Every bone in Jim Carrey’s body is funny.
He moves; you laugh. It doesn’t really matter if you’re laughing with him or laughing at him, because the point is that you’re laughing. For many people, this laughter has becomes so familiar that it can seem as though it’s been there forever. It’s like Carrey precedes laughter itself. It’s like he predates the word “funny.” It’s like he was making memes before memes existed.
On Wednesday night, the Canadian actor made his debut on Stephen Colbert’s “The Late Show,” partially to promote his upcoming movie — he’s starring in the new “Sonic the Hedgehog” film, the one that got a whole facelift after the horrified masses complained about the proportions of Sonic’s face — and partially to remind the world that he can also be serious.
He can be dramatic.
He can be ... mature.
In other words, he can act. With the latest season of his Showtime series “Kidding” debuting this week, and a semi-autobiographical novel on the way, Carrey flexed his theatrical muscles in that energetic, slapstick way that’s become synonymous with his name.
Colbert asked him to revisit some of his earliest, most comedic lines from iconic films like “The Mask” and “Dumb and Dumber,” but to imbue them with “a more full and impactful emotional depth” — the sort you’d find in Carrey’s more serious films, like “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.”
What ensued was a circuit of accents, singing, screaming, and mangoes.
Watch the video above to see for yourself.
Watch: Jim Carrey talks about his career as a political cartoonist. Story continues below.
In fact, Carrey has been in pursuit of seriousness for the last while. Over the last six years, the actor has thrown himself into the world of art, immersing himself with such a fervour that you might mistake it for method acting.
It isn’t. “There’s not a day that goes by that I’m not covered in paint or something from doing sculptures,” he said in a 2017 interview with W magazine. “Making art in general is not really a choice. I’m being painted and I’m being expressed and I’m being created, and there’s little me involved.”
Part of this whole artistic enterprise has been Carrey’s pivot into political cartooning. In 2016, around the U.S. presidential election, he began sharing those paintings on Twitter. Many of them went viral.
There were illustrations of Jeffrey Epstein as the “Creature from the White Lagoon,” Sean Hannity as a manatee and Mussolini hanging upside down with his mistress. (“If you’re wondering what fascism leads to,” he tweeted, “just ask Benito Mussolini and his mistress Claretta.”)
Donald Trump, of course, was a frequent subject of these viral cartoon paintings. But on his press tour for “Sonic the Hedgehog,” Carrey announced that his career as a political cartoonist is over.
Instead, he’ll be trading in Trump for some more inspiring subject matter: fruit.
“Kind of obsessed with mangoes right now,” he said in an interview with Yahoo Entertainment. “Because they’re like the fruit of the gods, and they represent abundance and sweetness and the gifts of the universe. So that’s where I’m at.”
Same.
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