William H Macy has revealed how his wife, Desperate Housewives star Felicity Huffman, helped him prepare for a key scene of his new movie.
Ricky Stanicky, co-starring Zac Efron and John Cena, was filmed in Melbourne across February and March 2023 but Macy revealed his wife was helping prep for over a month before filming started to get a funny, “lewd” hand gesture just right.
“The second I read it … I was walking around the house for a month with my wife, Felicity, saying, ‘What about this? What about that?’,” Macy said during a press conference for international media, including 9Honey Celebrity.
COMPETITION: Win a luxury resort trip to Hawaii worth over $10,000
Figuring out “various ways to do” the hilarious hand gesture – which his character doesn’t even realise he’s doing but marks a pivotal point of the movie – took “a month, walking around the house, being lewd” he laughed.
The Peter Farrelly comedy tells the story of a group of best friends (played by Efron, Andrew Santino and Jermaine Fowler) who get caught out in a lie about their imaginary fourth best friend who no-one’s ever met, Ricky Stanicky.
READ MORE: ‘Hearts are full’: Aussie TV stars welcome second child
They hire an actor (played by Cena) to be Stanicky at a party to help get the boys out of trouble with their wife, girlfriend and boyfriend but things go array when Stanicky ends up overstaying his welcome and turns their lives upside down, unravelling their scheme.
Standup comedian Jeff Ross makes a cameo in the film as Rabbi Greenberg and said the cast had “a great shoot” in Melbourne.
“We were in Australia, we laughed a lot and I made some new friends and I loved it,” Ross told international press.
“The whole cast came to see me perform the night before I started on set.
For a daily dose of 9Honey, subscribe to our newsletter here.
“So, I showed up, you know, from a 3am night to a 7am call and when it’s funny, it’s not hard – it’s only hard to make the adjustment when it’s not funny but the script, my part, I loved it so much that I grabbed it.”
Ross played shows in Melbourne last February alongside Dave Chappelle and the pair were photographed partying at nightclub hotspot Ms Collins while in town.
Ricky Stanicky premieres globally on Prime Video from March 7.
Nine Entertainment Co (the publisher of this website) owns and operates the streaming service Stan.