Luke Wilson & Dermot Mulroney: It's All in the "Family"

Luke Wilson and Dermot Mulroney are two hot and funny actor dudes with lots of credits. Luke was a hit in the wacky Old School and Dermot was last seen as one of Diane Lane's potential suitors in Must Love Dogs. The tall, dark and handsome guys play very different brothers and rivals for the attentions of Sarah Jessica Parker's character in the holiday dramady The Family Stone. Dermot's character Everett is a New York, business-suited lawyer and Luke's Ben is a sloppy slacker. Together, in person, these two guys are nutz and very fun to chat with.

While ribbing each other, the jean-clad duo was happy to talk about their roles as rivals in the film, their Christmas plans, their families and future projects.

TeenHollywood: In the film, some of the family members are really "huggy" and others are more standoffish. What about you two?

Dermot: We shake hands, don't we? Luke's a non-hugger for sure.

Luke: Hey, I'm friends with the tennis player Pete Sampras and he's always criticizing Hollywood men for hugging each other -- which they do.

Dermot: You fall into it.

Luke: You do...it's part of the [Hollywood greeting] process. You roll up to a guy you barely know and...[hug him].

Dermot: It's really weird. BUT, I'll tell you what -- you work with Sarah Jessica Parker and Claire Danes and Rachel McAdams, believe me, you're hugging every morning! [smile and laugh]...Good morning, dear - all that...

TeenHollywood: Luke, growing up, did you ever steal your bro Owen's girl or anything? Or vice versa?

Luke: It never happened. I just never would cross that line, I don't know. That's the kind of thing that might cause a serious rift in our friendship or family -- I wouldn't do that to those guys.

TeenHollywood: What's Christmas like in your houses?

Dermot: It's pretty crazy, [looking at Luke] you've got two brothers, I've got three and a sister and so, at this age it's so hard to get everybody together for a family thing. But when you do -- our family really plays hard.

Luke: It has to be nice to have a son, though. I figure that once you have a child, like Dermot [has], then it kind of comes full circle. You kind of enjoy [the holidays] again.

Dermot: Yeah, and you get to bring him over to the family house and you get to sleep in -- which is nice -- because he's hanging with his grandmother.

TeenHollywood: I can imagine a Wilson family get-together. Is it as fun and funny as one might think?

Luke: Um, we like to have a good time. And yeah, I think, we're one of those families that our way of showing affection is to kid [around with] one another. Sometimes we have to, kind of, tone it down or else it builds and builds and builds until you're being kind of mean. [laughs] But no, we all get along great and my folks are still together and so we all enjoy being around each other.

TeenHollywood: Can you talk about what brought you to your role in The Family Stone and what did you like about your character?

Luke: For me, it was just one of those things where it was my character on the page and then it seemed like it would be fun to be around those people. And I don't know that there's anything I don't like about Ben, except that maybe he does seem kind of aimless. But Ben's extra easy-going and extra-relaxed just to offset this underlying tragedy. [Which we won't reveal here]. Maybe Ben is trying to keep everything together.

TeenHollywood: Yes, Ben does have, shall we way a distinctive wardrobe compared to the other family members.

Luke: I think maybe he stands out so much just because everyone around does seem buttoned up, East Coast and Ben seems like a skateboarder from Venice [Beach] or something. I feel like he does change but then he goes with Meredith who is the opposite of him. And I know for the last scene Tom [Bezucha, the director ] had me wearing a sweater that I hated. He said it showed that I'd changed and I said 'Into what? A guy with horrible taste?'

TeenHollywood: Do you think comedies or, like, family comedies are becoming a Wilson family business with you and your brother?

Luke: Maybe we're kind of drawn to comedies. Maybe that's what we have the most fun doing. I like the idea of working with my brothers, which I've had the chance to do a couple of times. It's just like working with a great old friend or something. Not that we don't have our differences but we do have very similar tastes where you don't have to spend the time on a movie getting to know somebody. Starting a new movie is like going to a new school. It's like, maybe, you're kind of awkward. You don't know how everybody works and you want them to like you and you want to do a good job. And you need to feel comfortable.

TeenHollywood: Do you guys go Christmas shopping yourselves or...?

Luke: I do it myself, he has a personal shopper. [laugh, yeah, right]

TeenHollywood: Have you already started looking?

Dermot: No, I'm definitely a procrastinator. I always seem to get it done but even when I was a kid, I'd stay up late the night before the paper's due and stuff like that. Always an "A" but it makes you anxious when you don't need to. It's like learning lines on a movie. I'm doing one now that has a lot of lines. Now I'm three weeks in and you're learning them the night before. In the morning, in the car -- it makes you nervous, you know? It makes your job harder. Learning lines.

TeenHollywood: Is there any particular character, in a movie, that you've played that's more like "Luke Wilson in reality?" I mean like this guy, Ben, in The Family Stone or maybe Mitch from Old School?

Luke: I think, it's like I'm not doing Gary Oldman parts -- you know, totally transforming myself so I think there's elements of me in everybody I play. But yeah, I mean a lot of the time I'll start out with good intentions but usually I just end up playing myself. After the first couple of weeks. [laughs]

Dermot: That's okay. It works.

TeenHollywood: Has either one of you ever asked a girl to "fly her freak flag" like Ben does in the movie? That's a tongue-twister.

Luke: It's hard to get out isn't it? That was a phrase that I didn't feel comfortable saying so I tried to say it like it was some piece of sage advice. Something like, 'I once heard the Dalai Lama say 'fly your freak flag' or something like that. [laughs] I was trying to make it seem very [Biblical]...

TeenHollywood: Dermot, what're you working on?

Dermot: I'm on a low-budget movie called Griffin and Phoenix with Amanda Peet. It was almost started a year ago and then the financing fell apart and so forth, so, they're making it [properly] instead of hurrying it and doing it the wrong way which was what would've happened a year ago.

TeenHollywood: Some of the actors had trouble learning sign language for this film. You guys?

Dermot: It was pretty fun. I really was fascinated by it. Jack Jason is a really well-known sign language interpreter -- coach or technical advisor, I guess you'd call it -- and he was great to work with. I ended up just trying to do exactly what he did, you know, and just imitate his hands. But the more you learn it, the more you realize how really beautiful this language is.

Luke: Certain people were really good at it. Dermot was really good, Diane [Keaton] was especially good. I think she'd [learned] it before. I had trouble with it but I think it was a horse race between me and Craig [T. Nelson ] who was worse. And Thad [Stone, the deaf actor in the film] was really helpful and patient with people. And he always has a guy with him, who's translating for him, and...he's also good at reading lips too. You know, you'll kind of see him focusing on your mouth. I thought it was just because he thought I had a pretty mouth. [laughs]

Dermot: And what [Thad] will tell you is that people really do start to enunciate more when they know that their lips are being read. But then of course, he says, then I can't understand a word you're saying because it doesn't look like you're actually talking. Even like when Meredith [Sarah Jessica Parker] does in the movie where she talks too slow and people start to laugh at her and stuff, like "what an idiot."

TeenHollywood: Luke, are you working on Super Ex?

Luke: Yes. It's a comedy with Ivan Reitman directing and Uma Thurman. I play a guy that starts going out with who I think is just a regular girl and she turns out to be a super hero for Manhattan. But then, she's kind of tough to be in a relationship with and I break it off. And then she starts using her super powers against me.

TeenHollywood: Sounds funny. Are there a lot of special effects?

Luke: Yeah, there'll be a lot of stuff. I fly but I had to do this thing that's called the scan. You go up to this place in the [San Fernando] Valley and I went into this room and they were like 'could you just put that on for the scan?' and you like see a bikini. I mean this thing was like..it was sooo tight.

TeenHollywood: Well, I guess that's a special effect all by itself.

Luke laughs.. Okay, bye now.

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Lynn Barker is a Hollywood-based entertainment jouranlist and produced screenwriter.