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Interview: Hank Azaria Talks Lovelace, The Simpsons, and More

The actor told me about porn, Gerard Damiano’s Jheri curl, and the shelf life of The Simpsons, all while making me laugh out loud…a lot.

Interview: Hank Azaria Talks Lovelace, The Simpsons, and More
Photo: RADiUS-TWC

Hank Azaria is freezing. When I enter his suite at New York’s Mandarin Oriental hotel, the ever-versatile performer is sporting an oversized white robe. “Sorry about this,” Azaria says. “It was really cold in here.” For me, the scene is jarring, particularly after having run through Columbus Circle in 90-degree heat. Azaria looks like a character, but more importantly, he looks a little ridiculous. Playwright Jenelle Riley has gone on record calling Azaria “the best actor working today,” and anyone who’s ever taken an acting class knows that step one is a willingness to make a fool of yourself. That’s never been a problem for Azaria, who, whether in the flesh or with just his voice, has fearlessly pushed himself to lovably buffoonish ends, in a fashion that’s distinctly and recognizably his. Creating myriad caricatures of varying origins that somehow always remain soulful and innocuous, the actor, 49, has surely been a part of your life in one way or another, be it as the voice of many characters on The Simpsons, or as the co-star of films as diverse as The Birdcage and Dodgeball.

Azaria can ably play serious (look no further than his work in Billy Ray’s Shattered Glass), but comedy will likely always be his forté, and you can get a diverse dose of it right now on the big screen. In The Smurfs 2, the madcap whiz is back as the evil Gargamel, and in Lovelace, he takes on the role of the colorful, fashion-challenged Deep Throat director Gerard Damiano. For all its apparent attempts at camp, the latter film isn’t a comedy, but that doesn’t mean Azaria isn’t a riot. Unleashing some of his expert dialects to boot, the benevolent-seeming guy told me about porn, Gerard’s Jheri curl, and the shelf life of The Simpsons, all while making me laugh out loud…a lot.

It’s ironic that the two films you have in release right now, The Smurfs 2 and Lovelace, are basically at opposite ends of the taboo spectrum: a kids’ flick and a porn-star biopic. Which other movie of yours would you say lands in the middle of those, in a neutral, fit-for-everybody zone? Mystery Men? Godzilla?

Hmm, I don’t know. Something that’s halfway between Lovelace and Smurfs? I guess Mystery Men. I mean, the most popular thing I did was probably The Birdcage, but I’ve done such varied roles that I tend to get little cross-section-y reactions from people. Quiz Show was one a lot of people seemed to respond to. A lot of people remembered that story, and it was a New York thing—people from my parents’ generation, especially, remembered the scandal and the era. But I don’t know if there’s anything between Smurfs and Lovelace. I don’t know if that zone exists. [laughs]

Well, the gulf between them speaks to your versatility. Do you feel different approaching a set to play Gargamel than you do approaching a set to play Gerry Damiano? Or is a job a job?

Ultimately, the short answer to your question is “a job is a job.” You approach everything just like, “How do I make this work and come to life?” The Smurfs thing is extraordinarily broad, even for me, and I’m mostly falling down and getting hit in the head so five-year-olds can really enjoy it. That’s mostly what I’m doing there, though I do try to get as much into those movies for Mom and Dad as I can. In a thing like Lovelace, the mechanism of acting is the same, and it’s the same with voiceover. There’s no difference. But obviously Lovelace has an ensemble. With Smurfs there’s literally nobody there. They’re all animated, and I’m just doing gags with pretend cats and pretend Smurfs. Something like Lovelace lets you take in all the performances around you and react to them, as opposed to fabricating some lunatic, odd cartoon world.

And, of course, doing a fact-based film calls for a little more homework, which in this case involved watching some porn, I’d imagine. Did you watch a lot of Damiano’s stuff, or porn in general?

Well, in that sense, I suppose I’ve been researching this role since I was 14 or 15 years old. [laughs] But, you know, I got lucky on this film, because there’s a lot of footage of Gerry Damiano being interviewed, and him really spilling it about what it was like to make [Deep Throat], what the journey was for him, what it meant to him—a ton of from-the-horse’s-mouth stuff. And there was also just a lot of who he was in there. There he was [adopts New Yawk accent], talking like he talked, and with his crazy hair.

I was going to ask if he was always rocking that Jheri curl.

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Oh, totally. Every interview. And it was just a complete wig. Like, one of the worst toupées I’ve ever seen. And he was a hairdresser! How any woman would trust this man to work on her hair, with this thing sitting on his head, I’ll never know. It was also two-toned, by the way. He was white-haired on the side with this big black thing on the top. I didn’t go that far in the film, honestly, because no one would have believed it. People would have been like, “What the hell? What is that?” As it was, it was already insane.

Well, I guess that answers the question of what the craziest thing you learned about him was: the hairdresser bit.

Yes. That was a bit of a shock.

Another real-life guy you played was Michael Kelly in Shattered Glass, which also had you starring opposite Peter Saragaard. If Michael Kelly, or The New Republic, for that matter, were to do a story on Gerry Damiano, what angle would they take?

Well, the facts on him are amazing. Here’s a guy who was a hairdresser, who stumbled onto porn movie sets, and was more a lover of film than a pornographer. He was that too, and loved sex, and loved being around that whole sexual world, but was genuinely kind of childlike and enthusiastic about movies. His dream, his artistic dream in life, was to make “good” porno movies, with a good plot, and good story, and laughs, and heart. So, anyway, the angle would be that he was a guy who tried to elevate porn. He made this horrible movie, and yet, that became a tremendous success anyway. It’s an unbelievable story.

So, “Hairdresser Becomes Wannabe Spielberg of Porn”?

Yes. And he achieved that! But not in the way he thought he would. I wonder if he ever got the joke that the movie was really terrible. I don’t think he did.

Well, even with the hair and everything else, one of Gerry’s most memorable traits here is the voice—that Italian-American Bronx voice. It’s one of many you’ve delivered through the years. Is there a favorite voice that you’ve done, for film, specifically?

No. I mean, with Gerry, I’m from New York, and I know that New York accent. I did a similar version of it in Quiz Show, and probably to a less-successful extent in Godzilla. But that’s the way I grew up talking.

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I feel like a lot of people might cite The Birdcage when thinking about their favorite Hank Azaria voice work, but what I always come back to is America’s Sweethearts, in which your character keeps bugging Catherine Zeta-Jones about going to…is it the “yunket?” Meaning junket?

The “hunket.”

Right. And here we are, at the “hunket.”

Here we are. Life imitates art. That was basically cheap. It was a cheat. It was a decent Spanish accent, but in Castillian, they only lisp on the “C.” Like, they would say, “inthisive,” or if they’re saying “city,” a “thity.” But they won’t lisp and say, like, “perthpective.” They wouldn’t lisp an “S.” But we made him lisp the whole thing because it’s a cheap laugh. It’s like the vocal equivalent of having your eyes crossed.

I’m sorry I mispronounced “hunket.”

Thath okay.

Hahaha. You’ve said in the past that you’re all tapped out when it comes to creating new voices, and that even the new ones are versions of ones you’ve already done in the past. Do you still feel that way?

Let’s put it this way: I had a lot waiting to go in my arsenal. Like a lot. And I didn’t think it would ever run out, because there was so much I could mimic and spit back. But then, at some point with The Simpsons, I think we did run into like, everything. Even if it’s just a line or two, I’ve done just about every voice I can do. That said, once or twice a year now on The Simpsons we’ll hit on some kind of new thing. But I have to really actively try to find it.

For all the work you’ve done, I think it’s fair to say that The Simpsons has immortalized you. And yet, you yourself aren’t going to live forever, and I often think about how the showrunners wrestle with that idea. The Simpsons seems like the unending sitcom, but its actors won’t always be there. I imagine vast audio files of your vocals pre-recorded for future episodes.

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Well, God, I hope the show goes that long that that actually becomes a problem. We’re getting to a point with technology, right, where, probably within the next five or 10 years, they could cobble together whatever they need just from the audio of performances already given. Although, I don’t know. I don’t think that’s true. You can’t replace human timing, and comedic timing, and instinct. But, hey, as long as they want to keep going, while we age and the characters don’t, that’s fine with me.

TV is a medium in which you seem to have found just as much success as film, and also in which you’ve been able to work with a lot of your friends, like Oliver Platt and Matthew Perry [onHuff and Friends, respectively]. Are you someone who keeps grounded by having buddies in the biz?

Yeah. It’s important to have friends not in show business too. I don’t have any, but I hear it’s important. [laughs] But yeah, those guys: I went to college with Oliver, and Matthew was the first friend I made in L.A. He was 17 when I met him and I was 22. It’s nice to have that connection to the past.

Okay. So, Gargamel and Gerry Damiano walk into Moe Szyslak’s bar. What happens?

Hmm. [Adopt’s Moe’s voice] Well, Moe probably gets upset that some kind of weird monk walked in, and reminds him that he still has to pay for his beer. Moe probably insults Damiano’s hairpiece, and probably points out that the two of them together would make for some normal hair. You get the top of Damiano’s head and the sides of Gargamel’s head, and you got a decent head of hair there. [laughs] Ah, I don’t know. Best to just keep those characters apart, probably. And just don’t make a mistake with the kids. Don’t take the kids to see Lovelace!

R. Kurt Osenlund

R. Kurt Osenlund is a creative director and account supervisor at Mark Allen & Co. He is the former editor of Out magazine.

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