 | Wednesday, March 02, 2005, 11:52 PM EST.
Anthony Anderson Scarin' Up the Big Screen
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It's not very often that at a high profile movie junkets, the talent overwhelms the reporters with questions, but with Anthony Anderson the actor who dominates the big and small screen with his sheer mass and charisma, his presence could be heard sonorously for miles.
On a quiet Sunday morning at the Four Seasons Hotel as bleary-eyed reporters are trying to slap themselves awake, Anderson bursts through the door with a group of people chatting loudly about Howard University—he is an alumnus—and the not so discreet bodily function of flatulence.
"I had gas all day yesterday," Anderson deadpanned.
This seemed to be the theme at the junket for Scary Movie 3, where moments earlier, Leslie Nielson kept the room in stitches with his active whoopee cushion.
With starring roles in off color films like, Me, Myself & Irene, Barbershop and now Scary Movie 3, it's really no surprise that Anderson exercises his funny bone on and off screen.
In the spoof directed by David Zucker, Anderson's role as Mahalik, a dread-locked parody of the 8 Mile Mekhi Phifer' character, has him getting up-and-personal with co-star Simon Rex, a performance that the former MTV veejay said that Anderson got really into.
"He grabbed my butt," Rex said about a particular intimate scene.
Don't let the comedic façade deceive you, however, the 33-year-old father of two can also cut through a dramatic scene like a hot knife through butter. In his hit television series, "All about the Andersons," he plays a single father living with a dream to become an actor. If art imitates life, then both Anderson and the character he plays will be going places soon.
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 Has Mekhi seen your performance in "Scary Movie 3"? |
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No. He hasn't. Hopefully, he has a sense of humor. It's not like I did him a disservice, but you know he's a friend of mine. I didn't even talk to him about doing this role in this film. We'll see. We'll see.
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| How much of your own work did you put in the film? |
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| Was any improvisation involved? |
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We improvised a lot and that's a testament to our director, David Zucker. You know, he gives his actors the freedom to have fun and if it works with the scene and we're able to hit the beats and it moves the story along, he allows it. He just allows that freedom and I respect him for that because he respects his actors and he respects our talent.
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| What do you like doing better, television or movies? |
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You know there are pros and cons about both. I like the travel of my feature films because that's taken me all over the world, but I like those hours of television. Literally, in the two year's time span, I was out of the country, away from my wife and kids for 11 months and that's the drawback from that. On the flipside of that, my wife and my children get to travel the world with me and see things that a seven and a three year old would never see, but those set hours and the weekly pay checks from television and that weekly creativity—you know creating new worlds and new venues to play in every week—that's what attracts me to television and the fact that this soiree in the television is a bit more sexy for me because I created the television show and I produced it, so I have more vested in this show than just being a hired hand. If I had to pick right now, it'd be my television show.
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| Do you think your films offend anyone? |
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You can do anything you want in comedy, man. It's all a matter of taste. And I learn that from the Farrelly Brothers because they cross the line because … they have no boundaries or lines to cross. They erase them all for themselves, so anything and everything is fair game for them. And I learned that from them, whether you like it or not, that's up to you, but everything is fair game man. I mean, the reality of it is that we laugh at other people's pain. We laugh at our own. That's it.
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