesting to see When we were doing the promotional tour for

Superbad, like 20 years ago, almost or something, they sent us all over Europe, myself and Jonah

Hill and Christopher Mintz-Place. And we like watched the movie dubbed in all these different

languages and see how it plays with different countries. And it's really interesting, like

culturally some things work better in some countries than in others like some countries

that movie just you know didn't really land were there scenes in that movie where they worked for

everybody or was it some countries like to watch movies in the original language with subtitles

you know and they're like that's the pure way to do it like france i think really holds like you

know the original versions in high regard but countries like italy and germany dub them and

And the audience there are used to seeing American films like dubbed

So I think a lot, especially for something that's like a comedy, it really depends on the quality of the dubbing and the voice acting

you know, whether it's working or not. So you can't gauge it as the actor

It's like it's like watching a totally different movie. Has Barbie sort of changed your career directory at all with it being so massive

I don't know. I mean, because that's kind of hard to measure. Like you don't know what would have happened with it or without it

that's kind of hard to gauge. I mean, it did feel like a very big movie to be a part of

I was happy to be a part of it, especially be kind of on the, you know, like a smaller ripple in the movie

Do you get identified a lot in public for that? Not really. It's always so interesting

what things people recognize actors from, I think. I look quite different in that movie than I do normally

So I've never really been approached about it, to be honest. Actually, my nephew went and saw the movie

on the opening weekend. He was like five years old and with my sister

He didn't even recognize me in the movie. He was like, I thought Uncle Michael was going to be in this

And he hadn't even realized that was me