Paul Rudd recalls Steve Carell's very painful chest waxing experience while filming The 40-Year-Old Virgin. Released in 2005, The 40-Year-Old Virgin is directed by Judd Apatow and tells the story of Carell's Andy Stitzer as he sets out to lose his virginity. Rudd costars as Andy's friend David alongside other supporting actors including Seth Rogen, Romany Malco, Katherine Keener, and Leslie Mann.
In a recent video from GQ in which Rudd breaks down his most iconic characters, the actor recalls what it was like filming the hilarious scene in The 40-Year-Old Virgin where Carell gets his chest hair waxed off.
The actor confirms that Carell actually did get his chest waxed for the scene and remembers that it looked like a very painful experience. Rudd also questions just how experienced the woman was who was doing the waxing despite the woman's claims that she was a professional. Check out Rudd's hilarious recollection of the filming experience below:
“When Steve was getting waxed in that scene, he really was. The girl who actually did it said that her family owned a salon, she did this. And it’s like, I don’t think that was true, I don’t think she had ever done it. It’s like one of those things where you hire an actor, and it’s like, 'Can you ride a horse?’ I can ride a horse.’ ‘Can you wax a chest?’ ‘I can totally a wax a chest.’
"We were playing into it, obviously. I don’t know if it's true that Romany really did get queasy and wanted to leave, but I mean it really was… Like you could tell it was painful. We set up like 5 cameras because once you did it you weren’t going to be able to go back and do it again. Steve is hilarious. He knew how to scream and make it funny. You’re coming up with jokes on the fly too. I think just the pattern in which he was waxed, he did look like a pumpkin. So then, it’s like, ‘You look like a man-o'-lantern.'"
How The Comedy Movie Landscape Was Different In The Mid-2000s
The 40-Year-Old Virgin earned mostly positive reviews from critics and performed well at the box office, and, in hindsight, represented a major high point for the landscape of comedy movies more generally. The film tapped into Carell's comedic sensibility before The Office had become a major hit but also featured Rogen and Rudd before they had really become household names. Most of the stars involved would go on to grow in popularity in the following years, and so too would the comedy movie genre.
The 40-Year-Old Virgin would be followed by other hit Apatow comedies, including Knocked Up, Funny People, and This Is 40. Apatow also served as a producer on movies like Superbad, Step Brothers, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, and Bridesmaids. It wasn't just Apatow who was churning out hit comedies around that time, with Tropic Thunder and The Hangover, among others, going on to experience critical and commercial success as well. By the mid-2010s, however, comedy films were very rarely released in theaters and fewer of them seemed to strike a major chord in the larger pop culture landscape.
The comedy movie genre now is mostly relegated to streaming services like Netflix, Prime Video, HBO Max, and Hulu. Comedic actors like Rogen, Will Ferrell, Kevin Hart, and Adam Sandler all more prominently feature in straight-to-streaming comedies than in theatrically released projects. Declining box office results would suggest that there simply isn't an appetite for seeing movies like The 40-Year-Old Virgin in theaters anymore, but there is definitely something to be said for experiencing Carell's hilarious chest waxing scene in a room full of laughing theater-goers.
Source: GQ