January 28, 2010
Josh Duhamel's Roman holiday
Jim Halterman READ TIME: 6 MIN.
Josh Duhamel has had quite a ride in his career as an actor. On his first big acting gig as heartthrob/con-artist Leo du Pres on ABC's All My Children, Duhamel won a Daytime Emmy before his character plunged to his death while trying to save the love of his life (though, of course, his body was never found). In prime time, the good looking model-turned-actor set hearts aflutter in sin city as Danny McCoy on the NBC hit series Las Vegas for four seasons and, during his breaks from the series, he found time to start dabbling on the big screen with roles in Win A Date with Tad Hamilton and the two Transformers movies. �
In the new romantic comedy When In Rome, Duhamel gets to bring his playful charm (and what he calls his natural level of clumsiness) to the role of Nick Beamon who tries to win the heart of Kristen Bell's Beth first in Rome and then in New York City. The throwback to screwball motion pictures (and a very loose adaptation to the classic film Three Coins In A Fountain), When In Rome opens this weekend and EDGE's Jim Halterman recently hung out at the Four Seasons press room with Duhamel, Bell and the rest of the cast of the film (including Will Arnett, Dax Shepard and Jon Heder) to talk about the experience of making the film and creating a romance that audiences would believe as well as creating more than a few laughs. �
Doing stunts
Duhamel and director Mark Steven Johnson got along during filming for the most part, the actor shared, but there was some head butting when Duhamel was doing a stunt involving his character and an automobile. "Mark worried more about me hurting myself than I did," the North Dakota native said. "If Mark and I had any arguments in the film it was for that. Let me just explain the situation. There was a scene where I was supposed to run into this car. The stunt coordinator had it set up where the car was going to sweep out my leg and I was going to roll up onto the front of the hood and roll up on the windshield and see that it was my friend, Puck (played by Bobby Moynihan). �
"It wasn't the most well-conceived stunt ever performed but it took us a few times. So I'm running at this car and the first two times we did it I literally went right over the car and fell on my shoulder and another time I fell another way over the edge of the car and they almost pulled the plug on the stunt but I talked them into letting me do it one more time because I had figured it out. When we did it right, I literally took out the windshield."�
The character of Nick also has a habit of running into things and, on one occasion, he falls into an open door leading to a New York store's storage basement. Duhamel admitted with a laugh that he didn't have to do much rehearsal for those kinds of stunts. "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 this movie."� Story continues on the following page.
Watch the trailer to When in Rome.
Romantic chemistry?
Duhamel's on-screen love interest, Kristen Bell (who also said that there is currently no movie based on her own cult-favorite television series Veronica Mars in the works) added that Duhamel was also very adept at physical comedy involving a popular communication device: "There's the thing in the church when he drops the phone and chases after it. It was hilarious."�
Making a romantic comedy needs one important element to work, however, and that's the romance. How'd they make it happen in When In Rome? Duhamel explained, "Because we had to start out so quick and fall in love so quick and sort of do it in a way to propel the movie through we really had to make those first couple 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 once [Beth, Bell's character] got back to New York and all these guys are chasing after her it would make sense."�
Bell added that one of the ways this was accomplished is by not shooting the wedding, which appears in the early part of the film, in the initial days of shooting. In fact, Bell said, "The wedding scene was shot very late in the game when the friendship [between me and Josh] had already been established."�
Filming of When In Rome was fun for all parties involved, according to the cast. Duhamel admitted that while some movies have bloopers left on either the cutting room floor or saved or the DVD release, this film was different in that "any blooper that you see was pretty much left in the movie!"�
Co-star Dax Shepard, who has his shirt off more than Duhamel in the film and shows off a very impressive torso, said that keeping track of Duhamel's footage for the film was a favorite pastime of everyone involved. "I'll say we were definitely more often gathering around to watch Josh's playback than any of us," the comedic actor, who co-stars in the upcoming NBC series Parenthood, said. "[Josh] had all of our numbers and was so funny. We'd watch him dance over and over."�
One definite perk for Duhamel was that he was able to fulfill a lifelong dream while filming the Rome scenes. Despite the incredible heat wave that was happening at the time he was there, he wasn't about to stay inside with air conditioning. "I studied a lot of art history in school and 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 to me was the best part of it."�
The former model, who once beat out Ashton Kutcher for Male Model of the Year in the International Modeling and Talent Association and is married to Black Eyed Peas and solo singer Fergie, said of his time in Rome, "I had a day off when we were there, I remember, and I rented a Vespa and just went out and didn't know where I was going and got to see a bunch of the sites in Rome. I still can't believe that I had the balls to do it because there's nine million Vespas running around and not knowing where I was going. It was a great day."�
Touchstone Pictures' When In Rome starring Josh Duhamel and Kristen Bell opens in theaters today nationwide.�?�
Watch this scene where Dax Shepard shows off his pecs in When in Rome.
Jim Halterman lives in Los Angeles and also covers the TV/Film/Theater scene for www.FutonCritic.com, AfterElton, Vulture, CBS Watch magazine and, of course, www.jimhalterman.com. He is also a regular Tweeter and has a group site on Facebook.
