My Second Date with Jason Segal by Role Mommy West Coast Correspondent Kristin Flannery…
When meeting Jason Segel during a press junket for “Gulliver’s Travels,” I was struck by the fact that he is really, really tall. You see, in “Gulliver’s Travels” he plays a little person. Actually, he’s the biggest little person in Lilliput, an island populated by tiny people. When Gulliver (Jack Black) travels through an “inter-dimensional portal,” he winds up in an alternate world that has juxtaposed modern-day and old-school sensibilities. There, he befriends Horatio (Jason Segel), a commoner with a BIG crush on Princess Mary (Emily Blunt).
Jason says that size has always played an important role in his life, “I was six four since I was 12. The kids didn’t really like me that much. I was very shy. Very, very, very shy. And my parents sent me to the local, community theater to take acting class just to help get me out of my shell.”
Jason says that as he matured, he grew into his height. “I also became a pretty good athlete during high school and I won a couple state championships in basketball.” Luckily, his love of acting never waned. “In junior year of high school, I wanted to try to put on a play again,” he says. As fate would have it, that’s when Jason was discovered by a Hollywood casting director who just happened to be taking a tour of his high school.
Segal says that being a tall person playing a little person was not too much of a challenge in “Gulliver’s Travels” because the producers used a groundbreaking camera known as the DualMoCo (the “MoCo” is for motion control). While Black was in one area of the soundstage, performing against a green screen, the actors portraying the Lilliputians would be on another part of the stage, acting “opposite” Black.
When asked how hard was it to be a little person, since he’s so tall in real life, Jason replied, “See, I viewed it the opposite. We were normal size, and Jack was huge. That’s how I always viewed it because we were to scale of all the buildings around us. We were just acting regular. Jack did most of the green screen.”
And just so you know ladies, Jason Segel is as charming as he is tall! I was lucky enough to meet him twice and look forward to being asked to more of his press junkets in 2011. He is the type of guy who is charming and sincere and you feel like you can tell him anything. Which doesn’t always work in his favor as Jason revealed. “I had a dialect coach and I have to say it was really awkward. The lady was really nice. But, at one point she said, “I think we’ve done enough of the elocution lessons. Why don’t you and I just sit and we’ll have lunch, and we’ll just talk in English accents. And so, we go and we show up for lunch, and we’re talking. And then, the talk starts to get real serious and she starts telling me about her divorce and how she doesn’t get to see her kid as much as she would like. And she’s crying.” I don’t know about you, but I think there’s a talk show in Jason’s future.
You can hear more of the adorable Jason Segel’s interview by clicking here and look for him in “Gulliver’s Travels” coming out Christmas Day – December 25th!
Role Mommy 3.0