‘He did apologise and so did I’: Jay Baruchel spills on Jonah Hill feud
We’re All Gonna Die host Jay Baruchel spills on his Hollywood feud with Jonah Hill, the problem with Canadian manners and existential dread.
In your docuseries We’re All Gonna Die (Even Jay Baruchel) you explore the science behind the various ways humanity could meet its doom. It’s now back for a second season - and we’re hearing from experts on everything from asteroids to nuclear warfare, and alien invasions, has fuelled your fear of death or quelled it? I hate my answer - t’s goofy - but it made me more optimistic. I walked away from this season feeling better about it than I did after Season 1. It’s hard not to be encouraged and heartened by people who are working to make everything better. It’s a garbage fire for our species at the moment but it’s also the best it’s ever been.
If there was technology that could make you live forever, would you stave off death for good? At the risk of sounding pompous and vain. Yeah, I’d f**king love to live forever.
What is your earliest memory of experiencing existential dread? One of my grandads would say crazy shit all the time. When I was 11, I remember him volunteering to me that he wakes up every morning and thinks this might be the day he dies. It really nuked my young brain. Up until then I would just wake up and think of frosted flakes for breakfast or whatever.
Out of all the threats to our humanity – apocalypse, pandemics, volcanic eruptions – what do you think is the most exciting way for us to go? Exciting is in the eye of the beholder. I could say an alien invasion would be fun. Though, I’d feel like a real arsehole for saying that if aliens obliterated our world in 10 years time. So my real answer is finding out that we’re actually in a simulation or a matrix situation.
You’ve been a mainstay on the Hollywood comedy scene since starring in films like Tropic Thunder, Knocked Up and Good Neighbours. When did you realise you were funny? I’m Irish on my mum’s side and Jewish on my dad’s. The one thing the two cultures have in common is a great tradition of gallows humour. Taking the piss out of heavy topics is part and parcel of my existence. It’s a self defence mechanism. In early high school, I stopped growing when all the other kids got huge. I thought if I kicked my own ass by acting like Mr Bean or bumping into lockers myself, I’d become a less interesting target. Really, I’ve been using humour to take the edge off things ever since.
You admitted to having a rocky relationship with Jonah Hill when you both worked on the film This is the End. Have you made up since? There was never any making up. It’s more that we’re both guys in our 40s now. He did apologise and so did I. We had an email handshake – of sorts.
Fellow Canadian actor and comedian Seth Rogen has collaborated with you multiple times. Does the friendship extend into real life? The only word I could ever use to describe how I feel about that guy is: love. We’ve known each other since we were 18. Even though we grew up on completely opposite sides of the country, we still had the same cultural touchstones. I’m always for the home team.
What was it like working with Nicolas Cage in The Sorcerer’s Apprentice? I was in awe of this rare, pure artist. He’s larger than life and profoundly unique. He loves nothing more than talking about his favourite movies, music, paintings. I enjoyed his company a great deal. And, let me tell you, it’s afforded me a lifetime’s worth of anecdotes.
Any you can share? [Pauses] I don’t think he’ll take issue with this one. One morning, he showed up to work and said, ‘I had a crazy dream last night.’ He said he was on this boat and there was this man with a shrimp head who kept pointing at him, saying, ‘Shrimp, you f**k.’ 10 minutes later his assistant tapped me on the shoulder and said, ‘Jay, Nic wanted you to see this’. It was a scrap of paper with a charcoal sketch of the shrimp man.
You won best performance in a comedy at the Canadian Screen Awards for your role in the film BlackBerry, in which you play Mike Lazaridis, co-founder of the brand. Do the accolades play a large part in the roles you choose? Would that every job I did gain an award nomination! So no, it’s just gravy. I never have a read on whether or not people will like something I’ve done. It’s since been compared to the American film Air, which had a budget 15 times the size of ours. BlackBerry was world class work with very limited resources. We punched above our weight and got our moment in the sun.
Is it true you had an accident when you found out the project had been greenlit? It was winter and I was near my cottage in the woods [outside of Toronto] driving a rental Mitsubishi SUV on this little snowy dirt path when I got the call from Matt [director of the film] to say we had the go ahead. As he was speaking, the car went over a big patch of black ice, straight into a tree and started smoking. It was an impossibly Canadian moment, I crashed my car in the freezing cold and was too polite to even tell him what I’d done because I didn’t want to spoil the moment!
The BlackBerry had an untimely demise. Is there another trend you’d like to see come back? If it’s acceptable for people to look at their phone in the middle of dinner, I should be able to pull out a book at the table and just read it for 30 seconds at a time. If you’re going to be distracted, be distracted by something of substance. But who am I to say? I’m sure kids are getting plenty out of their social media.
Season 2 of We’re All Gonna Die (Even Jay Baruchel) premieres on SBS Viceland and SBS on Demand on July 29.
