Actors talking to other actors about their craft can either be fascinating or insufferable. I say this as someone who went to college and studied acting. We’re the worst. But then, there are things like Variety’s Actors on Actors series, where they get to interview each other and talk about their work from a place of genuine interest.
And that’s what happened when Ant-Man and Captain America, a.k.a. Paul Rudd and Chris Evans, sat down in front of their computers to talk about their non-superhero work in Living With Yourself and Defending Jacob. In Actors on Actors, Rudd and Evans just kept geeking out about each other and their work—and how both of their most recent shows were challenging for them as actors.
Full disclosure: They both forgot the interview was happening, and they both admit to being hot and sweaty.
What’s important to note is that Paul Rudd claims that he ages. I don’t see it, and neither does Chris Evans.
Evans: Why don’t you age? Are you drinking baby blood?
Rudd: I most certainly age.
Evans: [scoffs] Bullshit.
Rudd’s lack of aging has been a topic of conversation for literal years. I’m not kidding; every year Paul Rudd gets “older,” we’re confronted with the fact that his “aging” is just a few gray hairs in his beard. I see you, I know what you think you’re doing, and it isn’t aging.
Evans and Rudd also talked about working together for the first time on Captain America: Civil War and how, apparently, Chris Evans just has a bunch of footage of the actors who brought our favorite heroes to life … dancing around, which he was going to cut together to “We Go Together” from Grease??? Christopher, where is that video? I need it YESTERDAY.
They discussed their first meeting, as well:
Rudd: When I was working with you on “Civil War,” for that first scene that we had where we were in the car parked —
Evans: That was the first day I met you.
Rudd: Yeah. And there was a real kind of nervousness about Scott Lang, and I just really kind of played into that because that was part of what I was feeling anyway. I’d look around and think, “Whoa, there’s Chris Evans and there’s Sebastian Stan, and wow — and there’s the suits.” Do you remember there was like a little makeshift locker room? We’re all kind of changing into things, and I saw the suits on the racks. It felt like being in a locker room of a Super Bowl-winning football team.
Evans: I don’t know if you remember this. On that day, it was literally the day I met you, [Anthony] Mackie and I and Scarlett [Johansson] got in our head that we were going to shoot — this is so hilarious — a little video just for the Marvel gang, like a little culmination, like a yearbook video, set to that song from “Grease.” “We go together, like rama lama,” whatever that song is. We were just going to go around, take little clips of videos of people dancing and cut it all together. The first day I was like, “All right, I’ll start collecting some of this footage.” I have the footage.
I was like, “Hi, nice to meet you. You don’t know me, but can I get this?” It was you, Mackie, I think [Jeremy] Renner, Sebastian, and I just said, “Look, everyone, just dance for 30 seconds,” and you did it. You were a great sport. You willingly danced with little explanation from me, and then I never completed the video. I just abandoned it. But I got that footage of our first day of meeting of you dancing.
In the full transcription from Variety, they don’t include the fact that Chris Evans says “Bullshit” multiple times, which is, frankly, bullshit. But, in general, it’s a fun video of two actors just kind of talking to each other and geeking out with one another, and honestly, right now, I needed it.
Would I take a weekly sit-down session between Rudd and Evans were they just talk to each other about life and how they’re doing? Yes, yes I would.
(image: screengrab from Variety)
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