Friday is a big day for Bill Burr. The comedian and actor has two things hitting Netflix: the Pete Davidson vehicle The King of Staten Island, in which he has a plum role, and his new comedy special, F is For Family. And last week his wife had a baby! Everything’s coming up Bill Burr, including a pretty decent anecdote, supplied to Variety, about what it’s like to fake-beat up the young SNL star.
Directed by Judd Apatow (who co-wrote it with Davidson and Dave Sirus), The King of Staten Island stars the star as a Davidson-like twentysomething, albeit one minus an SNL gig. Burr plays a firefighter who starts dating Davidson’s character’s mom (played by Marisa Tomei), and at one point they get into it in, of all places, a kiddie pool.
Fight scene, even ones with Pete Davidson for Judd Apatow, aren’t easy to stage. But just because Davidson is a scrawny guy doesn’t mean you should underestimate him. Here’s what Burr told Variety:
Because it was a fight scene, you really have to work out who’s gonna do what so you don’t get hit. Pete was pretty amped up, and also young, so there were a couple of times we clashed heads. I can’t even tell you how light he was. I have a bad shoulder and I was worried, but he felt like he weighed, like, 130 pounds. He’s like 6-foot-2 or 6-foot-3. But he has heavy hands. They’ll knock you out.
You can see the results of their tussle on Friday, when the film drops on Netflix. Meanwhile, Burr was also asked about whether or not it’s too soon to be making Covid-19 jokes, even if we’re still very much in the middle of a seismic pandemic. “No, nothing is too soon,” he replied. He added:
It’s all how you go about it, it’s all how you carve the turkey. You’re not going to make fun of the fact that somebody’s grandparents died, but you can make fun of the person who thinks they’re too good to wear a mask. Or the person with no medical degree that’s talking to you as though they do have one. Or somehow the CDC hasn’t figured out this virus, but this guy here, somehow he knows about it. I was in New York right after 9/11, and we were doing 9/11 jokes right out of the gate. You weren’t making fun of the people that died, but you made fun of the fear, the paranoia — and being in New York and actually having to be nice to people.
You can read our own interview with Burr right here.
(Via Variety)