| By Fred Topel
In Theaters June 10
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Television has always given us attractive housewives married to grumpy, overweight men. But film is different. On film, it’s a little bit harder to accept that a guy like Cedric the Entertainer could land a babe like Gabrielle Union. But that’s just what happens in The Honeymooners, as the duo play modern versions of Ralph and Alice Kramden.
In real life, Union is married to former Jacksonville Jaguars running back Chris Howard, but buff football stars are not the only type that can attract her. “Cedric is incredibly sexy in just his personality,” she said. “He’s so funny. He’s college educated. He’s a great family man. When you see him with his wife, he not only loves her, but you know after people have been married a while, sometimes they stop liking each other. They actually get along and hang out outside of the times they actually have to be together. So just being himself, he’s hilarious. He likes to dance, he likes music. Basic things that most girls like.”
Gee, sense of humor really does matter. “Yeah, and you know, he bought his mom a house and he’s just that guy. Just a sweet, fun, good natured guy. He’s family oriented.”
Howard has playfully expressed concern with Union’s many romantic kissing scenes in her movies, but she said he was calm about her on screen romance with Cedric “because he knows him. He knows he’s not a perv and he’s not going to try to take advantage. And he also knew that Lorna was coming, his wife, so he wasn’t worried about it.”
Ah, the Entertainer family was checking up on their man too. “Well, no,” Union clarified. “She came and he has a whole family so they all came over to [the set in] Ireland.”
The film shows how Alice and Ralph met and ultimately became the bickering Honeymooners. In her own marriage, Union strives to keep the honeymoon phase going.
“This is something my sister actually said. You’ve got to be a freak in the bedroom and a princess on the street, and that’s worked for us. Within the confines of a married, monogamous relationship, there are no boundaries. Whatever works for you, you’ve got to go for it. For some reason a few of my friends got married and became prudes. It’s like, hello? In high school and college, you were like... you’ve got to bring that into the marriage. You’ve got to be open to your man, you’ve got to be open to your lady, so that’s what’s kept us on our honeymoon. And also when you have a man that’s as passionate and who is dreamer, you don’t want to extinguish the flame. Sometimes you’ve got to pour lighter fluid on it to sort of lift him up and in lifting him up, everybody gets lifted, and that’s what I’ve sort of done in my marriage.”
So what do two successful people still dream about? “Sleeping,” she joked. “He just started a
business last year, and he dreams of having it become this amazing multi-faceted company that has other branches in other cities, and expanding. For me, I dream of being a producer. After working with Joel Silver and Jerry Bruckheimer you realize where the power really lies, and that’s what I would love to do.”
Making the action films Cradle 2 the Grave and Bad Boys II in the same year, Union got a taste of the power trip a producer can have. “They, for the most part, have more power than the director and can get things done really quickly. And I learned that early on. I was like, ‘Why am I talking to you when I should be just talking to Jerry?’ Not about directing. Michael Bay is quite big. But other things, I learned Jerry and Joel are pretty much the end all be all if there’s any kind of problem on set, you need something, you want a Ferrari for the day, those are the cats you need to get to. Or if Jerry’s producing a film, I’d call Jerry before I would call the director or the studio because he’s the cat that can get it done.”
On The Honeymooners, Union simply provided her services as an actor. Though other actors improvised and even invented new scenes, Union felt it wasn’t her character’s place to do so.
“Unfortunately, Alice isn’t the most extroverted of the bunch. She’s sort of the most introverted so there wasn’t a lot of opportunity for me to ad lib or be a little more creative as I would in other types of films. It was my responsibility to make sure the plot points were addressed and we stayed within the frame of the scene and we got what we needed to accomplish accomplished. Regina [Hall]’s character is so wacky and out there, much more of a risk taker than Alice.”
After playing the ultimate domineering woman in Deliver Us From Eva, Alice Kramden was a nice change of pace. “Whereas Eva would have cussed everybody out by now, Alice is a little bit more reserved. When it’s absolutely necessary, then she will go at Ralph. But until then, she’s not just flying off the handle for no reason. It’s more expressed in her facial expressions and she internalizes more so she’s just more disappointed than she is angry all the time.”
When working on a set with comedians like Cedric and Mike Epps, and improvisers like Regina Hall, Union said the goal is to make each other laugh. “You figure if I can make my costar laugh, then the audience will be laughing. So usually the goal is to have somebody crack up, or at least to be able to hear the grips, the boom guy laughing. You’re like, ‘Okay, I’m onto something. Okay, this is funny. They’re laughing.’”
Outside of the movies, Union laughs at the laughter of others. “People, just people in general who don’t take themselves so seriously and can laugh at themselves, can be silly and share parts of their lives that are a little bit more humorous. Because I can find the humor in pretty much anything as long as you’re willing to go there. So I laugh all the time at things that aren’t always supposed to be funny like people falling. Or Regina brought this damn dog over to my house. It was the ugliest dog I’ve ever seen. This dog had, was it acid reflux? Irritable bowel syndrome. It was deaf and it lost 17 teeth and it had little patches of hair missing. And it was so ugly, but the dog was on steroids to make up for some of this, so it had superhuman strength but was the ugliest dog. Regina was like doing an impression of the dog. Stupid crap like that.”
Laugh with Gabrielle Union in The Honeymooners, starting June 10. |
