Among the breakout stars from “Saturday Night Live,” Kristen Wiig may be the most elusive.
Tina Fey emerged as the wry smart girl who doesn’t know she’s pretty, Will Ferrell as the big, lovable galoot and Adam Sandler as the overgrown man-child, but Wiig has less of a defined persona, or look, than an ability to home in on recognizable tics and expand them into memorable, if often irritating characters. These include such “SNL” staples as the hair-stroking, one-upmanship-addicted Penelope, the overly enthusiastic, nosy Target Lady and the frizzy-haired, lethal Gilly.
Wiig has exercised this talent in big-screen supporting roles as well, playing, for example, the haltingly undermining TV executive of “Knocked Up.” But, she acknowledged during a recent visit to Chicago, “I don’t know if you would want to watch two hours of that lady without wanting to kill her.”
Wiig does hope you’ll enjoy two hours of her as the star of “Bridesmaids,” a comedy written by the 37-year-old actress with fellow Groundlings improv troupe alumna Annie Mumolo. The movie, which opens Friday, represents Wiig’s first opportunity to carry a movie (we’re not counting “MacGruber”) and to showcase her naturalistic side, of which she offered a glimpse two years ago in Drew Barrymore’s roller derby comedy “Whip It.”
To switch to a basketball analogy, Wiig is sort of the point guard of “Bridesmaids,” sometimes dishing it off to her ensemble (including former “SNL” castmate Maya Rudolph who, along with fellow co-stars Wendi McLendon-Covey and Melissa McCarthy, performed with the Groundlings) and sometimes going in for the score as the reeling best friend of Rudolph’s bride-to-be.
It’s a delicate balance, and director Paul Feig — who considers Wiig to have an “Everywoman” appeal — said he and producer Judd Apatow talked her into including some of her bigger scenes, such as an intoxicated tirade on an airplane.
“When we were developing the script, we sometimes had to force her to have more things that would showcase her and not just the people around her,” Feig said in a phone interview. “Her first draft of the script, she had a funny but grounded character and was almost giving all the laughs to everybody around her. As a fan I was just like, ‘No, I want to see you be hilarious also.'”
Wiig, soft-voiced and unquirky in person aside from wearing an oversized spiky ring that looked as if it could impale a Klingon, called the airplane scene the most nerve-racking one to act. She said she and Mumolo set out to write a film with a predominantly female cast “because we know so many funny women, and it doesn’t happen that often, and plus I love working with women.”
Yet the filmmakers don’t consider “Bridesmaids” a chick flick, as the movie strikes another balance between what stereotypically might be considered male humor (active aggression) and female humor (passive aggression). It’s telling that the broadest set piece, in which the women suffer some graphic effects from food poisoning while at the posh dressmakers’, also was suggested by Apatow and Feig not long before shooting began.
“At first we were like, ‘Wait, what? We’re going to be getting sick?'” Wiig recalled. “We were a little nervous about it, so then Annie and I wrote our version of it, and Judd was really great about it. He was like, ‘Look, let’s try it. It could be really, really funny. If it works, it works. If it doesn’t, we won’t use it.’ And he was right: There’s something so funny about seeing all these women trying to act like they’re not sick.”
Twitter @MarkCaro
10 more things we learned about Wiig:
1
She didn’t watch “Bridesmaids” dailies and never watches herself on “Saturday Night Live.”
She said her boyfriend records each “SNL” episode, so “sometimes I’ll watch sketches that other people are in, but I don’t watch my own stuff.”
She does make an exception for a film performance — once the film is finished.
“Movies are different,” she said. “Movies are done, so that’s kind of it. It’s locked, and nothing is going to change. ‘SNL’ is ongoing, so I just don’t want to be aware of how I am on the camera.”
2
She doesn’t consider irritation an essential element of comedy.
“But I think I do, as pointed out by other people, gravitate towards writing those people that maybe you don’t want to be on a road trip with,” she said, laughing. “It’s fun to play uncomfortable.”
3
She’s a “Brady Bunch” fan.
One joke in “Bridesmaids” should have “Brady Bunch” fans howling while the uninitiated wonder what they missed.
She said she included the sly reference for her mother, “because we used to watch ‘The Brady Bunch’ together, and we would have a contest of who could say what the plot was right when the show started. So I put that in there as an homage.”
4
She said she makes no distinction between what she thinks is funny versus what she thinks the audience will think is funny, though if you’ve seen enough Gilly sketches, you may wonder. (Then again, she just told Time that she’s retiring Gilly and Penelope.)
“I try not to think what the audience will think. When I’m sitting in a room with writers, and we’re trying to think of something, it really comes from what we think is funny or if we’re laughing.”
5
She’s not one of those comedy actors who are always “on” or armed with funny anecdotes.
Asked about which “Bridesmaids” moments were discovered while improvising, Wiig kept reverting to generalized statements about the actors’ weeks of rehearsal and how they “found a lot of stuff” there.
Later she said: “In some aspects I’m a little shy. I’m not the person at the dinner party that’s going to tell a long, elaborate story that holds everyone at the edge of their seat. I looked at a yearbook recently and saw what people wrote in it, and a lot of people wrote that I was funny, and it kind of surprised me — like, I don’t remember that, really.”
6
She can’t name a recent movie that made her laugh.
“I haven’t watched any movies in so long. I honestly can’t even think of one right now that I’ve seen recently. ‘Airplane!’ (1980) was on a few months ago, which is always a classic for me. I’ll always watch that if that’s on TV.”
7
The epitome of the type of comedy she would love to make is another 1980 movie.
“‘Caddyshack.’ I love ‘Caddyshack.’ It’s just so out there, and it’s a little bit of a twisted reality, which I like.”
8
She has a surprising answer when asked whose career path she would like to emulate.
“I’m a huge Michelle Williams fan. I love every movie she does. I want to do dramas, comedies.”
9
She sees herself less as a funny person than an actress who happens to have done mostly comedic work.
“I’ve always wanted to do drama. I got my start in comedy, but that’s not all that I want to do. I’m adapting a book right now that’s not really a comedy, even though it’s called ‘Clown Girl’ (by Monica Drake). It’s about a woman who was a clown, but it’s not that funny.”
10
She would have enjoyed April in Chicago.
“I like cloudy, rainy weather. I think I’m like a vampire or something. I don’t like the sun.”
