“It was the worst job ever,” Simmons says of being a mall Santa.
For a certain subset of character actors, portraying Santa Claus is almost a rite of passage.
Simmons, it’s a chance to redeem his prior stint with Saint Nick’s red suit and beard.
J.K. Simmons in ‘Red One’.Amazon MGM Studios
“It was one of those where you charge 10 bucks for the Polaroid or whatever.
It is for the parents.
The parents want to have that experience and they want that picture.
J.K. Simmons and Bonnie Hunt in ‘Red One’.Frank Masi/Prime Video
So many of them had pictures of traumatized children sitting on my knee.
It was not fun.
I’ve tried to repress that memory for the last 44 years.”
Dwayne Johnson in ‘Red One’.Karen Neal/Prime
“This is my redemption,” he reflects.
So thank you to everybody for that."
J.K. SIMMONS:It’s all about the script.
I don’t want to hear a pitch.
I don’t want to know anything about it.
Very early on when we first meet Nick, he’s not exactly jolly.
He’s a little more grounded than some depictions of Santa Claus.
Then you get to page 20.
There he is in the gym working out with The Rock.
Tell me more about your training regimen and how intense it was.
I’ve gone up and down in my life with being healthy.
For the last 15 years, I tried to stay pretty even-keeled in my weight.
Did you actually do any workouts with Dwayne Johnson off camera, as well?
That was just too intimidating.
He works out on Christmas Day.
He’s on a whole other level.
I just have an exercise bike and a few dumbbells in my hotel room, wherever we’re shooting.
Let’s face it, it’s a different universe.
I first met Dwayne the day we were shooting the Christmas mall sequence.
There’s a combination of hard work and God-given genetics of people like Dwayne.
There should be a separate super species of human that are Dwayne and the elite 100th of 1 percent.
How does Santa being more buff change who he is, if at all?
Red Oneborrows from a lot of different mythologies and turns things on their head a little bit.
It’s a lot of work to be Santa Claus.
He burns millions of calories.
He’s got billions of people to get presents to in a 37-hour period every year.
So he’s all about the work.
He is the singular force in the universe that we all count on every year to do his job.
That’s a lot of responsibility.
That was really fun.
Dwayne and I did a fair amount of that together.
Are you a runner?"
And I was like, “My back, my knees, my everything [hurts].”
Anything but more running.
The film’s got varying opinions on naughty versus nice.
What do you take away from that argument at the heart of the movie?
We all earn our way onto either list.
I love the idea of redemption.
There’s a lot of turmoil on the planet.
It really comes down to the Golden Rule, and being nice is the North Pole version of that.
Do you have a favorite cinematic Santa?
He’s not a Santa, but Clarence, the angel fromIt’s a Wonderful Lifebelongs in there.
If you were Santa Claus, what would you want left out for you on Christmas Eve?
Classic chocolate chip [cookie], non-fat milk.
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