Paul Walter Hauser

keeping his memory alive in a, in an authentic and loving way. Yeah. I know I'm going to do that. Um, and that's not cockiness. That's once again, knowing what you're capable of too.

And knowing that there are certain things you are just meant to do in some way, you know, like I, like I, I met up with John Farley a couple of years ago to talk about this being a possibility, his brother, John, and I gave him my phone number and he goes, why is your number already in my phone? My number was already in John Farley's phone and we had never met. Huh?

It said Paul Hauser when he typed in the number. Weird things like that have been happening for a while. And I think some people are just supposed to play certain people. I think Jamie Foxx.

god his parents like there's something in the ether that knew he was going to play that role and i think this is one of those things that i was supposed to play uh jeff bridges when he got his first role he has a story about how he told the director like i don't think i'm doing a good job i think this is a mistake you should fire me and the director just said no i chose you you're right for the role you couldn't screw this up if you wanted to you're the guy

And I think sometimes you're just the guy, you know?

Wow.

Well, I haven't done it yet. I've only starred or co-starred in three or four things. I think Jewel. Blackbird, this thing I did with Mark Wahlberg, he and I were, it was like a two hander. We're both in all the scenes. We've only done it like four or five times maybe. So I, starring in something is way more taxing than I, Tonya or Black Klansman.

I, Tonya or Black Klansman, I get to show up, I'm doing my finger guns and I walk out. Uh, but starring in something is, is exhausting, um, in a way that I kind of didn't know until I did it. Um, So my hope is that I can do my homework to a degree of precision and aggression that when I'm on set, I can be very calm and not in character. Yeah.

That's my hope is that I do the homework enough to still be emotionally available to the crew and the cast. Because you don't want to alienate people. Even if you are doing a job, it's like... it's too important to me to be social with people and to be on the level to alienate them.

So when I watched the Jim Carrey documentary about him and Andy Kaufman, I saw that Jim had kind of alienated a lot of people in his process. Jim Carrey, who I adore, by the way. But that process of kind of like alienating people or pushing them away, I sort of decided I'm not going to do that.

It depends on everyone's process, but it was not fun for me. I can tell you that much. I was not in a good place personally when I shot that mentally, emotionally was not a good place, spiritually not a good place and was definitely ingesting a lot of marijuana and alcohol when I wasn't on set.

and uh and and also we shot in new orleans that's a pretty spiritually thick place you can kind of feel the air a little bit there sometimes um and and i would say that the way i played the character my process was i have to think the thoughts i can't just say the lines and hope that it seems real i had to kind of get into the icky of it um and so

Having to think the thoughts, to have it register in the eyes when you say lines of dialogue, you feel very guilty when you rap at the end of the day. You feel gross. Yeah. And, you know, I only did it because of the damn character, but it's also a little mentally exhausting and you feel really gross. So, yeah, no, that character was hard to play. That wasn't easy and it wasn't fun.

What was fun was the fact that the writing was good. And I was getting paid decent, and I was working with brilliant actors like Greg Kinnear and Taron Egerton.

Yeah, and I didn't cleanse myself well. Like I was saying, I would grab a sandwich from Turkey and the Wolf, and I'd get stoned, and I'd sip a cocktail. But a lot of self-medicating. But the sort of PG things that I was partaking in were – Me and my buddy Anthony Pettix would go shoot hoops at a local court in somebody's neighborhood in New Orleans.

We'd play Super Nintendo or watch Curb Your Enthusiasm. There were things that were pressure releases. And yeah, Larry David was very influential to me, being able to laugh at the end of a...

a dark awkward day yeah yeah so you you've done drama you've done comedy is there one that you prefer more than the other at this point in your career i think i prefer drama because there's just a complexity to it that has more of a variance and a diversity comedy is sort of can feel redundant sometimes, and that's also why even your favorite comedians make comedy movies that you don't like.

You know, Leo, every time Leo or Denzel do Leo or Denzel, in a drama where I'll just like, boom, another one.

Right. But like comedy, there are brilliant people who do comedy and we're like, that movie sucked. Why isn't it as good as the one they made eight years ago? Right. And it's like, well, comedy can get very redundant. And after a while you learn somebody stick, whereas like drama, you're living in different worlds and different moods and you can keep them guessing a little bit better.

So I think I, I enjoy watching and doing drama more. But at the same time, my roots are entirely stand-up and sketch comedy. I grew up on Jim Gaffigan and Monty Python and, you know, Chris Farley and Eddie Murphy and everything.