‘I definitely am trying to focus more on myself’: Isla Fisher on life, motherhood and rumours around THAT Wedding Crashers sequel
The Australian star addresses her divorce from Sacha Baron Cohen and explains why she is putting herself first, as she reveals her next Hollywood role.
Stellar
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Isla Fisher doesn’t think she will do too much soul-searching when she hits a big milestone birthday with the number five in front of it early next year.
The Australian actor, who first shot to fame on Home and Away more than 30 years ago before making it big in Hollywood thanks to movies including The Wedding Crashers, Confessions of a Shopaholic, The Great Gatsby, Now You See Me and Nocturnal Animals, is only mock outraged when the subject is raised over Zoom call from the Gold Coast, where she has been shooting Day Spa for the past couple of months.
“That is very indelicate – how dare you,” she says, feigning shock at her impending 50th trip around the sun from her ritzy trailer, just days before wrapping the women-led comedy that co-stars Leslie Mann, Anna Faris and Michelle Buteau.
It’s just one of several projects the flame-haired actor has on the go right now, including the animated kids book adaptation Dog Man, which arrives in cinemas here next week, a third Now You See Me blockbuster due for release in September, Noah Baumbach’s star-studded coming-of-age drama Jay Kelly and the Alan Ritchson comedy Playdate, both of which are in post-production.
Since splitting from her husband of 13 years, Borat creator Sacha Baron Cohen, at the end of 2023, and with her three children growing up fast, Fisher has already decided that now is the time to throw herself back into her career with gusto.
“I think because of the challenges that I’ve gone through in the last two years, I don’t see that it will change much,” she says of the birthday milestone that many use to reflect and re-evaluate their life, priorities and career.
“I have readdressed my attitude or at least my ambition and my attitude to work.
“I definitely am trying to focus more on myself professionally, something that was always on the backburner. I always put motherhood first but everyone’s a lot older now.
“Obviously my kids are always going to come first – every parent feels that way – but it is nice to go back to work and feel of value or be able to contribute at least to the arts in a way that’s meaningful to me. It’s also just nice to be around people that you like at work. It’s really fun.”
Fisher says she’s been having an absolute blast filming on the Gold Coast – “working hard is very strong for what we’ve been doing” – and stayed calm in her oceanfront residence during the chaos of Cyclone Alfred, even if her overseas cast mates were freaking out.
“I felt very safe and honestly I just enjoyed it from a kind of visual perspective,” she says. “Where I was staying is on the ocean and you could see the waves just coming on and I was just praying people wouldn’t lose lives and businesses and it wouldn’t be too destructive.”
In the end, she says, the cyclone with the masculine name proved to be something of an anticlimax after so much fanfare.
“I thought in the traditional male way, we waited, we waited, we waited and then it was over in a second,” she says with a laugh.
Since relocating to Hollywood in the early 2000s, Fisher largely split her time between Los Angeles and Baron Cohen’s home town of London, where she is now based so they can co-parent their two daughters, Elula and Olive, and son Montgomery.
The pair spent a few years living in Sydney while Fisher filmed two seasons of the comedy drama Wolf Like Me, but Fisher says it’s getting more difficult to work in the country she still feels deeply connected to – even if she dreams of retiring here when the time comes.
“It means a lot to me emotionally and socially,” she says. “But I feel it just is a challenge with the kids in school in the UK and the distance and the time zones. It’s very hard to keep up with the other side of your life when you’re here. But obviously it’s my happy place, Australia.
“I feel so Australian. I’ve actually never met another Australian in my life who doesn’t feel incredibly Australian. Even those that left when they were babies, there’s something about this beautiful land.”
In Dog Man, Fisher had the rare pleasure of using her own accent to play intrepid reporter Sarah Hatoff in the animated kids’ movie based on American author Dav Pilkey’s beloved books of the same name.
Fisher came to the part well prepared – not only is she a kids’ book author herself with her Marge in Charge series, she’d been reading the stories about a half-dog, half-human superhero cop to her son for years and indeed they were a key factor in his learning to read.
“For emerging or reluctant readers, there’s not that much text and so you get the pictures and it’s such a wacky and cool idea – a dog and a human being fused,” she says. “I think it just really captured my son’s imagination and really inspired him to want to really improve his phonics.”
Landing the part and sitting with him during the film’s London premiere made Fisher a hero in her son’s eyes – it even got the stamp of approval from her 17-year-old daughter – and finally helped her earn that most elusive of commodities: parental cred.
“All you want is your kids to think you’re cool,” she says. “I would do anything to get a laugh from my kids. I’ll pick the cat up and put it on my head. I just want their approval. Everything’s about my getting validation from them. Particularly my teenagers by the way.
“Once they’re teenagers, you just wait by the door, hoping that the door will open and they’ll speak to you. But if you do anything wrong, like ask them how their day was, they could just retreat for another three days.”
Fisher is no stranger to voice work, having previously recorded roles for Horton Hears a Who!, Rango, Rise of the Guardians and the 2021 local animated comedy Back To the Outback. She says the appeal goes beyond the convenience of being able to fit recording around other work and life commitments and being able to turn up in your pyjamas – she also loves the complete lack of vanity that goes with it.
“You can pull really hideous faces,” she says. “When you’re on camera you have to sort of temper that – you’re aware of the fact that you might look like a ghoul if you’re crying but with animation you’re just having complete fun.”
But the contrast between the family-friendly Dog Man and her previous voice role in Strays – the 2023 live action R rated comedy about a pack of dogs trying to exact revenge on a neglectful owner – could hardly be starker. She took that job voicing Australian Shepherd Maggie because working with Will Ferrell was on a list of career goals she’d made decades earlier and, after coming close with a role on Blades of Glory she’d had to pass on, being able to improvise with him over Zoom during Covid was literally a dream come true.
“It was like playing chess with Bobby Fischer like or basketball with (Michael) Jordan,” she says. “You just can’t believe your luck that you’re in a room with Will Ferrell and you’re getting to just be in the moment and play.
“But yes, we definitely went for a lot of dick jokes. It was very puerile, let’s just say. It was not like anybody would have want their kids in that room. I mean the plot of the movie was basically us trying to bite somebody’s dick off as revenge. It’s not really high art but it’s never going to be not funny.”
This year also marks the 20th anniversary of the movie that “changed my life” and Fisher reflects fondly on playing oversexed, filthy rich heiress and “stage five clinger” Gloria Clearly opposite Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson in Wedding Crashers.
“I feel very grateful for that experience and I really do appreciate that now more than ever,” she says. “It’s so weird that people still love that movie and they still talk about it and come up to you and mention it and I’ve never seen it since it came out.”
Rumours have periodically surfaced of a sequel and Fisher reveals that it came close enough to happening that she still has a visa in her passport to shoot it, until Wilson pulled out at the last minute. She’s still confident it’s going to be made “at some point” though.
“We got too close and all the ingredients are there and I think there’s an appetite for it,” she says. “I would be up for it again – I think it’s fun.”
Dog Man is in cinemas April 3. For more from Stellar and the podcast Something To Talk About, click here.
Originally published as ‘I definitely am trying to focus more on myself’: Isla Fisher on life, motherhood and rumours around THAT Wedding Crashers sequel
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