Fool’s Paradise, an upcoming emotional buddy comedy, doesn’t seem much like legendary horror and fantasy director Guillermo del Toro’s bag. The movie follows a recently released mental patient — played by Charlie Day — who has lost his ability to speak. The helpless Day is quickly discovered by a publicist (Ken Jeong) and used as a lookalike for a method actor who refuses to leave his trailer. Like every good buddy comedy, the trailer shows a slew of hijinks and shenanigans, the perfect mix for your run-of-the-mill comedy movie.
But after some excellent input, and some grounded rewrites, Ken Jeong reveals in an exclusive interview with Looper that it’s a lot more than that. When the film first wrapped nearly five years ago, Jeong shares, Day sent a screener to Guillermo del Toro. The pair worked with one another back in 2018 on the set of Pacific Rim, and their long history made del Toro a perfect early viewer for the film. Del Toro has always had a knack for representing the finer points of human emotion, and his feedback for Day was all about the heart of the movie. Jeong recalls del Toro telling Day, “You should make Ken more the emotional core of the movie.”
It wasn’t the first time Day had reconsidered how his film could really emphasize the emotionality between the two characters. Jeong is intentionally unlikable at the beginning of the movie, but by the end — thanks to del Toro’s intervention and Day’s willingness to rework the concept — Jeong steals audiences’ hearts. And that is something that only someone like Charlie Day would do. Jeong gushed over his co-star and friend, “Who would do that but Charlie? I’ve never seen that happen before.”
While reshoots tend to mean bad news for movies — especially ones that set back a release by years — Jeong thinks these changes were well worth the wait. “Flash forward to a few years later — the whole cast returns to do the reshoots, and it becomes a different movie and a better one. It became a deeper movie, and it was great.”
Jeong’s enthusiasm for both his work on the project and his adoration for Day are infectious.
“You talk about this being a buddy comedy, a buddy journey. In real life, it’s evolved that way behind the scenes. Really, I’m only here for Charlie…. I’ve been very blessed to do so many amazing things in my career, but in my film career, this is my favorite thing I’ve ever done.”
Fool’s Paradise hits theatres on May 12.
