‘New Girl was too scary for me to quit smoking’: Jake Johnson on endurance, pickleball and Prince | Movie

Yyou might think that Jake Johnson would know a little about pickleball. The player plays in The Dink, the spiritual successor of Dodgeball – it has a Ben Stiller cameo – and he plays Dusty Boyd, a former tennis pro turned plucky pickleball. Maybe Johnson took the gig because he loves the game so much, he loves famous balls and amazingly smooth paddles? “Nothing has happened,” says the actor, cheerfully, in a video from Los Angeles.

Yet this lowly player, beloved by retirees, still found him. At the climax of the video, Dusty has to play against an old enemy, which means that Johnson had to do months of real pickleball and tennis training, so it looks like he can play. “It was like WWE. They call it a fake fight. The consequences are there, but you still have to fight. That was probably the most stressful part of the movie for me.”

Dink came to Johnson through his writer, Sean Clements, who was involved in the game. “He started playing pickleball, and then he became friends with a group of older women in Beverly Hills. He’s like, he talks so bad, and he’s so competitive, it’s so funny.” At the time, Johnson was looking for a different kind of comedy. “I wanted to do something fun and light, with big funny pieces. I wanted to make a movie that felt old school, without messages, not trying to teach people anything.” It was just before the 2024 US presidential election. “I know, though, it’s going to be crazy in our country, and it’s going to be very divided, and the Internet is going to be angry about everything, and we’re all going to be fighting,” he says.

Dink was born out of a desire to escape, if only for a moment. “I thought, if I’m going to do something, I don’t want to throw more fuel on that fire.” You can say that the world is on fire, and you have a great proof.

There is no denying that culture has taken on a new dimension in recent years. From Marty Supreme to One Battle After Anothermovies and television are increasingly crowded, dull and often very stressful to watch. “You’re going: man, I know everyone loves this, and it’s won all the awards, but I can’t watch it. I’m already stressed out.”

The Dink is the rest. Dust is “common”, according to Johnson. He works at his father’s country club and is still haunted by the injuries that ended his successful tennis career, which he blames on Andy Roddick. When Dusty picks up pickleball, he joins a gang of older, tough-talking women, led by Mary Steenburgen’s Candace, who schools Dusty in sports and life. In a very endearing way, Dusty and Candace have a strong intergenerational relationship. He said: “I don’t agree with the idea that men and women can’t be friends, and no matter what, people just end up having sex. “It sounds old school and puritanical to me.” Steenburgen is a comedy legend, and Johnson was already a big fan. “Parenting really appealed to me when I first saw it, as did the Step Brothers. the eldest friend. Mary is my friend. I talk to Mary all the time. “

Has Johnson ever seen a video of Zendaya’s hot, sweaty, racquetball-playing great Opponents? He didn’t, he says, but rejects his colleague Aaron Chen’s response: “Chen refers to our film as Sexier Challengers.”

Johnson started playing sports in high school, in Chicago. He dropped out of school at the age of 15, not knowing what direction his life would take, but he returned to give it one last shot. “I couldn’t break the rules, I just knew there was nothing going on, and then I made a play, and I was like, oh! this it’s big.” It changed his life. He said: “For the first time I received help from adults who did not like me.

What’s not to like? “I don’t know,” he said. “And most of the time, I’ve brought matches.” Acting turned that restless energy into something positive. “I didn’t know it could be a real job. I didn’t realize that Cheers, which is my favorite show, was a group of actors who had jobs. As soon as I started doing math, I decided I had to get into it. That’s all for me.”

He moved to Los Angeles and spent many years as an actor, taking whatever he could, whenever he could. “I call it grinding,” he recalls. “If a trade comes, I’ll take it. If a (role) player comes, then I’ll take it.” He appeared in Curb Your Enthusiasm as “The Man on the Cell Phone”, in Take Him to the Greek as “Jazz Man”. He describes Hollywood as “a really long dinner table with a bunch of chairs, and the chairs keep coming out, and then a new part will come.

Then came New Girl, a sitcom that came into his life when he was 33. For seven years, he played the love interest, Nick, to Zooey Deschanel’s Jess. “New Girl was a very scary job, because they were all really ready. I had to stop smoking pot, because I was like, oh, these fools know their lines! I have to change something and do it quickly, otherwise I will lose the job,” he laughs.

That work gave him his seat at the table. New Girl was so broke that a few years later, Prince reached out and asked her to come. He was a huge fan of the show, and watched it on his tour bus. He appeared in 2014, in the Super Bowl episode that was watched by 26.3 million people. Once settled, Prince cast Deschanel as Jess, and Johnson as Nick. “I grew up loving Prince. We used to take road trips from Chicago just to hear his music in Minneapolis. So I thought, I’m going to show this guy some respect. I’m not going to be weird. And then I heard him say, ‘I want to meet Nick now.’ And he was very big. ” They talked for hours about sports and TV. “Cheers, Roseanne and New Girl. Those were her three shows.”

When New Girl exploded, Johnson’s life changed. “I think it blew my mind for six months. I came out, and I didn’t know what it all meant.” Bill Murray has a great quote that once you get famous, you have about a year of being an ass, and then if you’re an ass after that, it just means you’re an ass. It took Johnson a while to get used to being recognized in the world, but it helped that he was already in his 30s. “Honestly, the dust just settled.

Johnson has been working hard since then, with various and busy projects, from blockbusters including Jurassic World and The Mummy, to the comedy of the great publication that has been brutally terminated Minx (“that one makes me sad”) and, most recently, the murder mystery of the Apple sex camera Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed. He’s reunited with his old Drinking Buddies and Digging for Fire director Joe Swanberg, of The Sun Never Sets, and Dakota Fanning. As we speak, they have just closed a deal to take it to theaters, with an expected release date later this year.

However, she says, there’s nothing like having children to keep you from being afraid. In 2014, his wife, actress Erin Payne, gave birth to their twin daughters. “Kids change everything. I think if I didn’t have kids, I would have a ponytail now, and I wouldn’t wear a shirt for this interview, because I wouldn’t trust a shirt,” she laughs. “Kids wear you down, fast no fans of old Jakester and his work. “

Not even Spider-Man? (He portrayed a version of Spider-Man in two movies, Into the Spider-Verse and Across the Spider-Verse; a third is in production.) “They thought Hailee’s (Steinfeld) Spider-Gwen was cool. She had to tell them that’s not exactly how it works. “I was like, I can’t say, ‘Can I be cool in it?'”

It sounds like Johnson has no problem being humble. “Exactly right,” he says. “Unfortunately!”