INTERVIEW: Kristen and Josh's Love Recipe

Actors Kristen Bell and Josh Duhamel had to "fall in love quick" for their new rom-com (emphasis on the comedy) When in Rome.  We're with them in Beverly Hills to get their formula for accomplishing a love connection.  

Josh is late for the interview. He finally enters and Kristen scolds him with
"tardy!"  Tall cutie Josh, who recently renewed his vows with wife Fergie, says falling for Kristen was a breeze on their romantic Rome location.

The two actors are evidently accident-prone. Josh was hurt performing a stunt and Kristen admits she's somewhat of a klutz. Kristen also shares that, if chased by suitors of various types, she'd pick "the funny one". Ah, this explains her hook-up with funnydude Dax Shepard who also stars in the film.

Picture Kristen wearing a Miu Miu black and white square necked, sleeveless dress, black tights and some killer Jenny Kayne black suede peep toe pumps. Josh is adorable in black sweater over grey button down shirt with red and black tie.. and of course, pants!

Kristen, are you somewhat of a workaholic and if you met a guy you like would he have to be more important to you than your job as an actress?

Kristen:  I think your significant other should be way more important than your work, personally.  I love working. I don't know that I'd say I'm a workaholic because I also love maxin' and relaxin'. [Josh dies laughing at her urban slang]

Josh: Oh wow.

Kristen: I don't think I'm a workaholic but currently, I feel like I'm at a really lovely place and I'm grateful to be where I am so I like working too.

Kristen your character doesn't believe in magic or superstition.  How about yourself?

Kristen: I'm not very superstitious at all.  I never have been. No. I walk under ladders.  Who cares?

How was the experience for you on this film being the straight man to all your comedy co-stars like Dax, Will Arnett and Jon Heder?

Kristen: Being surrounded by those guys is so flattering because they all have a style of comedy that I really envy and I laugh out loud at them often. I was grateful for the opportunity.  I'm glad they had the faith in me to pull it off and I tried to do the best I could.  This is so lame.  

It's fine! Josh, we saw you exercise your physical comedy muscle. Was it fun or did you worry about hurting yourself?

Josh: Mark (the director) worried about me hurting myself more than I did.

Kristen: We took out a huge policy on his face.

Mark says you did your own stunts and a real windshield shattered when you rolled into it.

Josh: If Mark and I had any arguments in this film it was for that. There was a scene where I was supposed to run into this car and roll onto the front of the windshield and look up and see that it's my friend Punk.  

It wasn't the most well-conceived stunt ever performed. I'm running at the car and the first two times we did it I literally went over the top of the car and one time fell on my shoulder on my neck. 

Another time I fell another way over the edge of the car. They almost pulled the plug on the stunt but I talked them into doing it one more time and when we did it right, I literally took out the windshield.  

But this is more in line with the way I am anyway.  I'm more of a klutz than I am anything.  I just had a lot of fun coming up with as much stuff as we could for the movie.

Kristen: The scene in the church when he drops the phone in the hallway and chases after it is hilarious.

So you're a klutz too, Kristen?

Kristen: Luckily for me, the character was written fairly klutzy.  People embarrass themselves on a daily basis.  I know I do.  This character did a lot, which I think makes her likable and also leaves room for a lot of funnies.  That vase-breaking scene [at her sister's wedding] allowed me to get very physical. 

Sometimes when you see people getting physical, it's very funny.  I'm very klutzy in real life to begin with and we just captured that on film.  There wasn't much training or stunt-coordinating going on.  I would just trip and Mark would just happen to be rolling the camera and we put it in the movie.

So you constantly trip over things in real life?

Kristen: There's a fair amount of that, yeah.  I also bruise like peach. I knock into things.  I'm not the most coordinated person in the world.

How did you two build your relationship for a romantic comedy?

Kristen:  It's a difficult thing to capture.  I've seen a ton of movies where I've believed the couple and a ton of movies where I have not believed them at all.

Unfortunately, as an audience member, you check out if you don't believe them so we knew it was important and I think that's something you trust your director to bring as well and just capture those moments.  

But, Josh and I got along so well from the beginning that I think it was just natural that it read as romantic chemistry because we got along very well in real life. It's kind of a crap shoot. You have to hope for the best.  You really don't know until you're in the editing booth and he figures out whether we captured it.  

What I liked about this is it's not the girl chasing the guy which you so often see; the sad, downtrodden girl who is chasing after the guy all the time and revolving around his world and this was sort of the opposite. Who wouldn't want all of these guys chasing after them so I thought, 'okay, I'll do it'. [laughter]

Josh: Because we had to start out so quick and fall in love so quick in order for to propel the movie through, we had to make those first couple of scenes work at the wedding and the stuff afterwards when we get back to New York.  Otherwise, it would have felt like there was nothing there to begin with so what's he really chasing after? So we really focused on that wedding scene and tried to establish as much of a love at first sight thing as we could so when she got back to New York and all these guys were chasing after her, it would make sense.

Kristen: We shot the wedding scene [where their two characters meet] very, very late in the game and we had already established a friendship and so it was much easier to connect immediately and we knew each other's rhythms and knew how we were going to play it. 

Our first meeting was actually the end of the movie (shoot) and I think the [order] in which you shoot is really beneficial to your actors sometimes. So, I think we lucked out there.

Any bloopers?

Josh: There will be something coming out on the internet in a couple of days...

Kristen: [laughing] No specific bloopers but yeah, that little clippie will come out. But, who cares? But there was a lot of laughing on camera.  There was a lot of ruining other people's shots because we were laughing.

Josh: Any blooper you see was pretty much left in the movie [laughter].

Kristen, you are hilarious when your character gets blasted on a bottle of champagne.

Kristen:  When you're drunk.... [laughter]... not that hard to play drunk. [she's kidding].

Fans of the TV show are still asking. Will there be a "Veronica Mars" movie?

Kristen: The way it stands now, from the information I have is that Rob Thomas wrote the treatment and brought it to Warner Brothers and Joel Silver and Warner Brothers said 'there's no enthusiasm to make a Veronica Mars movie at this point' which means they don't think they can sell tickets.  I think the Veronica Mars fans would say otherwise but...

Josh: I'd be there.

Kristen: Thanks, Josh!  It's a matter of convincing them that people would see it which I know some of the online groups that are so dedicated are trying to do which is awesome but, at this time, we have no control.  One day Rob and I will just shoot it in his backyard.  I'm positive of that.

What was the experience of shooting in Italy like?

Kristen: Glorious.

Josh: I loved it. The only was, it was just so hot.  We were in the middle of a heatwave shooting the stuff in Rome.

Kristen:  And Italy had not discovered air conditioning. That was different for us.  We're so spoiled with every room being air-conditioned.

Josh: I got to study a lot of art history in college and it was always a dream of mine to be able to go to Rome and see some of the things there. So that was the best part of it for me. 

I had a day off when we were there and I rented a Vespa and just went out, didn't know where I was going and got to see some of the sights in Rome.  I still can't believe I had the balls to do it.  There are nine million Vespas driving around and cars and I didn't know where I was going but it was a great day.

Kristen, out of all these characters, the men chasing you in the film, which type would you pick?

Kristen:  I'd still pick Josh.

Josh: Yeah!  

But, of the types; the funny guy, the artistic guy....

Kristen: Gosh. I'd still pick the funny guy  [humm, does she mean Dax?]

You have a beautiful wedding dressing in the film.  Did you get to choose it for yourself?

Kristen: Yes. We met with Amsale and saw their whole collection. I got to pick.  It was great, right?