Dax Shepard is pulling double duty at the Toronto Film Festival this year: He co-stars alongside Robert Downey Jr. in the opening-night film The Judge, and he’s also got a role in Shawn Levy’s star-studded dramedy This Is Where I Leave You, opening later in the festival. The really remarkable thing, Shepard told us last night at the after-party for The Judge, is that he shot both of those roles at the same time while also juggling his day-to-day duties on Parenthood and trying to squeeze in a cameo in the Veronica Mars movie for wife Kristen Bell. “Scheduling it is all luck,” he admitted. “The Veronica Mars thing, that was me saying, ‘Yes, honey, I’ll be in your movie — assuming that the plane lands in time and the driver can get me to downtown L.A.’”
Now, though, Shepard can relax and enjoy the fruits of his labors, and he’s anxious to check out This Is Where I Leave You, where he bares his butt in a thrust-filled sex scene. “I’m nervous!” he laughed. “There was a moment where they were shooting between my legs, and Levy had to come and put a fucking sheet up to block my anus. Very normal! Most men, at their jobs, are having a piece of fabric draped exactly to cover their anus.”
After he leaves Toronto, Shepard will get back to work on a big-screen version of CHiPs, which he’ll write, direct, and star in alongside Michael Peña as Ponch. “I don’t want to do the spoof version — I want to do the Lethal Weapon/Bad Boys version, and for that you really need Peña,” said Shepard. “Did you see him in End of Watch? I saw that movie, and I thought, Oh my God, this guy is everything.” Shepard came to the movie from an unexpected place: He’d been crafting a screenplay for Reese Witherspoon that had a CHiPs joke, and he became obsessed with the show while researching it online. “It all started because I used Google to figure out how to spell Poncharello,” he laughed.
