Evan Almighty
Lauren Graham on Evan Almighty
“I love movies like this and I think somebody has to be the straight man,” she said. “Also to me, one of the things I liked about this movie was the heart of it, and the sort of emotional, real story of this man who seems to be going crazy, no one believes him, and I think that's an important part of the story. I have had years and years of talking fast and being sassy, and I'm as happy to do something simpler. So it's not about trying to turn it into something else, it's just trying to do a good job with what this is. So that's what I tried to do.”
When Evan Baxter follows God’s task to build an ark, and grows unshaveable facial hair because of it, Mrs. Baxter has a hard time supporting him. Give her a break, that’s a tough sell.
“I think I kind of go through all the colors in this because you want to believe them, you look for a rational explanation, you finally decide you can't take it anymore, and the Morgan Freeman is your waiter and he tells you what to do. That's pretty much how I hope it would go. I don't know. You can't possibly know. I think the movie raises the question of, ‘How far will your faith take you? What do you do in the face of doubt? Is the power of love enough to get over what you perceive to be the reality of something?’ And I don't know the answers to all those questions. But we ask them here, in this little PG movie. It makes you think.”
Animals also start following Evan around, for position in the ark. Graham has less interaction with them but still witnessed some top animal acting. “The amazing stuff with the animals was less what was my interaction with them, but watching these trainers get them kindly and very simply to do what they wanted them to do. Because I just thought, ‘These giraffes have not been training to do Evan Almighty their whole lives. How do they know to bring him the hammer?’ So much of the stuff is real that you see in the movie. So that was really amazing. I mean, we weren't like sitting around petting the lions or anything, but it was cool to watch them walk by. You're like sitting drinking coffee, and you just got strangely used to it. But I didn't like sit down and talk to anybody.”
Graham did have her favorite creature though. “Toothy the alpaca, who had an underbite, he's our favorite. He has this huge underbite, and he was really unattractive. And I think we made the trainers mad because we called him Toothy and that's not his name. But the little boys got really into Toothy as like a mythical figure, even though he was right there. But they'd be like, ‘Do you think Toothy knows we're rolling? Do you think Toothy knows we're home?’ And like we'd be at dinner, and they'd like, ‘What do you think Toothy's eating for dinner?’ So he was the one that somehow, became of his unusual appearance, struck gold in our hearts. We loved Toothy.”
Evan Almighty opens to theaters on June 22nd.
For the stills, posters, trailer and more movie info, go to the Evan
Almighty Movie Page.
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