By now most of you know have seen the commercials or at least know about the movie….but if you haven’t, here is the synopsis:

Steve Carell (The 40-Year-Old Virgin), reprising his role as the polished, preening newscaster Evan Baxter of Bruce Almighty, is the next one anointed by God to accomplish a holy mission in the hilarious new comedy Evan Almighty.  Blockbuster comedy director Tom Shadyac (The Nutty Professor, Liar Liar, Bruce Almighty) returns behind the camera for this next episode of divine intervention.  This time, however, his cast grows two-by-two. 

Newly elected to Congress, Evan leaves Buffalo behind and shepherds his family to suburban northern Virginia.  Once there, his life gets turned upside-down when God (Morgan Freeman) appears and mysteriously commands him to build an ark.  But his befuddled family just can't decide whether Evan is having an extraordinary mid-life crisis or is truly onto something of Biblical proportions...

To help promote the movie most of the cast did some interviews on the Universal lot in Hollywood about a week or so ago. All the interviews were done via press conference – meaning about twenty something journalists each took turns asking questions. That’s why some of the questions are a little off topic as each journalist had an agenda and needed to ask certain things.

Anyway, the interview below is with Steve Carell.

With the amount of projects that Steve Carell is involved with it’s a wonder he doesn’t spit fire when doing interviews. He’s always filming “The Office” or on a movie set and I’m constantly amazed at how friendly, polite and down to earth he always is when doing press events. He’s one of the best.

During the press conference for “Evan Almighty” my favourite part was when someone asked what Michael Scott would do if God told him he had to build an Ark. As a huge fan of “The Office” it was great to see him turn on Michael in front of my eyes. I had a grin from ear to ear.

During the rest of the interview all the normal subjects were covered and it’s a great read. As always, if you’d like to listen to the interview you can click here to download the MP3.

And before getting to the interview, if you’d like to see some clips from “Evan Almighty” click here.

"Evan Almighty" opens this Friday.

Steve Carell: Were people doing the dance after the movie?  When did you guys see it? Last night? Was it the Arclight?

Audience: Yeah.

I’ve still never been there. 

Question: Your character seems to have a difficult time with his kids. What about you in real life?

My kids are angels and never do anything wrong and are never aggravating and are perfect in every way, except…no, I have a three and a six-year old, so, I think everybody goes through that.  The kids in the movie are bit older than mine.  But yeah, I mean everybody goes through problems and difficulties and brattiness and where to draw the line. And, it was interesting too because we sort of bonded with the kids who played our kids in the movie because we spent a lot of time driving around in that Hummer. They were just in the back seat and there were times when they would not stop. They were like doing…and they were getting dirty and they were telling dirty jokes to each other and they were laughing and we were trying to do a take and they’d be all over the place. So, Lauren and I sort of became the parental figures.  It was like, ‘O.K. guys!’  It was like good cop/bad cop.  And I was generally bad cop with the kids. We got along really well with them. There was no —the kids were almost as good as the animals.

Have you talked to Stephen Colbert about the pro-bear agenda in this movie?

The pro-bear agenda?

Yeah, I wonder what he’d think of you rescuing the godless killing machines on the ark.

(Laughs.) I have not talked to Stephen about the godless killing machines. I’m sure he would weigh in on it on his show.  And maybe he’ll go after the movie. I hope he goes after the movie on his show, because, of course, that would, in turn be a vote of confidence.

You had faith in this from the get go?  Why did you commit so quickly to it?

Well mostly because of Tom. The first movie I eve did was ‘Bruce Almighty.’ And Tom took very good care of me. And it was funny, when I went to the premiere of that I had no idea I’d even be in the final cut. And it was right here at the Universal Amphitheater and I remember going and sitting there and there my scene was intact. And I had so much fun doing it and it was sort of a dream.  A couple of years before I got the part, I remember watching ‘Liar, Liar.’  And I was watching the outtakes and Jim Carrey just making everybody laugh and just how much fun they looked to be having. And then two years later it was exactly and then I was in the outtakes. And then the chance to work with Tom, again, sort of on a one on one basis, was like a dream come true. It was, how the last few years came about, was very surreal for me. He actually came and pitched it to me and I thought that he was going to pitch the idea of a sequel, starring Jim, and then maybe featuring me, as y’know, another thorn in his side sort of character.  But then when he said, ‘We’d like you to play the title role,’ I was like, ‘You had me at ‘Hello.’’ I was totally there.

You play a parenting advice columnist in ‘Dan in Real Life.’  I was wondering if you took your own philosophy for that role?

Um, well it is interesting, it involves a guy who is who fairly recently widowed. Like three years, four years before.  And he’s been raising these three daughters on his own.  And they are reaching a point in their young adult lives, at least two of ‘em that he doesn’t know what to do with.  And he still has one who is kind of a baby little girl that he can still manage. But, one of the themes of the movie is that he doesn’t take his own advice and he let’s things sort of get away from him in terms of his own kids.  So, I take my own personal? I don’t know.  I don’t even know if I have kind of a personal, like a take or a mental manual of how I’m raising kids.  It’s really – I think with everybody, it’s just day-to-day and you just try to deal with every situation as they come.  And I think that’s essentially what that character does as well.

Tom mentioned that he’s a Jesus freak…

He mentioned that he’s a Jesus freak? How did that come up in idle conversation? ‘Oh, incidentally…’

So, I was wondering, what is your philosophy on religion?

See, I don’t see it that way. I don’t see it as a biblical comedy. I see it as a fable.  I see it as a comedy that is based upon a story of the Old Testament, but y’know, I don’t see it as a religious comedy in any way, shape or form. I think it’s a fable, I think it’s a tale about a guy who has to make a huge leap of faith. In terms of my own personal beliefs or convictions?  That’s – honestly, I think that’s such a personal thing that I don’t want that to infuse my promotion of this movie, because I also think that that narrows it. Because I think the movie is really for anybody. It is for any faith or non-faith. I think the message behind it is just if people could just be a little kinder and take care of each other and the world we live in.  And I think that’s a universal theme as opposed to a religious ideology.

You don’t want to come out as an atheist then?

No, whether I was an atheist or whatever, I’m catholic, but I don’t really feel this is a platform to talk about my own personal beliefs.

In this movie you are very funny, are you trying to move into more romantic leading man roles?

You know what? I’m frankly; I am willing to take any job offered me at this point. So, I’m pretty amenable. I don’t really have a path set. Like, ‘I need to do this kind of movie and then that. And then I need to switch it up and play a psychopathic killer and then I need to…’ I don’t look at it that way.  I thought the script of ‘Dan in Real Life” was great and Peter Hedges is a very, very thoughtful filmmaker.  And his ‘Pieces of April’ I thought was fantastic. And he wrote ‘About a Boy’ and ‘What’s Eating Gilbert Grape.’ So, he’s really an accomplished person, so I thought, ‘That’s somebody I’d love to work with.  So, it wasn’t so much, ‘Oh, I want to do a romantic comedy with Juliette Binoche.’  It was more like, ‘Wow! I think that could be good and interesting and I think the script will be really good.’  In terms of working with Tom, that was, again, just a delight.  ‘Get Smart’ – just something I loved growing up with as a kid and getting the chance to bring that to a movie screen.  We are twelve weeks in, we are almost done shooting that and I think that is going to be fantastic. I’m very bullish about ‘Get Smart’ for next summer, too.

With all these movies you’re becoming a big movie star…

Oh, I’m internationally famous. (Laughs.)

How much more time do you give yourself for doing ‘The Office’?

I’ll give them 20 minutes every day for five days straight and that will be it for the season. So, whatever they can get, that’ll be it. No, I love it. I think just in terms of writing and I think value, nothing beats that. I think it is such a smart group of people and people are really devoted to the show and actors who I think are fantastic – everyone of them.  We’re very lucky.  That sort of group of people doesn’t come together very often in television or in movies.  I just don’t think that – it’s sort of a brain trust in my opinion -- especially the writing team. It’s really remarkable. So, I’m extremely happy and still very proud to be a part of it.

How do you think Michael Scott handle the same path from god?

How would Michael Scott, like, become a modern day Noah? Wow, that’s an interesting [question].  Well, Michael -- I have no idea. He would probably, well he would probably get Creed to come in and build the ark. So, he wouldn’t want to do it himself.  And Jan would end up; Jan would convince him not to do it because she rides roughshod over him anyway. So, he probably wouldn’t end up doing it, because in his mind, Jan might be more powerful than god himself. (Laughs.)

Can you talk about the special Boston benefit for Dana Farber?

I met this woman whose son has been suffering with brain cancer and it’s a very rare form of brain cancer. And as a Make-A-Wish had come to visit the set of ‘The Office.’ And I got to talking to her – she is from the Boston area – and she asked whether at some point I wouldn’t mind hosting some sort of benefit, because there is not a lot of funding for his specific type of cancer. So, we got tot talking and we coordinated with my manager and with Universal put together a an advance sort of Boston premiere for ‘Evan’ to benefit Dana Farber and this specific brain cancer, pediatric brain cancer, so that’s on the 21st, I believe.

What was your most difficult scene to shoot?

I think it might have been, it was early on. It might have been those birds on me. They were on me for a few days straight. And they were real. That wasn’t a computer-generated flock of birds on me. So, I think the fact they would literally not get off me and I could walk around and I don’t know how they trained them to do it, but they would go nowhere. And frankly, and to be blunt, they were well fed before shooting began.  So, that posed it’s own set of difficulties as well.

Were the snakes in the car scenes real too?

Well it was interesting, because the snakes that you see is CGI’d. The snake’s positive that they used, they couldn’t use because they kept crawling down the back of my jacket.  And these were like pythons. These were serious, big, nasty snakes. But they couldn’t use it, because you couldn’t see them.  But, they were there, but they were just like in my clothes. (Laughs.) So, I had to suffer through that and they generate a snake over me. But, I did suffer for the art. You have to know that.

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