Fred Armisen: ​‘I’m wimpy about pain’

Fred Armisen is a busy man. After end­ing his 11 years at Sat­ur­day Night Live in 2013, he cre­at­ed and starred in Port­landia, For­ev­er, Los Espookys, Doc­u­men­tary Now and Moon­base 8, record­ed a Net­flix spe­cial and became the in-house drum­mer for Late Night With Seth Mey­ers, all while writ­ing and per­form­ing music. Rather than be slowed down by lock­down he joined Judd Apatow’s Covid-themed Hol­ly­wood satire The Bub­ble, play­ing an out of his depth direc­tor tasked with cre­at­ing block­buster Cliff Beasts 6 and sav­ing the movie industry.

LWLies: Is there a phi­los­o­phy that you’re fol­low­ing with all these projects?

Armisen: I just go lit­tle by what looks like fun. With The Bub­ble it’s Judd Apa­tow, he’s some­one I’ve known for a while, so that was an easy one to decide on. In terms of emu­lat­ing, I like Matt Berry’s career and I like the way that Jane Lynch picks her projects. As much as I’d like to say that it’s a hun­dred per­cent about the project, some­times it’s about loca­tion. If I get offered to shoot in Eng­land, I’ll make it work.

You’re a fan of England?

I’m obsessed with Eng­land. I walk around want­i­ng to thank every British per­son I meet. I want to say thank you for all the music you’ve made. British bands are a huge part of my life. I spend a lot of my day think­ing about British bands. The Damned, The Clash, The Stran­glers, The Buz­zcocks, The Slits. These bands not only did they change my life they con­tin­ue to. I still am obsessed with them.

Some­times it seems like most men over 50 in Lon­don can tell you about a crazy night they had with Joe Strummer.

And every time I’m like, ​‘Please tell me about it!’ It’s an end­less obses­sion, and it’s weird because as I meet British peo­ple, I think they’re think­ing the same thing. Guz Khan who plays Howie in The Bub­ble is from Coven­try. And I’m like, ​‘Guz! The Spe­cials are from Coven­try!’ I real­ly think that Guz walks around all day think­ing, ​‘Hey, I’m from where The Spe­cials are from.’

Guz plays the com­ic relief in this giant action movie Cliff Beasts 6. As a com­ic actor has that sort of role ever appealed to you?

I think you got to be a lit­tle loud­er for that. I think my vol­ume isn’t right.

They’re not loud but there are so many details in your per­for­mances that feel very precise.

These are the parts and roles that work best for me. I don’t think that I’m good at being the main thing. I think my work has gone best if I do some­thing not too big, if it’s very spe­cif­ic and maybe a lit­tle odd. It’s where I’m happy.

With your char­ac­ter Dar­ren in The Bub­ble, at first he was the only per­son who I was actu­al­ly root­ing for, but it’s almost a vil­lain ori­gin sto­ry for him.

Because just giv­ing a direc­tor like that so big of a chance, they get greedy. He wants to com­plete this movie as opposed to wor­ry­ing about everyone’s safe­ty and men­tal health. Almost every­one in this has a kind of vil­lain­ous qual­i­ty; I like that there isn’t exact­ly a hero. I nev­er watched some­thing and go, ​‘I’m so glad there’s a straight char­ac­ter in this’. I like it a lit­tle cra­zier, when there is con­stant imbalance.

Dar­ren is the Sun­dance dar­ling direc­tor who is hand­ed a huge dinosaur film – did you base him on Col­in Trevorrow?

No, it’s a mix of dif­fer­ent peo­ple. I even tried to inter­view Judd to be like, ​‘How do you com­mu­ni­cate with actors?’ There’s like a look from a cou­ple of peo­ple, there’s an atti­tude from a cou­ple of peo­ple. There are some direc­tors who I called and asked, ​‘What do you do to make an actor hap­py when they’re out of con­trol? How do you bring them back?’ [Dar­ren] just tells every­one, ​‘I’m on your side, I’m on your side,’ when nobody’s on anybody’s side. That’s what he’s doing in that awk­ward hug in the pool, which was a great awk­ward space to be in water indoors, even with what it does to the sound. We just want­ed to make it super weird.

In terms of weird­ness, how impor­tant was the long glossy wig?

That fed it. What that’s sup­posed to rep­re­sent is ​‘indie’ right. An indie direc­tor who is sup­pos­ed­ly cool and they just plug into this fran­chise. And he has all these hip­ster t‑shirts and sweaters that are very ​‘indie movie fes­ti­val’, that kind of director.

For an actor, I guess the worst night­mare is to have an incom­pe­tent direc­tor will­ing to let peo­ple get hurt and phys­i­cal­ly fight his actors to keep the movie going?

Yeah, I’m wimpy about pain. I remem­ber once on an indie thing where some­one want­ed me to fall and look con­vinc­ing. It was a rea­son­able thing to ask, but I’m not good at falling or look­ing like I got punched. But the bud­get was so small, there was no room for a stunt­man and I just did a bad job at it. There were some stunts in The Bub­ble; I had this fake fight with David Duchovny. In my mind it looked pret­ty good. I was like, ​‘Hey, this is real­ly sell­ing it!’ but it looked so lame and Judd thought it was so fun­ny. And we all laughed but inside I was try­ing to make it look like a great fight.