Jonah Hill turned up as the surprise guest at SiriusXM’s Smartless LIVE on Saturday night at Hollywood’s Palladium for an appearance that marked his first lengthy (and very public) solo interview in years. And he was super stoked to be there.
“I’ve been gone for a while, so I’m kind of coming back, and I’m excited because I got all, like, serious for a while and I wasn’t as happy,” Hill explained to the Smartless trio of a quiet few years before returning to the spotlight with his recent Apple TV film Outcome. “And then I had my family and I got happy, and now all I want to do is be funny again. That’s why I said yes [to being on Smartless]. I’m, like, I want to go fucking be funny in front of a crowd and that’d be awesome.”
Hill appeared to have an awesome time with Smartless hosts Jason Bateman (a close friend he called a mentor), Will Arnett and Sean Hayes. The hour-plus conversation covered nearly his entire career, from his debut film role in David O. Russell’s I Heart Huckabees to breakout turns in Judd Apatow’s Knocked Up and Superbad opposite Michael Cera and Oscar-nominated turns in Moneyball opposite Brad Pitt and Martin Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street opposite Leonardo DiCaprio.
And before they really dug into the details, Hill joked that “people think I’m a nepo baby.” He said that he and his wife, Olivia Millar, were “just laughing” about that sentiment the other day. “My dad’s a fucking accountant,” he quipped of his father, Richard Feldstein, who has worked as a high-profile business manager for bands like Guns N’ Roses and Maroon 5.
But he did credit a real nepo baby, Jake Hoffman, for helping him land a part in Russell’s I Heart Huckabees, which starred Jake’s father, Dustin Hoffman. “Jake’s dad, Dustin, was like, ‘You should be a comedic actor,’” Hill recalled. “I was just trying to be funny all the time. … So, Dustin was like, ‘I’m doing this movie. I got you an audition.’”
The audition turned into a real part, and Hill found himself on set of the comedy starring alongside heavyweights like Hoffman, Jason Schwartzman, Lily Tomlin, Jude Law, Mark Wahlberg, Naomi Watts, Isabelle Huppert, Jean Smart and more.
“What was that like being on a set?” Bateman asked Hill of his freshman outing on what became a highly publicized production after leaked audio surfaced revealing an intense conflict between Russell and Tomlin as the filmmaker berated her in front of the crew. She later told The Hollywood Reporter that she was “stoic in her suffering” and that it eventually dissipated.
To answer Bateman’s question, Hill said, “David O. was fucking nuts at the time.” But he was quick to ground the statement with a series of compliments.
“He was buck wild and I’m like homies with him. He’s awesome. Super nice guy. But in that moment in life, and I’ve had my own, trust me, he was buck wild, dude. He was screaming at Lily Tomlin. It’s online and shit. And he’ll talk about it. He’s cool. He’s one of the best directors ever. I mean Flirting With Disaster and Three Kings, he’s so goated. It’s insane.”
Not only did Russell scream at Tomlin, but Hill claimed that on his first day on set, he witnessed a fight between the filmmaker and a high-ranking member of his creative team. “Everyone’s screaming at each other,” he stated. “The first time I walked on set, him and K.K. Barrett, the production designer, were joking around wrestling and then it turned into a real fight. It was like joking that turned into a fight, and these guys were fighting and they were setting up my first scene to act. I was like, Hollywood is so tight.”
For his part, Russell once told IndieWire that the production was like “a party” except for the day of the explosive fight, “but then that was the day that gets remembered.” He added, “I became a better filmmaker because of it, but it was painful. It was six years of losing my way a little bit.”
To bring the story full circle, Hill said that he made a commitment back then that if he were ever to find himself in a director’s chair, he would hire Barrett. And he did. “He did my newest movie, Outcome,” Hill said. “Full circle, 20 years later. The greatest production designer ever.”
In Hill’s Outcome, he also had a pinch-me moment by hiring Scorsese for a cameo in what marked a reunion after the two worked together on Scorsese’s Wolf of Wall Street. “He came in so prepared. Honestly, the whole thing was so psychedelic,” Hill said of having him make a cameo in the Hollywood satire, playing a representative of Keanu Reeves’ character. “Him coming to set and me directing him. It was so psychedelic. It was like childbirth. [I was like], ‘This is so trippy.’”
He said as an actor you “go through withdrawal” being directed by Scorsese “because the poor unfortunate other directors you have to work with after cannot compare, no matter how wonderful, prepared and amazing they are.”
Russell has a new movie out by year’s end, Madden, starring Nicolas Cage, Christian Bale, Shane Gillis, Will Ferrell, Sienna Miller and Kathryn Hahn. Hill has a new movie out this summer, Cut Off, which he wrote, directed and stars in opposite Kristen Wiig.
New episodes of SiriusXM’s Smartless drop every Monday.
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