-Our first guest tonight is an Oscar- and Emmy-nominated actor
you know him from shows like "The Office" and
"The Morning Show," as well as
the films "The 40 Year Old Virgin" and "Foxcatcher."
He stars in "Minions: The Rise of Gru,"
which opens in theaters July 1st.
Let's take a look.
-You seriously think a puny little child can be a villain?
-Um, yes. I am pretty despicable.
You don't want to cross me.
-Evil is for adults who steal
powerful ancient stones and wreak havoc...
-[ Gasps ]
-...and not for tubby little punks who should be at school.
-Please welcome to the show Steve Carell, everybody.
[ Cheers and applause ] ♪♪
Welcome. I'm so happy you're here.
-I'm so happy to be here. It's a pleasure.
-You know, obviously,
you're this accomplished comedian,
accomplished voice actor.
We first met in 2005 when you hosted "SNL."
And we wrote a sketch.
It was a Hurricane Katrina celebrity benefit,
and we just assumed, "We've got Steve Carell.
He must have a million celebrity impressions."
That was not the case. -Not the case.
-Yeah. And we literally said, "It could be anyone."
-Right. -And you said, "I have no one."
-I have -- I don't do impressions. Terrible.
-And do you remember what we came up with?
-Ray Romano. -Yeah.
Now, I will say -- we have a still of it --
you ended up looking more like Ray Romano
than I thought you could.
There's -- I'm Anderson Cooper, and there you are.
That's a very...
-And I was terrified because, you know,
I'd never done an impression,
and "SNL" is predicated on impressions.
So, the first rehearsal, I just kind of whipped out,
"Uh, yeah.
Uh, okay."
And that was it. -Yeah.
-"I just kind of did that to my voice.
Uh, Ray Romano. Uh, ha."
-I think that was the extent of it, too.
-That was it. -Yeah.
-I think everyone realized, "Oh, we can't give him dialogue."
"Uh, yeah. How you doing?"
-It's better than I remember.
I will say, it's a lot better than I remember.
-Yes.
-Yeah. Do people -- When you -- I mean, first of all,
this is a raised level of difficulty here with this Gru.
Now you got to do a kid Gru.
-Oh, so hard. -So hard?
-Oh, my gosh. I'm being facetious.
-Do people ever -- -It's really not hard.
-Do people ever say to you,
"How do you come up with your funny voices?"
-Never.
It just doesn't happen. I think anyone can do Gru.
I really -- I shouldn't say that,
'cause I'll be out of a job.
-Because they could probably get it.
-Well, I've been doing this, like --
all this promotional stuff, and one of them is, like,
people calling in and trying to do the Gru voice.
And I coach them like, "It's down here.
Hey, everybody!"
And people are quite good at it.
And Little Gru is just more earnest and higher.
-Yeah. -"He's kind of like this."
-Were you excited when they told you
it was time to do Little Gru?
Did you think, "Oh, we're going to switch it up a little bit"?
-Finally. Yeah.
No, I thought an origin story was a good idea,
especially since it's set in the '70s.
And just the nostalgia of that, I think you can
really lean into it, and I think parents are going to
really dig it -- grandparents, too.
-Well, that's the really important thing about
when you make these kids' movies.
The ones that I think are beloved are ones
that adults can also enjoy.
So when you put anything in there that they can hold on to,
because you can't send the kid
to go see Gru on their own --
-No, no. -Yeah.
-Although, you know, when my kids were little,
I used to sit and watch, you know,
kids' shows with them, and there were times that
they were out of -- They walked out of the room,
and I was still watching, like, "iCarly,"
and I'm like, "What's going to happen?"
And I enjoyed it.
-Did you worry about your children
that they were so dismissive of
the outcome of "iCarly," her fate?
-No, I hadn't even considered that.
I clearly don't keep track of my kids.
-I know you to be a man of great empathy,
and I want to ask you this, because when you do press for
a movie like this, you are often with Minions.
And when I say that -- You know, these are obviously --
I don't need to tell you,
these are people in Minion suits.
-I've heard. -Yeah.
And, Steve, a lot of times -- This is a summer film.
You're out -- It's pretty hot
when you're doing "Minions" press.
-You know this day? -Yeah.
-It was really hot.
And this other day, it was the same.
Super-hot.
-Do you ever -- Can you ever tell that the human beings
inside the Minion suits are getting a little hot?
-Yeah. They start to sputter a little bit.
We did this promo where I did this soccer promo
with a soccer player from Mexico named Chicharito.
And, so, we did this a little bit,
and there were Minions on his team
and these great, you know, soccer players on my team.
And they were going to have a soccer game.
And it was in L.A.,
and it had to have been 95, 100 degrees.
And these people in the Minion suits were --
I mean, they're kicking the ball and running around.
And where did the Minions go?
So, they had wrangled the Minions around the corner,
where none of the kids could see.
And all I saw, like, were Minion costumes, sort of, like,
tipped over and, like, arms and legs of human beings,
like, hiding behind bushes, like, drinking water.
It was really -- It's -- Yes, it's a thankless job.
-It's a level of professionalism that you have to appreciate
when you're inside -- when you're an actor
inside a Minion suit.
And you know you can't -- You can't lie down
in the middle of the field
because there are a lot of kids there.
They don't want to see a Minion go down.
-No, no. Exactly.
No, you have to -- You have to keep your appearances up.
-What was your -- I mean, again,
it's weird when you do a voice for an animated thing.
I mean, I'm sure, obviously, you see drawings in advance,
but you don't see a finished product
until a lot of people do.
What was it like the first time
you had the idea of Minions explained to you?
-I thought, "Good luck with that,"
because, well, they -- You know, they showed me a picture,
and I thought, "Well, sure, they're these
cylindrical yellow objects that have --
either they have goggles, maybe one eye, maybe two eyes."
It was explained to me they don't speak English.
They speak in a gibberish.
So you can't really understand them.
And they're hilarious.
I went, "Alright.
Well, good. Good for you guys.
That's a...
And it turned out to be a stroke of genius.
Like, I saw that first movie. I saw the finished product.
And you know, you're in a booth
and you're doing it pretty much solitary.
You don't -- You never see any cuts of it.
You never -- You don't know what
the movie's going to look like until you go see it.
And it was magical.
-Your early acting -- I did not realize this --
you did some -- like, some Revolutionary War re-enacting?
-Jealous? [ Laughter ]
-Now, you took this seriously.
You learned to play an instrument.
-I did, yeah.
My brother and I joined -- I grew up in a town
outside of Boston, and all of these little towns
had their own minuteman corps.
And it wasn't really for re-enacting.
It's, like, mostly parades, and, you know, the Fourth of July.
Back in Massachusetts, we have something called Patriot's Day.
And, so, you know, I wanted to be a part of it,
and so did my brother.
So he learned to play the drum,
and I learned how to play the fife.
And, so, we got dressed up in our little costumes
and we went out and marched around, and that was kind of it.
Later on, I had acquired more of an interest in history,
so I joined the British Tenth Regiment of Foot,
which was much more serious.
And that's what I was -- like in high school.
And, like, they would cast the buttons from the same molds
that the original buttons were cast back then.
And so I kind of geeked out and got into it.
-And did you have to have a certain level of fife playing?
Was this the kind of group that if you were shaky on the fife,
they wouldn't have you?
-If you could kind of play the fife
and you were amenable to dressing up like
a British grenadier, they would have you.
-That's quite a good advertisement for membership.
-It was. It was fun. -Yeah.
It's a cool thing to do. -No, it wasn't.
Don't say that.
I mean, everyone out there is going, "Cool thing to do?
That kid must have been a winner in high school."
[ Laughter ]
I enjoyed it. -It worked out alright.
It worked out for you alright. -It did.
And I can still play the fife.
-Can you really? -Yes.
-Wow! Have you had any reason to?
-"Wow!" That was the most insincere "Wow."
-Yeah. "Wow!" -"Wow!"
-Oh, my God! What's that?
Oh, no! I got to go to commercial.
I'd love to hear more about this fife.
-Fife? Wee!
-You guys, that's Steve Carell. -I wish we had a fife!
-I wish we had a fife.
"Minions: The Rise of Gru" is in theaters July 1st.
We'll be right back with Machine Gun Kelly. Thank you.