Some may remember the wildly popular 1988 film ‘The Naked Gun’, and the trail of detective spoof films that followed it into the early 90s. The Leslie Nielsen-led comedy vehicle is now living on with a 2025 reboot, starring Liam Neeson, Pamela Anderson and Paul Walter Hauser—and to delve a little deeper into the silly-driven comedy, Hauser sat down with Metro to chat more about the feature, which drops in theaters this weekend.
What drew you into signing on with this film?
It was the team that was put in place. Paramount has a crazy good track record for comedy. If you look through their list of all the films they’ve produced just in the last 30, 40 years, it’s pretty outstanding from ‘Beverly Hills Cop’ to ‘Zoolander.’ So I knew the studio seemed to understand good comedy, and Akiva Schaffer (the director) is brilliant with comedy. I love ‘Pop Star’ and ‘Hot Rod’ and ‘SNL.’ And Seth MacFarlane, I’ve been a fan of for a while.
And then Liam Neeson just made sense…he kind of feels similar to Leslie Nielsen, where they started in drama and went into some thriller and action, and then of course ended up lampooning that now with ‘The Naked Gun.’
Did you watch the original films or go into filming this reboot fresh?
Normally, I wouldn’t try to watch in fear of needlessly emulating or trying to replicate something—but this is such a specific sense of humor. I actually studied all three of those films and really watched George Kennedy. I play his character’s son in this new film, so, what does George do? I don’t know how many viewers will catch it, but there were brief moments of vocal choices or looks of disapproval of something Frank [Neeson] says, and that’s definitely me trying to embody the George Kennedy thing.
Since it’s so specific, how would you describe the comedy style of ‘The Naked Gun’?
I would say that ‘The Naked Gun’ is a spoof and wacky parody film that really takes a normal crime thriller action story and turns it on its head. [It has] cartoonish humor and sight gags and puns, running jokes and just all that manner of goofiness that you would see more in the sketch comedy world or a cartoon.
So everything from ‘Looney Tunes’ to ‘Saturday Night Live‘, it has that brand of quick-witted silliness that you don’t see in comedy movies that often. It’s really an onslaught of silliness and in a way that’s really exciting. It’s almost like treating yourself to a really unhealthy cheat meal while you’re working out or eating healthy. This is a cheat meal movie to watch where you’re asked to do nothing but sit there and laugh.
There is constantly jokes and funny moments happening in the background. Were you aware of it all, and did it leave any room for improvisation?
It’s more the set and spike of the screenplay than anything improvisational, because all the jokes have so much intentionality to them that it behooves us to kind of run the playbook or the blueprint. We saw everything, and there were things that were added on the day or shot in reshoots where they’d just go, oh, we added this really hilarious thing. That was fun for me because when I went to watch the movie, it was like I had forgotten what we shot all this other stuff that was added. It was pretty brilliant. I love all those little things.
And a lot of those added elements were not made through CGI or through other editing tricks, it was all done on set. What does that bring to the experience?
Anytime something can be practical and not digitized, I’m a huge fan and proponent of that. If I look at the ‘Lord of the Rings’ movies, they look so vastly different from those ‘Hobbit’ movies that came out five to 10 years later. There’s a reason those first ones were special, it felt more grounded and real. I think anytime you can do that with comedy, horror, anything, you get a lot more out of it. The department heads did a great job too. If you look at the wardrobe, the props, the production design, there was so much effort going in to every single joke.
How was it working with Akiva on his feature debut?
Outside of a couple digital shorts, this feels like his opus so far. It’s a truly near flawless comedy, and I think he had a lot of pressure on him. The studio had a lot of great notes and a lot to impart and big expectations. We’re all trying to honor the original films while making something new, which is tricky. But Akiva took it all in stride and really was accessible and funny and super cool during the process.
I’ve directed a few short films and I intend to direct a feature in the next five years for sure. But I learned something about his sense of calm. People like him and Matt Chapman, who I did the ‘Fantastic Four‘ with, some of these people just have a wild sense of capability, and if they’re sweating or they’re bugging out, they’re hiding it.
What do you hope fans of the original and new fans will get out of ‘The Naked Gun’ reboot?
Since it is a reboot, we’re picking up from where the story leaves off. I think that takes the sting away a little bit and if it were a pure remake, we’d have more people to try to win over. And for the new folks who are just coming into this, I hope they’re going to have a lot of fun. Don’t read into it. Don’t think that there’s a political ideology somewhere in this movie, I assure you it’s not there.
And I assure you it was just a bunch of psychopathic comedy nerds getting together with a generous production budget from Paramount saying, how do we make these people laugh? That is all it was. We are not trying to hide health food and vitamins in the snacks or the treats here. We are giving you an unhealthy cheat meal of a movie, and we just expect you to scarf it down and bring your friends.
‘The Naked Gun‘ drops in theaters Aug. 1
