For years now, Paul Rudd and Jack Black have been Hollywood comedy legends. But we only have one brief example of what happens when their powers are combined: that legendary Beatles scene in music biopic parody Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, in which Black played Paul McCartney, with Rudd as his Lennon. But now, finally, we get an all-out Rudd-Black team-up, in Anaconda, no less – a new take on the killer snake movie, in which the pair play members of an intrepid team trying to make their own low-budget Anaconda remake, only to run afoul of a real giant snake.
“This has been a long time coming,” Jack Black tells Empire of their eventual team-up, in a joint interview with Rudd. “Me and Paul have been in a mutual-admiration society for decades.” It goes right back to when Rudd first saw Black in early ‘90s cult comedy Bob Roberts. “A month after that movie, I went to this audition and there was only one other actor auditioning for the part, and that was Jack,” he recalls. “And I was like, ‘Oh my God, that’s the fucking guy from Bob Roberts.’ And you were very nice.”
Click here to preview your posts with PRO themes ››
They even crossed paths during the audition process for High Fidelity, when Rudd went for the role of Dick, eventually played by Todd Louiso. “We would have been best friends,” says Black, who got his breakout in that film as music-head Barry. As it turns out, Rudd played a part in that casting. “I said to Stephen Frears, ‘There’s this actor named Jack Black, and he’s the guy that should play this part, because he’s also a musician and he’s really funny’,” he recalls. “He was like, ‘What’s his name?’ He wrote it down!” The rest is history. “You launched my career!” says Black. Turns out, the origin story of Anaconda is just as twisty as its titular serpent.