The search for identity in a character’s psyche is a journey many can relate to, one that can cause even the most successful actors to experience a performative break. Jim Carrey, for example, recently said that internal dialogue and navigation is what first enticed him to Showtime and creator Dave Holstein’s “Kidding.”
Speaking on the series during the recent Television Critics Association summer press tour, Carrey said that “the search for identity” his Mr. Rogers–esque character Mr. Pickles undergoes through the series’ 10 episodes “is a theme that’s always been attractive to me. There’s definitely something in this piece that calls to me.” Part of that resonance came, he said, from Holstein and director and executive producer Michel Gondry’s exploration of “trying to hang on to the idea of the self.”
Carrey stars as Mr. Pickles, a children’s show host who preaches self-love, inner peace, and golden rule sensibilities to great success and acclaim; over the years, he has become the singular face of a $100 million franchise. All of that comes into question, however, when his personal life—specifically with his wife, played by Judy Greer—goes off the rails, and the host (known off-camera as Jeff) devolves into a man who’s just trying to keep it together. Also starring Catherine Keener and Frank Langella, the half-hour dramedy marks Carrey’s first TV project since his “In Living Color” debut nearly three decades ago, and it’s his first reunion with French filmmaker Gondry since 2004’s Oscar-winning “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.”
“We had been trying to find an appropriate project to work together on, Jim and I, and it seems that ‘Kidding’ was the one,” Gondry tells Backstage by phone. “The premise of the show was extremely original and I was hooked right away.” Hooked in part thanks to its invitation to Gondry to use his trademark balance of heartaching gravitas and lighthearted, at-times surreal whimsy. Carrey also said while on tour that “Kidding” instills the idea that “no matter how bad things may look, there’s an innocence inside us that can never be destroyed. It’s always there.”
It’s their shared ability to tap into that light that makes Gondry and Carrey such a great match.
“We have the same sense of fiction and of acting, which makes it very easy to communicate,” Gondry says. “He understands where I want to go. Sometimes, when it’s just about the performance, I can give him the most ridiculous direction and he knows exactly what I mean, and he’s totally going to go for it.... He doesn’t think about what he’s doing. He lives the character.”
READ: How to Become a TV Director
Such creative chemistry, however, is hard to replicate or conjure on the spot. For Gondry, finding that common ground with his actors is one of his craft’s greatest challenges.
“The most complicated part of the job of being a director is to find the language to communicate the direction,” he says. “To do it in terms of the acting, the emotion, the reason.” Langella, for instance, is “the opposite” of Carrey, and, as all directors do, Gondry had to recalibrate for him. “It’s sort of a gymnastic [act] for the director to find the way to communicate that doesn’t offend them and [to] have them get through to the character.”
It’s perhaps worth defining, then, the search for identity rooted in “Kidding” as being not just relatable to actors, but to all the creatives on a set. As director of six of the series’ episodes and beyond, it’s clear that Gondry is on constant lookout for how he can better adjust and fine-tune his approach behind the lens.
Ready to get to work? Check out Backstage’s TV audition listings!