The New York Times’ Dave Itzkoff talked to comedy power couple Judd Apatow and Leslie Mann about their new film, This is 40, which picks up of the lives of Paul Rudd and Mann’s Knocked Up characters several years later. Here are the highlights:
Framing Paul Rudd as the inspiration for weird things:
Q. But not everything in “This Is 40” is directly correlated to something that really happened to you.
A. Apatow A lot of it is fabricated to get across certain points. Things at their worst, or the way we wish things were, or things that we’ve seen happen to other people. We’re always debating, do we need more fake stuff to throw people off the trail? Can we blame this on Paul [Rudd]? We’re always saying anything weird in the movie is Paul.
On whether their daughters, Maude and Iris, get to watch the movies they make:
Q. Did they get to watch “Knocked Up”?
A. Mann No.
Apatow Iris hasn’t seen anything, and shows an incredible lack of interest in ever seeing anything. [laughs] There are no mermaids in the movies, so she doesn’t care. And when we finally told Maude that she could watch all of our movies, she watched like half of one and lost interest. I did show her this movie.
Mann Did she like it?
Apatow She seemed to like it. It didn’t blow her mind too much. And it doesn’t seem to have done any lasting psychological damage, from watching it. I think that comes from being bored of being around all this, in a strangely healthy way. It’s all demystified.
The family that works together…
Q. Do you feel that working with your children like this strengthens the family bond?
A. Apatow I think it does. I’ve tried to explain to them why we do it. This is what creative people do. They share their lives, they let other people that they feel the same things as them, that we’re all in this together. It’s a positive to talk about how you’re experiencing this life. It’s O.K. for her to be the screaming, emotional kid, because there’s millions of other kids who feel that way, and when they watch that, they’ll laugh, and they’ll feel better about themselves, that they’re not alone in that.
Strange Bedfellows: Judd Apatow and Leslie Mann on ‘This Is 40’ [Arts Beat]
(Photo by Christopher Polk/Getty Images for Pink Party)