From director Jon S. Baird and screenwriter Jeff Pope, the biographical dramedy Stan & Ollie follows the great comedy team of Stan Laurel (Steve Coogan) and Oliver Hardy (John C. Reilly), as they set out on a variety hall tour of Britain in 1953. With their golden era behind them and an uncertain future, the two funnymen quickly reconnect with their adoring fans and the tour becomes a hit, but that doesn’t dissolve the tension between them or cure Oliver’s failing health, leaving the two men wondering just how much they mean to each other.

During this 1-on-1 phone interview with Collider, actor John C. Reilly talked about being obsessed with Laurel & Hardy from a very young age, what he learned about the comedy duo from making Stan & Ollie, what made him most reluctant about taking on Oliver Hardy, what he did during his three-hour make-up and prosthetics process, having a partner like Steve Coogan to do this with, the moments in the film that he’s personally most fond of, and what makes Laurel & Hardy so timeless in their comedy. He also talked about how proud he is of the success of Ralph Breaks the Internet.

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Collider:  I loved this film and thought it was such a beautifully told story. There were so many things that I just had no idea about, with these two men, and it was great to get to know their wives and learn about what those dynamics were like.

JOHN C. REILLY:  There’s so much about their lives that even I, who was obsessed with them from a very young age, was stunned to find out. For instance, when they were working together, I didn’t know that they weren’t all that close, socially. They were going off, in their different lives. Oliver was enjoying the fruits of Hollywood, and Stan was a workaholic. During the tour is when they really came to see each other as people and learned to love each other as people, as opposed to partners or members of an act. I thought that was really, really poignant. It was a stroke of genius for Jeff Pope, the writer, to choose to set the movie during that tour, as opposed to a typical biopic.

As someone who was previously such a huge fan of Laurel & Hardy, in what ways were you most reluctant about playing Oliver Hardy, and made you decide to play him anyway?

REILLY:  I was reluctant because I don’t really do impressions. That’s not really my thing. And then, the second thing was that I don’t weigh nearly as much as Oliver, and I wasn’t willing to gain a hundred pounds. But the main trepidation I had was that I didn’t want us to make a film about these guys that would end up being a liability to them. To me, they’re in a perfect place already. Their films are brilliant, I love them, and they changed my life. I didn’t want to add anything to the conversation that would distract from that, so I had to be convinced, early on, from Jon Baird, the director, that we were gonna really do it well, and that we were gonna tell a story that you can’t find out on Wikipedia. We were gonna tell a story that was a human story, and that was the secret story of them, behind the scenes, with what their relationship was like and what they were like as people, as opposed to just recreating some of their famous work. You can tell they were great by watching their movies. Their movies are not lost. They’ve never been more available.

I saw that Jon really, really believed in me. At one point, he said, “I’m not sure this movie is gonna happen, if you don’t do it.” That was some added pressure. Then, I saw the computer mock up of what the make-up might look like and I thought, “Wow, I’m gonna look like him, for sure.” And the more I thought about it, I thought, “Well, I do look like him, a little bit, with my ears, the shape of my head, the fact that I’m the same height, the timber of our voice is not dissimilar, and we both sing.” And so, each one of those things gave me a little bit more courage to believe that I could do it. I just kept telling myself, “You don’t have to do the whole thing, at once. You don’t have to film the whole movie, in one day. You just have to do this scene right, and then the next scene right, and the next scene right.”

Luckily, I had such a great partner in Steve Coogan. He was someone who made me rise to the occasion, every day. Steve is excellence in comedy personified. We had this brilliant clown coach, named Toby Sedgwick, who was helping us do these routines. I just slowly found my way to a place of confidence with it because, ultimately, the one thing that gave me comfort, over and over, was the true fact that Stan and Ollie were plucked out of obscurity and put together. They didn’t know each other. Hal Roach told them, “Alright boys, come up with an act.” So, every time I thought the pressure was gonna get to me, or it was just too overwhelming, I thought, "Look, it’s exactly what happened to them. They were just two people who didn’t really know each other, that were pulled together, and told to come up with something.” By doing what they did, rehearsing dances and songs, working out comedy routines, coming up with the double door routine, or the hotel clerk sequence, or whatever it was, by doing that, we found our way to who they were and what they were like.

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Image via Sony Pictures Classics

What did you do for three hours, every day, while you had to go through the process of being made to look like him?

REILLY:  You have to hold still. I drank a lot of tea, and listened to a lot of great music. (Prosthetics Make-Up Designer) Mark Coulier has wonderful taste in music. I actually would help them, too, putting the pieces on ‘cause sometimes the pieces are so big that, in order for them to continue gluing and doing the fine work of attaching it, I would hold up one half while they were doing the other half.

There’s so much in this movie, with the physical side of it and the emotional side of it. Was there a moment, in the relationship between these two guys, that you personally are most fond of?

REILLY:  All of the big emotional scenes were very important to me because Steve and I helped write those scenes, especially the dialogue. There was a scene that took place on a boat, there was a scene that took place in a hotel room, and there was a scene that took place in a ballroom after the show, but those scenes all needed to be personalized, in a way that had direct emotional meaning to me and Steve. And so, I remember going over the dialogue for the big fight scene with Steve, which was written one way, and it didn’t quite feel like it had the teeth that it needed to be really cruel ‘cause they’re cruel to each other, in that moment. Me and Steve were just sitting there like, “All right, let me have it. What would you say to me? If I was him, and you were him, what would you say to really hurt me right here?” He said, “You’re just a lazy ass who got lucky,” which really hurt. And then, I called him a hollow man and said, “You’re empty.” Those scenes still really get to me emotionally, when I watch the movie, because they worked in such beautiful harmony. That episode where Oliver had to go away and do that other film hurt so bad. Those are the things that stick out to me. And the beautiful scene in the bed. All throughout this, Steve and I participated in making the dialogue work in a way that seemed real to us, given our pasts as performers. We know what it’s like to sit in the dressing room, and be sore and sweaty, and be talking with someone about ticket sales. We know how that feels. Steve and I have both done it. So, the script needed to be personalized, in that way, and those are the scenes that stick out to me.

What do you think it is about Laurel & Hardy that makes them so timeless, in a way that so many people aren’t?

REILLY:  Well, I think that they figured out some secrets about comedy and about the universality of the human experience. They didn’t use a lot of contemporary references – almost none. They didn’t talk about who the president was, at the time, or about news stories, or things that were temporary. Their conundrums were eternal conundrums, and the things that they were dealing with, people all over the world can relate to. I can tell you, from trying to sell comedy movies in other countries, it can be a real hard sell sometimes. Sometimes, culturally, comedy just doesn’t transfer. But for some reason, Stan and Ollie figured out ways to make people laugh, regardless of their country, their language, or their religion. They could make a whole room full of people from all over, laugh at the same time, and I think the secret was that eternal quality. People keep asking me when the first time was that I became aware of Laurel & Hardy, and the truth is that I can’t remember a time that I wasn’t aware of them. As long as I’ve been conscious in this life, I’ve been aware of them, and I think that is the secret of their comedy. The fact that they appeared, from the very first time they worked together, as a complete, brilliant thing. They seem like light and shadow, or salt and pepper, or the fat and skinny. They seemed elemental. It seemed like they had existed for hundreds of years, and they would exist for hundreds of years beyond. I think that’s the secret of their comedy. They focused on stuff that was true for everybody.

Like many people, I was a big fan of Wreck-It Ralph and was dying to see those characters again, which made Ralph Breaks the Internet very exciting. But obviously, six years is a long time for people to wait for a sequel. At what point, after the opening did you breathe a sigh of relief that people were seeing and loving the sequel, just as much or more than the first film?

REILLY:  It’s always satisfying when people go see a movie that you’ve done, as opposed to the alternative. But honestly, if I thought about the financial worries of the different studios, I would never get out of bed in the morning. That’s a lot of money on the line, and it’s not really my department. What I was really satisfied with was when I saw the film and it really moved me. It made sense to me, and it made me feel like we were giving girls something that a Disney movie maybe hasn’t given them so much before, or that we were giving kids emotional nourishment. We were talking about real relationship stuff, and what it’s like for a boy and a girl to have a friendship, and what that requires when people grow. For a movie about digital characters in the internet, we cover some very human things, and that’s what I’m proud of. I would be proud of that whether the movie made any money or not.

Stan & Ollie is now playing in select theaters.