Danny McBride on 30 Minutes or Less, Getting Over Your Highness, and How to Act During a Lap Dance

Danny McBride returns to theaters this week in 30 Minutes or Less, an action-tinged “double-buddy” comedy featuring McBride as Dwayne, the hapless mastermind of a plot to strap a bomb to a kidnapped pizza deliveryman (Jesse Eisenberg) and give him mere hours to procure more than $100,000. Director Ruben Fleischer’s film then parallels the stories of Dwayne and his partner in crime (Nick Swardson) alongside that of the deliveryman and his own best friend (Aziz Ansari), whom he desperately enlists to help rob a bank. Much R-rated criminal hilarity and male bonding ensue, and it couldn’t come soon enough for McBride, whose high-stakes writing-starring effort Your Highness performed miserably last spring despite the credentials of director David Gordon Green and co-stars James Franco and Natalie Portman. 30 Minutes or Less also arrives between sessions of McBride’s cult-favorite HBO series Eastbound and Down, which will close out its run with forthcoming third season. Movieline caught up with McBride recently to talk over his 30 Minutes future, his Your Highness past and what his earliest character might be up to 10 years after his debut in Green’s All the Real Girls. You know, when I saw this, I wasn’t sure what to think about Dwayne. He’s a bad guy, but he’s… not? Sort of? What appealed to you about him? I got the script sent to me, and I really liked the idea that it is a buddy comedy, but it explores the buddy comedy from both sides of the moral compass. There’s the good guys and the bad guys, and you see the dynamic between the friendships on both sides. I thought it was interesting. Comedically, I thought it would be interesting for audiences, too. Usually you’d just be following Jesse and Aziz’s characters, and the bad guys would juts kind of show up when they need to and be evil, and that’s that. I like that even amongst the bad guys, Nick’s character kind of has more of a conscience about what they’re doing. It just opens up the villain role in a couple of places where you can dip and dive. If we look at this as a double buddy comedy, how does it affect you and Nick to not really know at any given time what Jesse and Aziz were up to in their scenes? It is tricky, because on a lot of our days, Nick and I would work, and Jesse and Aziz were off, and vice-versa. So the movie just becomes what we’re trying to do to us, you know what I mean? That’s what’s so cool about watching the finished product: It’s awesome to see what Jesse and Aziz were doing the whole time. “Oh, so when you’re sitting in the van, that’s what was happening before that.” That was interesting. I think Aziz and I share maybe three seconds of screen time. Even when Jesse was there, it was only a few minutes that we really shared onscreen with him. It was very much so for Nick and I that we focused on it as just these guys’ story and that’s that. Were you ever bitter that you couldn’t work more with Aziz? I love Aziz, so I would obviously love to have as much working time as I could. This was like our Heat — this was De Niro and Pacino, barely meeting in a caf. There’ll be rumors as to if we were even there on each other’s day of coverage. Exactly! Of course Ruben has cited Heat — especially its bank robbery — as an influence for this film. Was that influence apparent on the set? It was. I’m a big fan of Ruben’s work. I remember hearing the idea for Zombieland and thinking, “Oh, that’s interesting. I thought Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg and Nick Frost kind of cracked the comedic version of the zombie movie [with Shaun of the Dead]. But then you see Ruben’s version of it, and it’s totally different and fresh and works great. And so I knew right away that Ruben was going to be capable of blending action and comedy in this film together, which is a tricky thing to do. But with this script, when I first met with him, his points of reference were things like Dog Day Afternoon, Heat, The French Connection — and that, to me, was a really cool angle to be taking on this sort of story. How does one act while receiving a lap dance? I get really weird with any shit that is sexual like that. Like, I have a wife, and she hates me doing this kind of stuff. She doesn’t dig it at all. It’s also just awkward: You don’t know this person, the whole crew is standing around watching you, you just gave your wedding ring to the prop guy, and you’re just like, “Why am I doing this?” So I feel like it’s always a little awkward. But you’ve got to do what you’ve got to do. At the end of the day it’s not really torture or anything. But even kissing scenes, I’m always nervous the day before. I’m like, [whispers to self] “Oh, fuck, I’ve got to kiss this girl in front of all these people.” I guess I’m curious how you did it? How long did it take? I just sat there and let the scene unfold. I think they covered that whole lap dance in the morning, and then you’re on to the rest of the day. Is there anything erotic about it at all in the moment? I mean, it’s a real lap dance! I’m sure there are people [for whom] it is, but for me, no. It feels like work, and it feels fucking super awkward. [Laughs]