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JOh See Reilly He eyed me warily when I approached him at a deli in the San Fernando Valley, where he suggested we meet for lunch. He’s standing near the door, wearing a tan fedora and holding up his slacks with black suspenders, making him look like an old man. His shirt sleeves are rolled up, acknowledging the Southern California heat, and he looks at me with a quizzical look that asks: Is this the writer sent to interview me, or just some crazy fan who wants to take a selfie and “shake and cook” with the guy. Talladega Nights,
A few moments later, when we walked into a booth and ordered matzo ball soup and a pot of tea, Reilly confessed that he had become uncomfortable with his level of fame. When his career first took off in the mid-1990s, Reilly’s humanity and emotional authenticity made him one of America’s finest character actors, beloved by many artists. Paul Thomas Anderson And martin scorseseThen came a series of big-budget comedies: his aforementioned Will Ferrell Nascar romance in 2006 was followed in quick succession by sublime musical spoofs. walk hard And step brotherHis reunion with Ferrell which presented the pair as rival step-siblings, it was they movies Which gave Reilly a different kind of identity.
“That’s part of it I didn’t see coming, and I don’t particularly like it,” he says. “I am much more shy and private than I am about fame. I am not one of those artists who has a deep hole inside that has to be filled by the anonymous affection of the audience.” That shyness marks our time together. Reilly will happily sit in court for 20 minutes without interruption on topics he is passionate about. However, that verboseness is a kind of defense mechanism, a means of keeping the conversation on safe ground; When we draw attention to topics she’s not interested in discussing, she has no problem letting silence fill the air.
Recently, Reilly has been wondering what it is that motivates him. In recent years, he has had blockbuster success voicing the title character of Disney’s wreck it Ralph films, and leading the cast of the HBO basketball drama to critical acclaim time to winWhen the latter was canceled in 2023, he gave himself a chance to think about what he wanted to do next. “I was trying to find meaning for my life,” he says. “I’m 60 years old. I’ve done over 80 movies and a lot of plays. I’ve made a lot of money and become quite famous as a kid on the South Side of Chicago. I asked myself: What gets you up in the morning now?”
The answer, it turned out, was show tunes. In 2002, Reilly starred in the musical film adaptation chicago As Amos, the oft-ignored husband of Renée Zellweger’s Roxy Hart. The role gifted him with the big musical number “Mr. Cellophane”, which he performed with such gusto that he was nominated for an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor. “I had an amazing experience playing that role and getting so much attention for it,” he recalls. “Then it was over, and I just moved on with my career.”
Reilly dreamed of taking “Mr. Cellophane” on tour, but the plan was disrupted by an glaring flaw: the character only has one song. Instead, he looked for music in a similar style, old standards from the Great American Songbook, and new compositions by Tom Waits that could showcase the raw emotion of his singing voice. “The first was Irving Berlin’s ‘What Would I Do,'” he says. “I spent 20 years collecting good songs, but I realized they’re not about not being seen, which is ‘Mr. Cellophane.’ Yes. He’s Mr. Romantic.”
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So for the past few years, Reilly has been touring the United States as Mr. Romantic, a vaudeville singer who is born new on stage every night when he crawls out of the steamer trunk where he lives. Reilly created the character – who he’s bringing to London and Dublin later this month – not only as a medium for the songs he wants to share, but also as a response to the world’s need for a clown who wears his heart on his sleeve. “I was looking at what was happening politically, what was happening to our empathy and what was happening to us as a result of the phone,” he says. “This thing that was supposed to be uniting us is actually dividing us. So out of joy and despair, I created this mythological character.”
When Mr. Romantic comes out of his box, he exists under two rules: he has to put on a show, and if he successfully finds someone who will love him forever, he doesn’t have to go back into the box. No two shows are ever the same, as the conceit allows Reilly to present an unexpected blend of torch songs, old-fashioned showmanship and interactive crowd work. It also distances him from any preconceived notions of the audience. He admits that his previous musical venture, a straight-ahead bluegrass band, had surprised fans who were expecting to laugh at Bozo. step brother,
“Mr. Romantic has no memory,” he explains. “What it does for the audience is it takes everybody into the present moment. I’m not talking about current events. I’m just talking about things in this room tonight. For an actor who doesn’t really like presenting himself to an audience, it’s a great way to do a show.”
Although Reilly may have created the character to protect himself from the public eye, the show is actually his most personal work to date. Born on May 24, 1965, in Chicago, Reilly grew up singing songs by Irving Berlin and George Gershwin on his mother’s player piano. The fifth of six children in an Irish Catholic family, he discovered his love for performing early, participating in his church youth group’s “clown ministry.” “They taught us the rules and ethos of makeup and clowning,” he remembers. “Then we’d go to street fairs or nursing homes, and do it all for free.”
As he grew older, his focus shifted towards serious dramatic roles. Reilly made his first film appearance in 1988 as a thug in the Chicago-set Steven Seagal film above the law Before landing small parts in Brian De Palma casualties of War and Tony Scott’s On the day of thunder, With Tom Cruise. Then, in 1994, she was paired with 24-year-old aspiring filmmaker Paul Thomas Anderson at an event at the Sundance Film Festival.
“By the time I met Paul, I’d done about a dozen movies, and he was one of the first people who said, ‘Wait, it’s the same actor,'” he recalls. They became fast friends. “This is where we’ll meet, there’s two booths on this side,” he says, pointing to a spot in the deli. “He’s a brilliant writer, and really funny. He comes from a big family like mine. We really hit it off.”
In 1996, when Anderson made his first feature, hard eight, He gave Reilly his first starring role as a wide-eyed gambler Philip Baker Hall takes under his wing, they collaborated again Boogie Nights And magnolia, The films that began Anderson’s string of ill-fated Oscar wins; He was nominated 11 times but never won. Asked if this year’s one fight after another Changing things for his friend, Reilly replies: “I’d say it’s taken a lot of time!”
When the world is so harsh, asking people to forget everything and laugh can be a hard thing to do
It seems that Reilly is less eager to focus on the comedies he is known for. when i start asking something step brother, He He is silently fascinated by the bowl placed in front of him. Her co-star Ferrell and the film’s director Adam McKay ended their long working relationship in 2019, reportedly over McKay’s decision to cast Reilly instead of Ferrell. time to winSo the three of them spending time together can be considered rocky terrain. Alternatively, Reilly’s hesitation may simply be explained by the incongruity between the beloved songs he is currently touring with and that film’s nonsense rap parody “Boats ‘N Hoes”.
He summarized, quoting the song’s lyrics, “I’ve written a lot about that song: ‘The Nina, the Pinta, the Santa Maria/ I’ll bottom you while you’re drinking sangria.’ For better or worse, that was written by me. He steps back, looking back at his soup. “It’s hard, though, when you’re in a public place with your kids and people are yelling ‘Boats ‘n Hose’ at you through the airport.”
Reilly has more to say walk hardwhich struggled at the box office in 2007, but has since gained a devoted following among those intrigued by its loving send-up of musical biopic clichés and the surprisingly sharp songs crafted for its fictional hero, Dewey Cox. Reilly has tentative plans to revive Cox for a series of live shows to celebrate the film’s 20th anniversary in a few years.
“Right now, it’s just my idea,” he says. “I’ve always wanted to go back on tour as Dewey Cox, because we did a tour when the movie came out, but nobody knew the songs. Now that movie is a serious cult favorite, especially among musicians. Jack White has expressed interest in re-releasing the soundtrack on vinyl. So I think we’re going to sell some tickets for that tour.”
The era of studio comedies that created Talladega Nights, walk hard And step brother Seems to belong to the distant past. Some have blamed changes in the movie business, but Reilly suggests that the prevailing cultural mood had as much to do with it. He argues, “My theory is that comedy is like a garden of flowers.” “For something as innocent and beautiful as comedy to flourish, the conditions have to be right. When the world is so harsh, it can be hard to ask people to forget everything and laugh at everything.”
he brings us back mr romanticReilly’s earnest attempt to remind the world to love each other one song at a time. He released an in-character album, what’s not to love?earlier this year and says he hopes to continue performing the show for the rest of his life. Waking up blinking from that trunk each night, he found the meaning he was looking for.
“It’s a very empty life for an actor to just chase fame and money,” he says. “Once you get to where I am, you want to leave behind a world that’s worth living in. Elon Musk and some of these other people say empathy is a weakness, empathy is a trap. That’s not true. Empathy is the cornerstone of civilization. So I decided to do something with my worries, not let them bother me. I shed light on those things. “I decided to put in which I think are amazing.”
we do not have time. As Reilly stands up to leave, we begin to exchange a few words about living in Los Angeles, but I notice him hesitating, getting defensive. His finger hovers over my dictaphone.
“I’m going to press stop,” he says.
‘Mr Romantic’ is at the Soho Theater Walthamstow from 17 to 19 November and the Ambassador Theatre, Dublin on 20 November. ‘what’s not to love?’ Now available to stream