Matthew Lawrence

Interview By: Andrea Tuccillo
AndreaTuccillo@TheCinemaSource.com

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Matthew Lawrence appears to be a classic middle child: reserved and laidback, willing to let others be the center of attention. His profession, however, is decidedly very 'un-middle-child.' Acting in the new outrageous comedy The Comebacks, Lawrence gets a chance to let loose and take the spotlight. He credits acting as being his release, in a way. It's something that has been a part of his life from a young age, often acting alongside older brother Joseph and younger brother Andrew in projects like the television series Brotherly Love. This time Lawrence is branching out on his own.

In The Comebacks, a send-up of serious sports movies, Lawrence spoofs the traditional 'hot jock' character commonly seen in movies like Friday Night Lights. It was a role that required him to check his ego at the door. 'The reason why I really wanted to do it was because of the director, Tom Brady,' he says. 'I worked with him on a movie called The Hot Chick and when I saw that he was a part of this movie that's what really made me want to be a part of it because I know that he's a very good director and he's great with actors and I would not be afraid to go as far as I need to go. When you hang yourself out there as an actor, it's up to a committee what your performance turns out to be, after it goes through the editing, the studio, the director, all those different elements that are part of a movie. So when you do something like this where you have to step out and wear woman's underwear and dance around, the big thing is the director and that's really why I didn't worry.'

Although his character ends up in some pretty ridiculous situations, Lawrence never aimed at being over the top. 'Any kind of acting has got to be grounded somehow to something real, to you at least,' he explains. 'If you're just trying to be funny it never really works. You have to be still in the moment. You just have to keep in the back of your mind that that moment is not about great acting, it's about selling the jokes. It's two different styles, very different, but it's the same thing underneath. It's about the stakes and in drama the stakes have to be high and in comedy the stakes have to be off the charts.'

So was there a lot of improvising on set' 'There was, but my character specifically kind of sets up the jokes,' Lawrence says. 'He kind of feeds off the action that's going on, so with me I'd be more specific with what I had to set up so it was a little bit less of that going on with my character. When it came to the big jokes and stuff, there was a freedom there on the set to play around with it. If anything felt uncomfortable the first thing the director would tell you to do was change it and make it comfortable within the premise of what's going on.'

With improvising there usually comes a lot of unscripted funny moments. According to Lawrence, it was often difficult for the actors to keep from laughing and ruining a take. 'David [Koechner] would go on rants,' he recalls. 'Oh God, there were a couple of occasions on the shooting of this movie where 20 or 30 minutes would go by and we'd be worried about time because we just couldn't keep it together.'

Some of the raunchier material had to be cut from the film, however. 'There's two ways of doing a film like this and one is an R and one is PG-13,' Lawrence says. 'And of course on the artistic side, we all wanted to go with the R and Fox Atomic wanted to go with PG-13 for the audience. It's a bigger audience, the younger crowd. So yeah, there was lots of stuff, I think there was probably like a half an hour's worth of stuff cut out of the movie that was just too much.'

The Comebacks seems primed to become a great DVD release stuffed full of deleted scenes and blooper reels. But for now, Lawrence hopes people will enjoy it on the big screen. 'I've only seen it with my little brother; he's the only one who's seen it in my group,' he says. 'He liked it; I think it's skewed to his age group and his friends. I think guys will really like the movie. There's sports and there's Brooke [Nevin], she's a very attractive girl, a very talented girl as well. So yeah I was happy because that's why I wanted him with me because he's right at the age range they were going for. He's 19.'

Up next for Lawrence is a small, but pivotal role in an independent film called Trucker, starring Michelle Monaghan and Benjamin Bratt. 'It's about this lady who kind of starts out at a real bad time in her life and kind of develops a relationship with her son and becomes a mother and cleans up her act. In the beginning of the movie to set up her character she meets a guy in a restaurant and goes back to a motel room in kind of a shady way and they just hook up. That was my role in that.'

Could there be a Lawrence Brothers reunion project in his future' 'Joe's developing a few things for himself, Andy's working on music and I'm trying to do this acting thing,' he says. 'So we're all kind of at different points right now. If there was something really great out there or if we came up with something, if one of us had an idea and it worked for the three of us then sure, that's awesome.'