{"id":41423,"date":"2025-08-02T08:47:09","date_gmt":"2025-08-02T08:47:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/41423\/"},"modified":"2025-08-02T08:47:09","modified_gmt":"2025-08-02T08:47:09","slug":"a-ricky-gervais-video-proved-liam-neesons-comedy-skill","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/41423\/","title":{"rendered":"A Ricky Gervais Video Proved Liam Neeson’s Comedy Skill"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you had grown up with the original \u201cNaked Gun\u201d trilogy (1988-1994) like writer\/director Akiva Schaffer,<\/a> chances are you, too, would\u2019ve thought a 2025 franchise reboot was a horrible idea. <\/p>\n

Schaffer, 47, watched the original \u201cNaked Gun\u201d countless times in middle and high school, but his \u201ctrepidation and pessimism\u201d when he got a call about the remake went beyond the typical kneejerk nostalgia to protect a cherished childhood memory. The \u201cSNL\u201d and Lonely Island<\/a> alum is as serious a student of spoofs as anyone in comedy, and it was his considerable professional opinion that a reboot was a fool\u2019s errand.<\/p>\n

\u201cI definitely thought it was a bad idea,\u201d said Schaffer when he was a guest on this week\u2019s episode of IndieWire\u2019s Filmmaker Toolkit<\/a> podcast<\/a> to discuss his new \u201cThe Naked Gun<\/a>.\u201d \u201cThe first movie, specifically, is a perfect movie. It\u2019s almost a magic trick. Every time you think you figured out what they did to make it work in terms of the rules, the next scene breaks that rule in a way \u2014 somehow, their instincts were so good as to what the audience cared about and didn\u2019t care about.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"'Mother<\/a> \"Folktales\"<\/a> <\/p>\n

Schaffer said he took the meeting with Paramount out of \u201cmorbid curiosity,\u201d wondering what the studio\u2019s plans were for the respected property.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe thing that changed my mind was them saying Liam Neeson<\/a> was interested,\u201d said Schaffer.<\/p>\n

One of the keys to success for brothers David and Jerry Zucker, along with Jim Abrahams \u2014the ZAZ producing-directing trio behind \u201cAirplane,\u201d \u201cTop Secret,\u201d and the \u201cNaked Gun\u201d films<\/a>\u2014 was the casting of dramatic actors in Hollywood\u2019s first spoof films.<\/p>\n

\"NAKEDLeslie Nielsen in \u2018Naked Gun 2 1\/2: The Smell of Fear\u2019\u00a9Paramount\/Courtesy Everett Collection<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not that they\u2019re playing it straight; it\u2019s that they\u2019re playing it real,\u201d said Schaffer. \u201cWhen people think of playing it straight, they think of playing it serious, meaning they could get very humorless and flat, and it\u2019s not that. It\u2019s that you\u2019re playing it like you\u2019re an actor who is so dumb, they don\u2019t know that what they\u2019re saying is crazy. That it\u2019s so genuine.\u201d<\/p>\n

Schaffer is not alone in believing no one was better at this than the original \u201cNaked Gun\u201d star Leslie Nielsen, but more importantly, stepping into his Detective Frank Drebin\u2019s shoes would be a mistake.<\/p>\n

\u201cLeslie Nielsen is irreplaceable, one of one, as they say,\u201d said Schaffer. \u201cAny actor that would be trying to do a Leslie Nielsen impression of any sort would be a failing idea.\u201d<\/p>\n

The reason the possibility of Neeson intrigued Schaffer, opening the door a crack to the potential of doing the reboot? A four-minute bit the \u201cTaken\u201d star did in Warwick Davis, Stephen Merchant, and Ricky Gervais<\/a>\u2019 2011 comedy series \u201cLife\u2019s Too Short.<\/a>\u201d <\/p>\n

It\u2019s a well-known clip in comedy circles that Schaffer had watched countless times. In the scene, Neeson plays a severe version of himself, the dramatic actor wanting to try his hand at comedy, but seemingly unaware that AIDS, cancer, famine, and his \u201cSchindler\u2019s List\u201d preparation aren\u2019t suitable comedic premises to riff off. You can watch the scene below.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s all in that clip. He\u2019s playing Liam Neeson<\/a> in it, but it\u2019s clearly a caricature. That\u2019s an amalgamation of every action movie he\u2019s made for the last 10 years, and he\u2019s playing it so serious and so humorless and saying crazy shit,\u201d said Schaffer. \u201cThat\u2019s also why when they said Liam Neeson, I went, \u2018Oh,\u2019 because when you see that clip, you\u2019re like, what an amazing untapped resource. The leading-man, old-school gravitas \u2014 that doesn\u2019t exist anymore, but also [he] hasn\u2019t used his power for comedy yet, almost ever, except that clip and a cameo in \u2018Ted 2.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Schaffer pointed to other handsome leading men, like Alec Baldwin and Jon Hamm, who had successfully made the pivot to comedy, but afterwards kept one career foot firmly planted in the comedy world.<\/p>\n

\u201cLiam never did that pivot. He\u2019s just really rare in that way,\u201d said Schaffer. \u201cIt let me know that we wouldn\u2019t be doing an impersonation.\u201d<\/p>\n

With Neeson, there would be no need to try to replicate or impersonate Nielsen\u2019s work in the 1980s and \u201990s films. Neeson would instead draw from his own well-established, onscreen dramatic persona.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat you see in that Gervais clip, what he showed me, he\u2019s willing to poke fun at this iconic persona he\u2019s been developing,\u201d said Schaffer. \u201cI could be like, \u2018Oh, that\u2019s who he is. That\u2019s his version of it.\u2019 It\u2019s not Leslie\u2019s version. That specifically is why Liam opened it up, because I could see a new version happening.\u201d<\/p>\n

At the beginning of Schaffer\u2019s 2025 \u201cNaked Gun,\u201d it\u2019s established that Neeson\u2019s Detective Drebin is the son of the Nielsen character. His character honors his father\u2019s legacy, from which he could draw lessons, but he is his own man living in his own time. It\u2019s a tidy analogy for how Neeson\u2019s presence allowed Schaffer to approach the original films.<\/p>\n

A Paramount Pictures release, \u201cThe Naked Gun<\/a>\u201d is now in theaters.<\/p>\n

To hear Akiva Schaffer<\/a>\u2018s full interview, subscribe to the Filmmaker Toolkit podcast on\u00a0Apple<\/a>,\u00a0Spotify<\/a>, or your favorite podcast platform.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"If you had grown up with the original \u201cNaked Gun\u201d trilogy (1988-1994) like writer\/director Akiva Schaffer, chances are…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":41424,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[24675,49,48,75,1554,10085,23992,23993],"class_list":{"0":"post-41423","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-akiva-schaffer","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-canada","11":"tag-entertainment","12":"tag-film","13":"tag-filmmaker-toolkit","14":"tag-liam-neeson","15":"tag-the-naked-gun"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41423","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41423"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41423\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/41424"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41423"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41423"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41423"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}