By Susan Wloszczyna, USA TODAY
LOS ANGELES � This story of lady and the scamp begins not with a plate of shared spaghetti but with a pair of underpants.
By Michael T. Larsen, for USA TODAY
British bond: Oscar winner Helen Mirren and comic bad boy Russell Brand became friends during the filming of Arthur, a remake of the 1981 comedy.
By Michael T. Larsen, for USA TODAY
British bond: Oscar winner Helen Mirren and comic bad boy Russell Brand became friends during the filming of Arthur, a remake of the 1981 comedy.
And not just any underpants, mind you, but canary-yellow men's Y-fronts, to be exact.
Before Helen Mirren joined forces with fellow Brit Russell Brand to re-create the memorable partnership between John Gielgud's deliciously droll butler and Dudley Moore's lovable rich lush in 1981's Arthur, they both appeared in last year's largely ignored adaptation of Shakespeare's The Tempest.
She was the star. He wasn't.
"The whole film was built around Helen's questionable talent," says Brand, 35, who takes the lead in their comedy remake that opens Friday. "I was only in it fleetingly. Essentially, I was the tea boy. I was in one scene where Helen had a sort of speech, and I had to stand there reacting to Helen. I tried to make my reactions very big so they would cut away to me, but it didn't work at all."
It wasn't until he was about to leave the production that he fully caught her attention. "I gave you my underpants," says Brand, his head full of inky Medusa curls nuzzled against the radiant dame in question as he semi-reclines on a hotel couch.
"No, no," says Mirren, 65, correcting him in a way that only someone who has been bestowed with bountiful awards for playing both Elizabeth I and II can. "I took your underpants."
She elaborates: "He was clearing out his trailer and he came to say goodbye ? that's because he's actually a very, very good boy and a polite boy, nicely brought up by his mum. And on top of his pile of stuff was this pair of underpants. I said, 'Can I have those as a memento?' and he said, 'Yes.' "
Um, were they clean? "He says they're not," Mirren says. "I say they are. I've still got them."
Gazing fondly at Brand, she adds, "I've got your DNA, man."
Her serpentine-eyebrowed seatmate responds: "There are other ways ..."
Charmed, she's sure
The dirty laugh that issues forth from Mirren lends insight into how an Oscar-toting queen of the big screen and a once-notorious substance-abusing wild man turned foppish farceur managed to mesh their disparate personalities in an update of a screwball relic of the Reagan era.
The key to refreshing the premise of a overindulged drunkard and his loyal keeper, says Brand ?who also holds the lofty title of executive producer on Arthur ? was to have Gielgud's Hobson undergo a gender change and transform into a nanny.
The only current actress he could think of as the female equal to Sir John was Dame Helen. After a two-hour meeting where he all but charmed the pants off of Mirren, the deal was basically sealed.
"I kind of floated out of there on a bit of a cloud, really, going, 'Oh, my God, he's fantastic,' " she recalls. "I absolutely wanted to do this movie."
Not that they both weren't slightly apprehensive about working with one another.
"I was awed because of her career and her reputation," says Brand, whose best-known role among his handful of movies was as reprobate rocker Aldous Snow in both 2008's Forgetting Sarah Marshall and 2010's Get Him to the Greek.
"I was basically terrified," Mirren says. "Just look at Russell. The legs, the snake hips, the hair, the naughty, naughty, naughty eyes looking at you, boring a hole into your soul. It's a terrifying package for an old-fashioned girl like me."
Considering that this sexy senior can still pull off a mean bikini (as a beach-holiday snapshot from 2008 proved) and bears a star tattoo on her left thumb (a souvenir from an inebriated night in Minnesota long ago), perhaps she protests too much.
Mirren took it upon herself to break the ice early on. "You said" ? Brand puts on a throaty posh accent ? " 'Stop respecting me!' " Just in case he wasn't paying attention, she smacked him on the arm for good measure.
Despite any Freudian implications suggested by the sight of her daintily peeling Brand's breakfast banana ("I've peeled many in my time," she purrs), the two say they're just good friends. Not the least because they are both happily married: she to director Taylor Hackford (Ray) since 1997 and he to chart-topping pop songbird Katy Perry (I Kissed a Girl) since October.
Platonic pals
"Yes, we are friends, but weird friends," Mirren says. "It exists in a sort of other universe, our friendship. Where there is no sex and no age difference. It's not like Russell and I hang together. We don't. I haven't gone to your house, you haven't gone over to my house. We've never been on a double date. We've never been out for dinner. I can't go out for drinks with him because he doesn't drink."
Observes Brand, who has been drug-and-alcohol free for about nine years, "Essentially, it's a very superficial friendship."
These platonic buddies also took great care to avoid hints that Hobson harbors anything but maternal feelings for her overgrown charge. "Helen's character is a surrogate mother figure for Arthur in the movie," says Jason Winer, a director/producer during the first season of ABC's hit sitcom Modern Family who is making his feature debut. "She was very conscious to desexualize herself."
Flirtatious banter? Of course. But all in good fun. "I don't know if he is teasing or not, but Russell professes to be quite attracted to Helen," Winer says. "Frankly, they adore each other, and my job as a director was to put that adoration on film."
Besides, Brand's Arthur is more of a spoiled sprite than Moore's hooker-happy souse, complete with a penthouse playpen filled with toys and gadgets. Instead of tooling around in a Rolls-Royce, his vehicle of choice is the Batmobile. The real Batmobile, that is, used in the Caped Crusader's films.
Just to make the superhero fantasy complete, Brand also dons the infamous George Clooney Batsuit circa 1997, ab indents, rubber nipples and all.
"Did it have his name in it?" Mirren inquires.
"No, but it had his sweat in it, and I think that elevated my performance," Brand answers.
As much as they joke around, the film clearly holds a great deal of meaning for both of them.
For Brand, it was the message behind merriment.
"The reason Arthur chimed with me so strongly is that he is a man whose life is changed by falling in love," he says of how a whimsical working-class dreamer (indie-film darling Greta Gerwig) inspires his character to mend his ways.
"I've undergone this experience," he says. "I fell in love with somebody, I've gotten married and my life is changed and I'm very happy with the way things are working out. I'm much happier presenting Oscars with Dame Helen Mirren than I am purchasing crack in East London."
Instead of being the same unruly rogue who spent the day after the 9/11 attacks working as an MTV VJ while dressed like Osama bin Laden, Brand now prefers to exploit his bad-boy past in his movie roles. Even his animated heir to the title of Easter Bunny in Hop, which topped last weekend's box office with $37.5 million, has a rebellious streak. "He runs around in just a shirt and no pants," he notes. "He's a cheeky bunny."
Mirren pipes up: "Does he have a little ... tail?"
"Yes, Helen, he does have a tail," he answers with a mock-harrumph, "if THAT is your question."
Meanwhile, Mirren is getting a kick out of throwing her fans a few curveballs of late. She did her period-piece duty as the long-suffering Mrs. Tolstoy in 2009's The Last Station (and earned her fourth Oscar nomination). But she spent last year slumming as a brothel madam in Love Ranch and as a Gatling-gun-toting assassin in Red. Now she finds herself doing her first film that can rightfully be called a comedy, although 2003's Calendar Girlsand 2004's Raising Helen came close.
Being declared best actress for 2006's The Queen granted her the freedom to expand her choices, she says. "Although the American film industry was already well aware of me, I think the Oscar made them see me in a different light. Jerry Bruckheimer was the first guy to step up," referring to the producer of the 2007 National Treasure sequel. "People began to understand I didn't mind making a fool of myself."
Indeed, Mirren is fearless enough to have signed up for Saturday Night Live hosting duties this weekend.
Gielgud as role model
Someone else who didn't mind playing the fool? Gielgud. In fact, they both had the nerve to appear in the trashy 1979 Roman orgy of sex, violence and bad taste known as Caligula.
"I've decided that John Gielgud is my guardian angel in a way," Mirren says. "He is somewhere over my shoulder." Not only do they have Hobson in common, they both played Prospero (or, in her case, Prospera) from The Tempest on film. The esteemed stage and screen actor, who died in 2000 at age 96 and won a supporting Oscar for Arthur, also was an inspiration to Mirren when she was starting out in her 20s.
"He was just so respected, so on a pinnacle," she says. "But of all those actors from that generation ?Ralph Richardson, Laurence Olivier, Paul Scofield? he was the only one who did things like Arthur and Caligula. He had the courage to step out and do these completely unexpected things. I wanted to be a serious actress, but I also wanted the courage to do things no one would ever expect me to do."
That includes improvising during Arthur? a talent she denied even having.
"It turns out she can and is quite good, too," says Brand, especially when Mirren took a few liberties while reading aloud the exploits of Arthur's favorite storybook characters.
"They were erotic and frankly filthy versions of Frog and Toad, behaving in the most reprehensible manner," he says. "Not fit for the ears of children, adults or the worst kind of deviants."
Sounds as if Saturday Night Live viewers might be in for a real treat.
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