Ted Danson plays a small town closeted gay man who joins in the making of a porno film to prove his heterosexuality. It was actually his wife, Mary Steenburgen, who recommended him for the film. She went in for a female part, did not find it to her liking, but suggested her husband could play Moose.
Ted Danson Talks The Amateurs
"I want to know why she didn't recommend me for a Chuck Norris part," Danson complained. "She recommended me for the gay guy. I know the answer. The hormone count in my family is like a real delicate balance. I can talk fabric with the best of you guys, ladies."
Ultimately, Danson got the joke of him playing the anti-Sam Malone. "I love Moose. God, I love Moose. He loves people, he wants to be loved. This is me I'm describing. He just finds himself so interesting and just wants to be part of the group and I think his huge fear later in life and later in the film is that he won't be able to hang out with the guys watching football. That's the scariest thing for him. I don't think he's actually ever had sex. I think he went to a Broadway show when he was 15 and that changed his life."
The Amateurs did require a nude scene of Moose, and it was Danson's first. "Yeah, and it won't be the last. I'm so into taking my clothes off. Well, clearly I stopped working out and I ate a lot because I was really buff right before we started shooting. It was such a perfect thing to do to the character. It was so pathetically, sweetly, sadly funny. One of my least favorite things. I've never had to do it. I think my wife whispered to me as we were watching the film, 'never again.'"
The Amateurs
The Amateurs
All of those aspects make Moose a bold choice for Danson's career, but he just takes things as they come. "I don't have this huge vast number of scripts in front of me to choose from so that it looks like I'm being clever or not clever about my choice. I really almost always take what I'm being offered, if it's in the ballpark. And when you have a really funny, good script or you just have a good script, like Damages was a great script, you have somebody like Glenn Close in Damages, you have somebody like Jeff Bridges in this and you just know in your heart of hearts you're going to have fun with this character. That's not a risky choice. It's like just smart to be part of a great script with really good actors."
The Amateurs has a limited release on December 7th.
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