You’ve spent all morning doing interviews. What questions are you sick of?
Joe: The one that we’re really bad at answering is, ‘What is your favourite chat-up line?’ because I don’t think in seven years of doing this show that we’ve ever had an answer for it.
Simon: The other one that really annoys us is, ‘Which of you is most like your character?’
Joe: I just say it’s me.
Simon: We just say that to get it over and done with it.
I read an interview and the writer was a bit snobby and smug, and he said, ‘Joe is chatting and obliging and clearly much more mature than James (character name Jay).’ James, would you like to respond to this?
James: Yeah it’s very astute [laughter]. He was probably with us for about five minutes.
Simon: And he’s got to the number, hasn’t he?
James: Good on him, well done.
Joe: He’s a psychologist; that’s unbelievable.
Blake, describe Simon in one word.
Blake: Simon the man?
Joe: Or Simon the boss [laughter].
Simon: Or the legend.
James: Who gets to do Blake?
Joe: We all want to do Blake.
Blake: For Simon…intelligent.
Simon, describe James in one word.
Simon: Filthy. Is that fine?
James: No, I’m not filthy.
Simon: Not in the physical sense, dirty up here [points to his head].
Joe: That’s worse.
James: I’m not more filthy than anyone else here.
Joe, Blake and Will: Uhhhhhhhhhhhh [laughter].
James, what about Joe?
James: Joe? I mean there’s one word…
Joe: Go on.
James: Well, weird, obviously.
Joe: Weird?
James: Wonderfully weird.
Simon: He’s freaky.
Blake, I feel slightly uncomfortable sitting opposite you because I saw the movie yesterday and I’m not sure if I’ve seen your knob or not.
Blake: I can put you at ease because you’ve seen a prosthetic version which is much smaller than the real version, so yeah, don’t worry.
Joe: It’s an absolute monster, isn’t it, your knob in that film?
Was it awkward to film?
Simon: Honestly, it’s never awkward.
Blake: If it’s just us, it’s not awkward, it’s more fun.
Simon: The most embarrassing scenes are the most fun to film because we know they’re going to be memorable moments.
James: They’re physically awkward, but we like it, don’t we?
Joe: The only time there’s been genuine awkwardness was in the series when I had to shoot a scene with my testicle. That was just genuinely awkward. I don’t think the audience had been informed.
Simon: It was at a fashion show in front of a live audience.
Joe: We thought we’d get a better reaction if they didn’t know it was coming.
Blake, you’re staring into the ground in shock.
Blake: I wasn’t in that day, but when I saw that scene with Joe’s testicle out, it was one of the funniest things I’d ever seen. I loved it.
Simon: The awkward moments to film, and they’re rare, are when we have to be earnest and serious, and actually sort of have to…act? [laughter – starting to regret this perk]. Which I hate.
Joe: Sometimes you have people watch you when you act, that’s awkward.
Your manager told me there was a running gag on set.
Joe: Iain and Damon obviously write the show and they have from day one. They have always been on set, which is great, because they infect this atmosphere of naughtiness and playfulness. The first series we filmed, at the end of the first week, they were told off for mucking around too much. For this film, they decided to direct it, which for us – we couldn’t take it seriously, the idea that they were directors. To us, they’re like our mates. We couldn’t obey them.
Blake: They were getting patted on the head a lot – “Oh you’ve done such a good job today! We might ask you back tomorrow!”
Joe: We said they were competition winners and be like, “Oh look at that! That’s your chair! It says ‘director’ – it’s for you!”
Simon: “Do you want to say, ‘Action!’?”
How much flexibility did you have to improvise with the script?
Blake: There was probably more adlibbing in this film than anything we’d done, but it’s still really rare. It’d be quite rude of us to think on the spur of the moment that anything we come up with is funnier than what Iain and David came up with draft after draft.
Joe: Sometimes we forget our lines, and say that we’re improvising, but they see through that.
James, what misconceptions did you have about Australia before you came here?
James: Hmm.
Joe: We did an interview where we were electrocuted during the interview.
James: There seems to be a culture of wacky DJs. You guys love crazy DJs. And if you get the question wrong, we’re gonna shock ya. Then we sheared a sheep.
Joe: We were not very good at it.
James: We were scared.
Simon: We’re not country folk.
Joe: This huge ram came charging out the pen. We were basically hiding behind the bloke.
What would it take to live in Australia…
All: Not very much.
…’s Outback.
All: Oh the Outback…
James: Honestly, the Outback just appealed to me so much.
Simon: We loved the Outback. For the week that we were filming it was amazing. No internet, no phones. We had a great time just us and the crew hanging in the pub.
James: You actually have to connect, and be present, because there wasn’t even television. It really just appealed to me. No crime, well, there’s no-one there! [laughter]
Blake: There’s no-one to report the crime to anyway.
Joe: There are none of the problems associated with people.
I hear you’re going to the footy tonight.
James: I’m looking forward to seeing what it’s all about.
It’s just big guys in short shorts.
James: Well, we’re there! [laughter]
