Wanda Sykes

Spotlight By: Rocco Passafuime
RoccoPassafuime@TheCinemaSource.com

More and more the general public has stopped asking the question, 'Who is Wanda Sykes'' She's made some amazing headway in her career as a comedienne in the last few years. She made her debut as one of the writers of Chris Rock's HBO talk program and appeared with Rock in the show's feature-length film version of its popular skit Pootie Tang.

She's had most of her success as a regular in small roles like Comedy Central's Crank Yankers and hosted the channel's Premium Blend program. Aside from making two stand-up TV specials, Comedy Central's Tongue Untied and HBO's Sick And Tired, her forays into more prominent vehicles like Fox's Wanda At Large and Comedy Central's Wanda Does It has been left with little notice.

Despite the occasional setback, Sykes continues to prove herself a delightful presence in supporting comedic roles. Her latest role is as Rita, assistant to congressman-turned-modern-day-Noah Evan Baxter, played by Steve Carell, in the new comedy Evan Almighty, the sequel/spinoff to Jim Carrey's 2003 blockbuster hit Bruce Almighty.

When we sat with Wanda to discuss the film, we discovered that she has an incredible timing for cracking jokes on the fly. With that in mind, we asked her how much of her performance in the movie was improvised, despite the fact it's less risqu' than its predecessor had been.

'[Percentage-wise], in the 90's, as far as ad-libs,' Sykes reveals, 'As far as to censor, some things just wouldn't work. We weren't told that, 'Hey, this is PG. This is going to be a clean movie, so no cursing.' I wasn't given that direction, which I'm happy he didn't give to me, because that probably would have stifled me. But you could just feel it. You stand in this big ark and all these animals, so it just felt right.'

We pressed the question even further afterward by inquiring whether or not she and director Tom Shadyac had any conflicts over what certain choice words to slip out.

'There was a couple of incidents where I wanted to say ass and Tom's like, 'Oh, that's so funny!' she recalls, 'But you can't say ass, OK. Try butt.' And I'm like, 'No, butt's not funny.' He's like, 'No, for real, say butt. Just give me one butt.' And I'm like, 'No, I'm not going to do butt, because that's the one you're going to be using and we'll be fighting at the premiere.''

Another matter that was of importance was whether or not Wanda had any difficulty working on such an incredibly high-budget, special-effects-laden film, which was reportedly a record $200,000,000, the most for any comedy.

'The scene where [Evan] goes to Congress, his first time, and I'm just looking at him on the TV screen and I'm just making comments as far as what's going on,' Sykes remembers, 'First, I'm looking at a blank screen, there's nothing going on, and they hadn't even shot that scene yet, so I hadn't anything to even go on.' Tom would just go, 'He's going to have this thing and he's going to look something like the guy from Fleetwood Mac and something like that.' So it was a lot of that.'

Knowing too well that working with green screen could be an awfully irritating experience, we asked how she felt about going through such an experience.

'At times, funny, but frustrating, because I felt like I was working in the dark,' Wanda answers, 'I'm like, 'Man, can I at least see the scene first, because I'm sure I could come up with stuff that's better,' and he's like, 'No, no, it'll be fine, it'll be fine.'

She also adds, 'Those were the days when I'd call my agent and go, 'You know, we really didn't get a good deal out on this movie. I mean, it sounded good, at first, but trust me, they're getting every penny out of me. They're making up stuff! This isn't even in the script! You should see it!' It was pretty funny.'

Despite her role in Evan Almighty being yet another supporting comedic role, Wanda believes that her being chosen for it was not a product of any stereotypical typecasting

'I think that if I didn't do this role, somebody else would have been it,' she insists, 'And I don't think it's necessarily written that they were looking for a black woman. They just wanted somebody to be funny and there's lots of funny actresses out there who could pull the job off. I enjoy playing those roles and I guess in comedy that's just like Thelma Ritter. That's always been there, the wisecracking underling, but I think anyone who's in power and someone that you root for, you like them because they have someone so close to them, they tell it like it is. And that role's always fun to play.'

In keeping with the plot of the film, we hypothetically asked Sykes what she would do if someone claiming to be God himself chose her to build an ark and, if so, what would she take aboard it with her.

'Well, first, if I'm walking into the street and this guy asked me to build an ark, I'd give him a dollar and keep it moving,' she claims, 'Like, 'Eh, God bless you, whatever.' What am I putting on it' A flat-screen TV, some air conditioning'but it'd be a hybrid though, a bar'actually, two bars, that's a big ark'jacuzzi, a pool. We really don't need [the critters]. Animals wouldn't make it, I don't think.'

Returning to play the new title character is comic actor Steve Carell, who has impressed both critics and audiences with his performances in the hit comedy The 40 Year-Old Virgin and the successful NBC version of the British comedy series The Office. Important to also ask was whether or not Wanda got along with the budding Carell.

'We didn't try,' Sykes claims, 'We did, we just cracked each other up. Steve, he's very funny, and the guy, he shows up, he works hard. Me, I would have just been complaining all the time with the hair, and he had to go through so much makeup and, ugh, getting water being tossed on him and he's got birds all on him and they're pooping on his head. And so he was a real trooper and he really got into the spirit of the thing, so you just had to have fun with it.'

Having seen her often impressive stand-up performances in her TV specials, we asked the 43-year-old comedienne what she had been up to recently in that part of her career.

'I just wrapped up some dates on the road,' Sykes mentions, 'I was out in April and May, I was on the road. I did more about, I've been traveling a lot to Paris and to Brazil and just been doing new things like snowboarding. So I talked about more on that because I'd been so sick of talking about how Bush is screwing up everything. I just can't do it anymore. I just take Ambien, take a nap, and just sleep it out'wake me up in '08!'

In wrapping things up, the last question to ask was, of course, what new projects she had on the horizon.

'I haven't signed on for anything, except for the TV show The New Adventures Of Old Christine,' Wanda reveals, 'I will be back on as a series regular, so I'm looking forward to that. You know, television, it's fast. I love it. That's the closest thing I guess in film, whatever, TV that I can get to stand-up. Each week, it's a new script, it's fresh, we get to play around, you get the quick response because we get to perform in front of a live audience. So all those things are appealing to me.'