By Ryan Parsons | Images property of Universal Pictures.
Let's Go to Prison
Chi McBride goes from playing protective fathers
and sensitive school principals on TV to playing a prison inmate who rapes
Will Arnett in Let’s
Go to Prison. Don’t worry, he’s a funny rapist.
At least that’s what the previews make it seem like.
Interview: Chi McBride on Let's Go to Prison
“Ha, is that what they’re saying?” McBride laughed. “Is
that what the press lede is saying? I wouldn’t classify it as that.
I’m just an inmate in the penitentiary who’s looking for love
and thinks I’ve found it with Will.”.
Believe it or not, this character was not a tough sell for McBride. “I
read the script and I thought it was funny. I thought it was dark, subversive
which is pretty much right up my ally. If I’m going to do a comedy,
it’s going to be something that’s going to be a little off the
beaten path. That’s what really attracted me to it because the material
was so dark and subversive. I thought it would work.”
Once you are done with that, on to the clips.
The comedy finds son of a judge Nelson Biederman IV framed for a crime and
sent to prison. There, he bunks with Barry (McBride), sipping toilet merlot
and getting cuddly. “Barry is a guy that’s at heart a real sensitive
and who has learned to temper his anger and his lack of self control because
of his relationship and the things that he wants with Nelson.”
As for the toilet merlot, McBride said. “In
the movie, it tasted like fruit juice. In real life, I don't know. Whatever
you could imagine ptomaine and botulism. That combination is probably the
closest I would say to the real flavor, with a slight septic bouquet. Do
the math. Toilet, wine, just think of whatever the most unpleasant things
you could possibly think of and that you’ll get loaded.”
Though the film was all laughs, the actors filmed in a very serious place,
Joliet State Prison. That helped McBride get into character. “It was
pretty creepy. There were some really bad guys in there. Richard Speck came
through there, John Gacy came through there, Al Capone’s been in there.
Some pretty scary guys have been in there so you get that feeling as you’re
in there.”
The filming of Let’s Go to Prison fit in during the
off season for Prison Break, so McBride never met his TV
peers. “I had just heard when we were shooting, I had just heard that
they had just finished the pilot a couple of months before we started using
it and they were due to come back that June and we were done by then.”
Add to Heffee!
