James Franco & Danny McBride are Swashbuckling Bros!

In the raunchy, action/epic Your Highness, Pineapple Express alums James Franco and funny Danna McBride play medieval brothers Fabious and Thadeous on a quest to rescue Fabious’ new bride Belladonna (played by Zooey Deschanel). If this sounds like silly fun, it is but…Warning: This film has it all warning-wise. It is rated “R” for strong crude and sexual content, pervasive language, nudity, violence and some drug use. Make your film-going choice accordingly.

We’re back in Beverly Hills (we’re going to set up a tent there) to jaw with the boys about their wacky romp in the film, how Natalie Portman was a trooper when they launched raunchy jokes on her and more. Picture gorgeous James in all black; pants, shirt and jacket and Danny more casually dressed.

TeenHollywood: Did you two grow up watching sword and sorcery films? Were there specific ‘80’s movies that you watched for research?

Danny McBride: Yeah, we appreciated movies like Beastmaster, Krull and Dragonslayer, and those fun movies that capture your imagination, when you’re a kid. It was awesome to be able to actually try to make one of those movies. It gave me a very good excuse to give my wife for why I needed to be watching Krull on repeat, all the time. I really couldn’t have gotten away with it, unless I was getting paid for it, so it was a selfish reason to make this film.

James Franco: The first film I ever saw in a movie theater, when I was very young, was The Dark Crystal, and I saw that repeatedly in the theater. Then, there was The Never-ending Story and the original Clash of the Titans. We’d watch that on my friends’ VCR. They’re a little hokey now, but they still have a lot of charm. [Note: If you are too young to have seen these films in theaters, rent them. They are a hoot!]

TeenHollywood: Which scene was the hardest for you to get through without cracking up?

Danny: You know, surprisingly, the scene that I couldn’t get through was the scene I had to do with Natalie [Portman], where we’re sitting at this table in the tavern and I have to confront her about stealing the compass. The way David Gordon Green directs, he’s literally right out of frame of the camera, and he stands there and makes you say the most ridiculous things, and you can’t really hesitate. You have to just keep going through with it. In the scene, he was just like, “Call her a bully and a [Ho].” So, I just did it without thinking about it and, as soon as I looked at Natalie and the word [Ho] came out, it just felt horrible and I couldn’t get through it. I had to keep doing it, over and over. That, weirdly, was the hardest thing for me to get through.

TeenHollywood:  What was Natalie Portman like to work with, and how did she fit in with everybody?

Danny: David [Gordon Green, director] had been in talks with Natalie about another project and, once we started to get some movement on Your Highness, it looked like that was what was going to be next. In his conversations with Natalie, she brought up this project and was saying that she was dying to do a comedy and really wanted a chance to work with us. We were thrilled by that because, having actors like James and Natalie is what separates this movie. It’s not a movie that’s just filled with your typical comedians. It’s cast with a lot of prestigious actors.

TeenHollywood: Were you afraid that Natalie might think it was too gross?

Danny: Honestly, I was really embarrassed to hand Natalie the script, for the first time. I was like, “Should I go through and take out all the dirty stuff? I’m nervous to show her this.” David was like, “No, we’ve got to let her know what she’s in for.” But, she was a total champ.

The stuff that I thought would make her blush is the stuff that she thought was funny. She totally embraced it. On the set, she never shied away from that stuff. She could definitely hang with the boys. She wasn’t intimidated by any of the foul stuff going on.

James: No, she wasn’t. She embraced it. I also think we had a hard time with the wise wizard scene, too. We were acting with a puppet and we were short on time that day, so it was actually causing problems.

Danny: We couldn’t finish that scene.

TeenHollywood: In your historical research, did you find that the ‘80’s mullet was a common hairstyle in medieval times?

Danny: [laughs] Well, historical accuracies were very important to us, in this film. We really wanted to make this an educational film and show teens that people back in the middle ages, when there were two moons, acted just like people do now. [He’s so kidding] We really were modeling that haircut off Mel Gibson in Lethal Weapon. That was what we were going for with that haircut. They rocked the Mel Gibson Lethal Weapon haircut back then.

TeenHollywood: Was there any Pineapple Express-style wizard weed involved in the writing of this film?

Danny: You know, I don’t tend to partake in much wizard weed when I work on scripts. It’s such a hard process and, if you want to do it good, it seems like if you do partake in a lot of that, people don’t tend to really want to watch the things that you come up with. We really just approached the movie as if it were a serious epic fantasy, and we just found the comedy in the fact that the more serious we took the movie, the more the comedy seemed to work. In the writing of it, we thought of it as a comedy second and as an adventure movie first, and then we really tried to find that humor on the set.

TeenHollywood: Was there a lot of improv on set?

Danny: There was a ton. I’ve worked with David a few times before and, even the way we worked on Pineapple Express, or the stuff we’ve done on “Eastbound and Down” [on TV], we always tend to do one or two takes of what’s on the page. Then, from there, we just start pushing it. It’s not always even just to find jokes. We’ll just improv, so that everyone in the scene is on their toes and you find that reaction that maybe you wouldn’t have gotten, when the actor knows exactly what’s coming next.

James: Yeah, when you have a movie where you improvise during every scene, it’s not just about finding funny lines. It does something to the actors because you’re more aware. You don’t know what’s coming next, so you don’t get lulled into a way of doing the scene the same way, one time after another. You’re much more aware, and it does something to the behavior. It makes it more immediate and more alive. And then, David [the director] won’t have you just improvise different lines. He’ll have you say it in very weird ways. He’ll say, “Say it like a robot,” or, “Say it like you’re taking a big dump.”

TeenHollywood: When you’re dealing with raunchy humor like this, was there anything you were really surprised that you got away with?

Danny: Well, the fact that we made this movie was very surprising to us, in the first place. David and I, the whole time, never really were convinced that someone would make this movie. To us, it was just this wild idea for this crazy movie because we wished Hollywood would take more chances and make crazier things. To us, that’s what this was. It was an opportunity to make a film that we liked, that just seemed so specific for what we wanted to see, that we were surprised that someone was going to let us do that. There’s tons of things that I can’t believe are in there.

TeenHollywood: Danny, like your character in this film, have you ever cleaned up your act to be the hero for a woman?

Danny: Well, I got married last October, so I have cleaned my act up. I was born in the South and was raised to respect ladies and be a gentleman, so that’s something that’s always been important to me.

TeenHollywood: James, you do so much work, writing, directing, acting, studying, that they’ve even spoofed it on SNL.

James: Not very well though. That guy didn’t look like me, at all.

TeenHollywood: How do you feel about the public perception of your work?

James: Well, that’s hard. It’s out of my hands, really. I went to school for myself. Sometimes, I forget that it’s actually not a public act. I’m just there to learn and better myself. That part of my life is not a performance, but in some ways it has become material for public discussion, to the point where the New York Times is interviewing my teachers. But, I don’t mind. I’m proud of everything I’m doing. It’s just that part of my life is a performance and I perform as a job, and part of it is not, but I can’t control the attention.

TeenHollywood: You’re directing films, acting in a number of films a year, and we keep hearing your name attached to various projects.

James: Well, there’s also this phenomenon where people do like to announce movies that they think I’m doing, that I’m not. Somebody just doesn’t have the time to do all the movies that people claim that I’m going to do. I have acquired the rights to a lot of books that I love, and I think it helps the writers to sell their books, if they announce my attachment, but it doesn’t mean that I’m going to make the movies in the next year, or two, or three.

TeenHollywood: James, you’ve been in serious epic films like Tristan and Isolde. Did any of that experience help you with this?

James: It’s interesting. Somebody said that we might have ruined this genre for anyone that wants to treat it seriously because it really is hard to make an earnest fantasy film. Until The Lord of the Rings and maybe the Harry Potter series, there haven’t been too many of these films that have been embraced by an older audience. Usually, they’re thought of as kids’ films. People think of heroes in a different way now. Because this had a comedic element to it, you can get away with that.

TeenHollywood: And you took your character Fabious seriously as well.

James: Yeah. I actually tried to play the character pretty earnestly. Because it’s a comedy, we can get away with a lot of the cheesiness that maybe can hurt a film that’s completely earnest. Because we get away with it, then you can actually address some of the real feelings and dynamics between brothers and jealousy and feelings. That’s the secret of bromances. You can talk about relationships between guys and brothers because it’s a comedy. If it was not a comedy, it would probably just be boring or cheesy or kinky. If you go the kinky route, that could work [we laugh].

TeenHollywood: What kind of training did you do for the swordplay?

James: Danny was the writer and he conveniently wrote his character as someone that was very bad at using swords, so that he didn’t have to train at all. I trained a bit, but I had done, literally, nine months of training, seven days a week for Tristan & Isolde because I was a young actor that didn’t know any better. That was insane. I didn’t get to use much of it in that film, so I got to use it in this movie.

TeenHollywood:  But, Oz: The Great and Powerful [a prequel to The Wizard of Oz told from the POV of the wizard] is one film that you’re actually attached to, right?

James: Yes.

TeenHollywood: What made you want to take that on?

James: I love the idea of working with (director) Sam [Raimi] again. Sam is a master of combining classic Hollywood character types and storylines and ideas, and then matching that with innovative technology. I really think he’s going to build an incredible world, but a world where we have room to play and have fun.

TeenHollywood: You are everywhere. Is there an end to your work on TV’s “General Hospital”, in the future?

James: No, there’s going to be a lot more awesome, groundbreaking stuff, truly.