Isla Fisher talks friends, smuggling for Ali G, Tag and why a Wedding Crashers sequel is a long shot

AUSSIE star Isla Fisher doesn’t think she’ll ever get the chance to play her best known character, the unhinged nymphomaniac and “stage 5 clinger” Gloria, again. Here’s why.

ISLA Fisher doesn’t think she’ll ever get the chance to play her best known character again.

The former Home and Away actor burst on to the Hollywood scene in 2005 playing the unhinged nymphomaniac and “stage 5 clinger” Gloria opposite Vince Vaughn in Wedding Crashers, which made more than $300 million at the box office and helped revive the R-rated comedy in the US.

Ever since she’s been asked about a sequel and she let slip a few years ago that Vaughn had told her one might be in the works.
But after the wave of recent revelations about systemic sexual harassment in Hollywood, she’s now not sure that the time is right for the further adventures of two freeloading man-children who leech off bridal parties with the express purpose of sleeping with guests overcome by emotion.

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“I am not sure about that actually,” she says. “I heard word of it and then I haven’t heard for a while. I’m not sure that a Wedding Crashers sequel would work in the Time’s Up movement.”

She is, however, encouraged by what she calls “a very positive time in Hollywood right now” on the back of that movement.

“It feels like it’s gaining momentum, we are getting leadership and it feels like whenever there is power, there is going to be abuse of power. And now that we are trying to equal that power out, it can only be moving in the right direction.”

And as to the equally entrenched ageist attitude of the movie business, which has traditionally seen parts much harder to come by for women over the age of 40, the 42-year-old Fisher says she hasn’t felt that effect so far.

Jeremy Renner, Isla Fisher and Ed Helms in a scene from Tag.

“I’m not sure it’s whether it’s because I am an actress who also has a young family so I am not actively trying to continually work,” she says. “Ideally I would shoot two movies a year, one straight movie with a wonderful director like a Baz Luhrmann [The Great Gatsby] or a Tom Ford [Nocturnal Animals] or a Harmony Korine [The Beach Bum] or a David O’Russell [I Heart Huckabees], like I have done, and then a fun comedy.

“And a smaller role and not the lead in either of those. So in terms of what I want to do in my career, I haven’t felt a difference yet, but I am sure it is inevitable that the types of characters I am offered will change as I age, and I welcome that.”

In her new — and very fun — comedy, Tag, Fisher plays a supportive wife who’s prepared to go to extreme measures to support her husband’s crazy endeavours.

Her onscreen husband is played by The Hangover’s Ed Helms, who is one of a group of fortysomething men who have been playing the same game of tag since they were children. He and his grown-up buddies — Jon Hamm (Mad Men), Jake Johnson (The Mummy), Hannibal Buress (Broad City) and Jeremy Renner (The Avengers) — take the month of May off each year, putting their lives on hold and going to vast effort and expense to ensure they are not “it” when the clock ticks over to June 1.

Fisher describes her character, Anne, as well-meaning and sweet but “who cares too much about the game and then gets hyper-aggressive and competitive”.

Sacha Baron Cohen and Isla Fisher at the 2016 Oscars when she smuggled in his Ali G outfit in her underwear. Picture: Jason Merritt/Getty Images

But the flame-haired Aussie actor isn’t sure she’d be quite so understanding in real life.

“I definitely didn’t relate to that level of passion for her husband’s hobby in the sense that the hobby seems so silly to me,” Fisher says. “I’m not sure that in real life I’d be able to put up with a whole month of a person’s spouse playing a very intense game of tag.”

In real life, of course, Fisher has been married to the controversial British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen, creator of outrageously silly characters such as Borat and Bruno. The couple have three children together, daughters Olive and Elula, and son Montgomery, and Fisher has revealed in the past that sometimes Baron Cohen’s own crazy endeavours have spilled over into their personal life. Like the time he came home covered in blood and bruises after filming a scene with a dominatrix as Bruno. And the times he freaked out the children by coming home from the set of The Dictator still in costume. And perhaps most famously, the time he enlisted Fisher’s help to smuggle his Ali G outfit into the Oscars in her underwear, despite him being expressly forbidden to appear as the character.

“Oh yes, that’s true,” Fisher says, reconsidering with a laugh. “I’m always happy to be a mule of sorts for my husband.”

Despite its ridiculous concept, which was loosely based on a real life group of men as reported in a New York Times story, Tag lovingly examines the bonds of friendship — and that’s something Fisher definitely can relate to. Outside of her family — one of the reasons she took the part was because the film was shot over the US summer holidays and she could take her family with her — friendship is everything to Fisher. She was born in Oman, where her father was a banker for the United Nations, and moved back to her parents’ native Scotland before eventually winding up in Perth, and she says her nomadic childhood made her value both her childhood friends and newer buddies including Reese Witherspoon and Amal Clooney even more dearly.

“Absolutely,” she says. “I am still in touch with my best friend Angie, who I met when I was seven in primary school, and we Facetime whenever we can. I am very sentimental and all the friends I have now I have had for many years.

“And even the friends I have made along the way, I tend to make attachments to people because my family moved around a lot when I was younger and I changed school every year, so I tend to be incredibly loyal.”

Burgeoning writer Fisher even based the main character in her Marge In Charge books, about a freewheeling babysitter, on two of her childhood friends, and says that their message, like that of the new film, is to stay young and heart and tap into your “inner idiot”.

“I think that’s what I love most about writing my Marge books too,” she says. “I was able to use Marge as a character to encourage kids to tap into their creativity and let their freak flag fly a little.”

Fisher has now released four of the children’s books — and is shopping around an animated series based around the character at the moment — and says as much as she enjoys the trappings of being an internationally successful actor, the approval of her junior fans means a whole lot more.

Author Isla Fisher particularly loves to impress her young reader fans.

“I want to find someone who is really passionate — as passionate about Marge as I am — and then continue to create the material for young kids,” she says of the TV version in the works.

“Even though it’s fun being an actress and recognised for the people that enjoy your movies, it doesn’t compare to the joy of being recognised by a kid who appreciates your book. There’s something magical about connecting to the imagination of a child and having them ask questions about your character. It’s just so satisfying.”

Fisher and her family split their time between LA and London, but she recently also admitted to a “secret fantasy” of relocating to Byron Bay and says she’s missing her homeland terribly at the moment.

“I don’t know what it is, but I get off the plane in Australia and I just feel relaxed,” she says. “It’s the smell and the taste and the sounds — I am really homesick right now and I am really looking forward to coming back at Christmas.”

Tag opens on Thursday.