Photo: Michael Bezjian/2010 Michael Bezjian
From his first fleeting TV guest spot on the forgotten MTV series Dead at 21 through his current stint as Ben Wyatt on Parks and Recreation, Adam Scott has had a lot of roles, some of which he’s been proud of, some less so. With a résumé as varied as his (Hellraiser: Bloodline, Party of Five, Step Brothers ) we thought it was time to call him up for an anecdote speed round: We threw out entries in his filmography and demanded his funniest, oddest, most awkward, or enlightening moments from the set. (Fortunately, he leaned more toward the awkward, which always make for the best stories.) So read on for an Adam Scott Babylon filled with tales of bad acting choices, Boy Meets World co-star feuds, prosthetic penises, and — to keep it classy — master classes from Martin Scorsese.
In season one, Scott landed the role of a patient who had been hit by a car.”I had three lines or whatever, but I remember that week George Clooney was on the cover of TV Guide for the first time, and so people were starting to notice him. I remember just sitting there, smoking outside and watching him play basketball and thinking like, Wow, it’s all starting to happen to that guy. I hadn’t seen
ER and I didn’t know who he was, but it was kind of an interesting little point in pop-culture history when George Clooney was really hitting and I was there, weirdly watching it.I do you remember this older guy, the guy that played the guy that hit me in the car. I forget his name, but I remember him telling me, ‘Never leave your wallet in your trailer. People will rip you off. I always have my wallet in my pocket on set, because people will take all your shit.’ I was like, ‘Whoa, really?’”
Scott played Howard Hughes’ s press agent Johnny Meyer in the biopic directed by Martin Scorsese.”Martin Scorsese had a screening room in Montreal where we were shooting, and every week he would have a screening and you could invite anyone that wanted to come. It was usually a movie from the period that
The Aviator was set in and he would introduce it, and then after the movie he would stand up and give a lecture about the movie. Because the character I played was a real guy, and he had been portrayed once before in this Humphrey Bogart movie
Barefoot Contessa — not by name, but as the approximation of this character — he showed it one night. I remember sitting there, it was like me, Leonardo DiCaprio, Cate Blanchett, Jude Law, a lot of the key crew. It was amazing … Sometimes it was sparsely attended. I remember one time going and it was me and Bob Richardson, the DP, and maybe a couple other people and Martin Scorsese, in this little screening room watching
Viva Zapata! with Marlon Brando. I couldn’t believe that everyone on the movie wasn’t jumping to go.”
The edgy and sexually graphic relationship drama featured Scott and Lost
‘s Sonya Walger as a yuppie couple torn apart by the pressure to have a baby.”They wanted it in the contract that they could show my erection on the show. So we were like, ‘Wait a second, once an erection is shown on a television show, it’s no longer a fictional show, now it’s a documentary or porn,’ so we had to get them to take that out. So what we ended up doing is when they needed an erection we would have this fake penis that I would have to put on, like it had straps and stuff. And in the pilot she gives me a hand job, so they had to rig up a fake penis that shot hair conditioner. It had a pump in it and there was someone behind the couch working the pump and it would malfunction and spray all over everybody. It was hilarious. The scene itself looks real, but we were just kind of laughing. It was ridiculous.”
In one of his favorite working experiences, Scott played former actor/current caterer Henry Pollard in the cult-favorite Starz series. He has nothing but fond things to say about his former cast members, even in light of (or because of?) this anecdote.Scott: “One cast member I won’t name would take shits in my trailer and then turn the heater on. I think it’s an old trick that people do to each other on sets, but it’s horrifying when it happens to you.”Vulture: “Was
Party Down frat-house-y?”Scott: “If the frat house was filled with nerds and unathletic, sarcastic people.”
Photo: © 2009 Starz Entertainment, LLC
In the unapologetically gory killer-fish film, Scott spent most of the shoot baking in the Arizona sun on spring break mecca Lake Havasu.”We were out there for a couple months on the water. It was an average of 115 degrees. In that movie, I am on a jet ski and I’m out on the water for a while. There was this stunt that got cut out of the movie where I go under water on the jet ski and turn all the way around and come up the other side and keep going. So I had to spend a lot of time underwater, and I developed a rash all over my body. It was really, really miserable. It was like I had severe poison oak all over my body. So I went to the doctor — first I thought it was bed bugs, then I didn’t know what the fuck it was — I went to the doctor and it turns out this was a rash that derived from all the bacteria in that lake. Because people are in that lake just being … it’s just body fluids. It was a spring break place. You know, it’s where Pam and Tommy Lee shot their sex tape. So there are all these sunburnt, drunk coeds frolicking around in the water and all of their bacteria went on to my body and turned me bumpy and red and itchy. It was horrible. As far as we know, Pam and Tommy Lee left some bacteria behind that leeched itself onto my body.”
