Monday 7 December 2020

Was Leslie Nielsen Afraid of Being Funny?

Many know him best for his deadpan comedy, a centrepiece in films like Airplane! And The Naked Gun series, but from much of his career Leslie Nielsen was far more comfortable playing the funny man behind the scenes than in front of the camera. In fact, Nielsen had been cast as a dramatic actor for 30 years before he landed his first funny role in Airplane! To tell that story, the team here at Flyeread searched the archives and came up with this gem, a part of Nielsen’s interview with The Californian in 1991.

“I always played those kinds of serious roles,” he told the publication, “but I did a lot of comedy behind the camera. I just didn’t have the courage to take it in front of the camera. Comedy was a dream. But if you test it and you don’t make it — if you’re not as funny as you imagined you could be — then you’ve lost the dream. The believability or credibility or logic all fit into a character. If you hang all that on me and have me do insane things or placed in insane situations, there’s a strong possibility it will be funny … If the audience gets the idea for one second that we think we’re funny or trying to be funny, it’s no longer funny.”

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