Ever since his first major role—as Alicia Silverstone's ex-step-brother/love interest in Clueless—Paul Rudd has refused to be pigeonholed. His career has been all over the map, including serious stage undertakings like Neil LaBute's The Shape Of Things and Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, a long-running role on Friends, Baz Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet, and 200 Cigarettes. But Rudd has always excelled at humor. Too sly for most romantic comedies, Rudd brought his keen timing to films like Anchorman, The 40-Year-Old Virgin, and the hilarious Wet Hot American Summer, and to guest spots on Stella and Strangers With Candy. True to his versatility, he's currently involved with projects in three different media, including the Amy Heckerling comedy I Could Never Be Your Woman, the genre-crossing meta-road-movie Wanderlust (directed by American Splendor's Sheri Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini; it premièred on TV's Independent Film Channel on May 29), and his winding-down Broadway run alongside Julia Roberts in Three Days Of Rain. The A.V. Club recently talked to Rudd about his love of comedy, his wide range of fans, and his unassuming charisma.
The A.V. Club: Did you know there's a fan-site dedicated to you that's called "Unassuming Charisma"?
PR: [Laughs.] No, I did not.
AVC: Now you do.
PR: Well, there you go—now I've just figured out the remaining hour of my day. "Unassuming Charisma"? You know how hard it was to actually get the rights to that domain name? Oh, wait a minute, I mean, no, wait, forget it, never mind. That just sounds, wow. Now, would you say that I have unassuming charisma?
AVC: Well, what do you think about that assessment of you?
PR: Um, spot on. Spot on. And I would like to thank whoever set up Unassuming Charisma. Because I am appreciative. And it certainly beats Assuming Charisma, or charismatic-asshole-who-assumes-he's-talented.com.
AVC: Do you get recognized in public a lot?
PR: Sometimes I do. What's weird is the different types of people that will sometimes recognize me. I can, and do, walk the street. No one bothers me or anything, because most people wouldn't know who I am. But the people that do, sometimes it's from Friends, Clueless still. But if I'm by NYU or something. I can tell who likes Wet Hot American Summer, and who likes, uh, The Object Of My Affection.
AVC: In New York, do you get recognized a lot from Wet Hot American Summer? People who are into that film are very into it.
PR: It's true, I know. It is true. There's a cult with that movie. I think, like, if I wasn't in it, I would be into that movie. I think those guys that made it are brilliant. I'm a fan of Stella and all that shit.
AVC: Why do you think it took that movie so long to find an audience?
PR: Well, when it came out, all the kids that worked for the film company that did it, like all the ones that were kind of below the people who made the decisions, they loved it. The ones who made the decisions didn't get it. And the critics… It was really divided. Many critics thought it was really kind of meta and ahead of its time and funny, but I would say the majority of them were of a different generation, and they didn't get it. They thought we were satirizing summer-camp movies, which is not completely accurate, and it was not their kind of thing. So, when they released it, it was so small, the release, and then it was so short, too. It only played in a couple of theaters for a couple of weeks. It's a word-of-mouth movie.
AVC: You're friends with a lot of comedians. And you drop in on a lot of shows. Did you ever consider becoming a comedian?
PR: I did, you know, when I was 13, 14 years old. I didn't really think about it seriously. I was much more interested in just kind of acting and doing other things, although I really liked comedy and seeing comedians and all that kind of stuff. I still am a huge comedy fan and nerd. I'm obsessive about Little Britain, and Mr. Show blew my mind when it came out. It's kind of cool, especially in New York, because there's a specific kind of scene here. I'm not really a part of it, I'm not really in it, but I'm friends with a lot of people who are—I still kind of do stuff with them.
AVC: So you never wanted to be a comedian, or you sort of gave up on it?
PR: No, I wanted to early on, but when I started, when I got into college, I started liking the idea of doing dramatic stuff too. I was more interested in acting than just doing stand-up comedy. And then my interests in stand-up started getting really weird. I was into a very anti-comedian thing, a very, kind of, Andy Kaufman performance-art type thing, and I thought, "Well, if I were ever to do comedy, it would so not work, because it wouldn't be funny." [Laughs.] I think there are guys like Zack Galifianakis, I just think he's like the best out there, so good. There are so many really good comedians, and I would never be as good as they are. It's not my calling. What's funny is, all the comics want to be musicians. Like Tom Waits or Elvis Costello. Same with actors. A lot of people say, "What's the worst part about being an actor?" And the worst part is that you're not a musician.
AVC: You don't think it's that whole grass-is-always-greener thing?
PR: I don't know, I think there's something about being a musician that seems more appealing. Certainly in acting, I think one of the things is being able to have control over whatever you're doing. Essentially, at its purest form, if you take the business side out of things…
AVC: Because you're the one writing the song?
PR: Yeah. You can write a song however you want to. If you're acting in something, you're at the mercy of… if you didn't write the script, if you're not gonna be directing it. Or if you are, you're still reacting on what the other person is doing, unless it's a monologue. So it's not as much control.
AVC: But you still have some control in what you choose to do.
PR: Well, yeah, yeah, that's about the only thing you can control a little bit. But at the same time, you still have to work, and sometimes you choose to do things that maybe creatively aren't the most fulfilling, or the most intriguing or challenging. But, that's what's great about doing stuff with friends. Um, I don't mean the show Friends, I mean my friends, doing things with David Wain. Like, we're doing another movie. We're finally going to be able to get another movie off the ground. After Wet Hot, it's such a struggle. But working with those guys, and working with Judd Apatow and Steve Carell, you know, we all find a lot of the same stuff funny, and I think there's a kind of trust there. We all kind of trust each other, which makes things more fun to work on.
AVC: So, are you aware of the "Frat Pack" term?
PR: Uh, I am aware of it.
AVC: Because you're a friend of the people who are supposedly part of it.
PR: I don't know if I'm so much in the… When I hear of the Frat Pack, I think of, like, Ben Stiller, Will Ferrell, Owen Wilson, and Vince Vaughn, I guess… And then I think of the Brat Pack, and I think of Judd Nelson and Emilio Estevez, which in turn makes me think of the Rat Pack, and then I go to, like, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, and Sammy Davis Jr. And then that makes me think of the Lat Pack, which is, like, a lot of muscular guys that, do the pull-down bars and stuff. They have huge lats. Guys like Van Damme, Schwarzenegger in his day, Marc Singer. Which then, in turn, makes me think of the Matt Pack, which is, uh, you know, Matt Houston, Matt Lauer, and uh, yeah… What are some other packs? We can keep going and have so much fun… The Bat Pack…
AVC: People who played in Batman movies?
PR: Oh, that's really good. See, I was thinking of Evel Knievel, cause he… Who else would beat somebody up with a bat?
AVC: We should get a job at Entertainment Weekly.
PR: This is the kind of stuff that EW dreams of. They could take the transcript from this interview, and I would imagine they'd devote an entire issue to it. And it would have to be one of those double issues, that were the sneak previews of the season, you know. Because literally 50 pages could be filled up with different Packs that are going on.
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