It took more than 30 years and many script drafts to get to "Beetlejuice Beetlejuice" -- but just because a lot of time and energy went into crafting the sequel, don't think that means they can't make stuff up on the fly. "Beetlejuice" sequel star Justin Theroux broke down just how much space he had to improvise on the set of Tim Burton's long-awaited sequel.
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00:00Hi, congratulations on the film.
00:01Thanks, man.
00:02So, I want to know, as somebody who's also a writer,
00:06when you see a character like this on the page,
00:08how does your writer's brain kick in
00:09to help you find the character
00:10when you're actually beginning to act?
00:13Tim was pretty collaborative.
00:15He was pretty great at just being like,
00:17let's find some more stuff.
00:19And he was gracious enough to let me
00:21sort of scribble in the margins a little and improvise.
00:27So, you know, we would, you know,
00:30and then we obviously sort of found elements
00:31of the character that weren't necessarily there on the page
00:33and he let me riff, so it was great.
00:36What's a moment where you realize that,
00:38oh, this riff is working?
00:41I think, it was a couple things,
00:45just elements of the character that were like,
00:47he was a people pleaser, he was a narcissist,
00:51and that he was trying to encourage
00:55a codependent relationship with Lydia.
00:58I know that maybe sounds like we're overthinking it,
01:01but there was a lot of attention paid
01:03to wanting to make sure that the relationship felt real
01:07and that it didn't, but it was also funny, you know?
01:10So, we wanted to make sure that the relationship
01:14felt like it could actually exist, you know?
01:16Yeah, and it's interesting to talk about
01:18trying to find that element of realism
01:19because the characters in Beetlejuice,
01:21the living and the dead, are both heightened.
01:22There's a, I don't want to say cartoonish,
01:24it's not quite cartoonish, but there's a,
01:26it exists in a halfway point
01:28between a cartoon and live action.
01:29Can you talk about how you find that tone as a performer?
01:33Yeah, I think it's, you know,
01:35all good comedy is played straight, pretty much,
01:37and you let the words and the situation
01:40do a lot of the work for you.
01:42You know, I mean, Katherine O'Hara
01:43is like one of those incredible actresses that,
01:47you know, if you took her performance
01:51and gave her different words,
01:52but gave her the same intensity,
01:53it could very easily be drama.
01:58But I don't know, there's just,
01:59it's people, I'm not saying myself,
02:02but someone like her or Willem
02:04or particularly Michael Keaton, you know,
02:07they just know how to do it, you know?
02:09It's not broad, weirdly.
02:13It's pretty down the middle.
02:15Was there a moment on a set like this
02:17where there's so many fully built sets
02:19and practical creatures and monsters
02:21compared to like a lot of films I've seen recently?
02:23Or was there something that caught you off guard?
02:25Where you said, whoa, this is like
02:26something I haven't seen before as an actor?
02:28I had never worked, I don't think,
02:30with puppets, you know, or animatronics,
02:33and that was really fun.
02:35Like, to be able to work with, like,
02:37for example, that Beetlejuice baby
02:39was like an incredible piece of not just art,
02:42but also machinery and engineering.
02:45That caught me off guard,
02:46just how fascinated I was by that.
02:49And then just all this sort of blood and guts,
02:51you know, rubber, latex, and goo stuff was just fun,
02:55because when, for example, when he rips open his sweater
02:58and that blows all over me and Lydia,
02:59it really, you know, requires very little acting
03:03to react to that, because it's such a fun gag, you know?
03:07Well, Keaton, in terms of like your relationship on the set,
03:10how much is you bouncing around,
03:11how much do you stick and disrupt?
03:12What is the dynamic between you two when you're in your seat?
03:14It's great, you know, I mean, he,
03:17I have such a reverence for that character,
03:19like so many people do,
03:20but I did not want, it's a weird combination.
03:23He's sort of like a firework that goes off
03:24when Tim says action.
03:27You don't want to get too close to it,
03:28because you don't want to like, you know,
03:30block anyone's view from what he's doing,
03:32but you also have to participate with it.
03:34So he was just hilarious, you know?
03:36He's a very thoughtful actor.
03:38You know, he's not a, you know,
03:41he really works things out ahead of time
03:43and sort of blocks it out in his head.
03:46So you don't want to, the last thing you want to do
03:49is sort of like impede the layup, you know?
03:51You want him to be able to do it.