GQ: How long did it take to turn comedy into a career?
JB: Six years. That was the process. I didn’t leave my job for a long time. Melanie is sat in the corner there. She can validate this. We ended up getting back together because she came to the comedy club not knowing that I did it. And I told a joke about killing her and cutting her head off.
Melanie Bishop: That was a shit joke.
GQ: Did you know she was in the audience?
JB: No, I didn’t. She didn’t know I did it. But she waited for me at the end and then we started talking and, just like Tess in the film, she thought it was hot. [Laughs].
MB: You’re really, really crossing the line!
JB: I’m embellishing things here.
GQ: Melanie, did you think he was funny?
MB: He’s always made me laugh.
GQ: The film is largely about the therapeutic nature of comedy – I wonder if that was the main thing that made you, Bradley Cooper and Will Arnett so passionate about this story?
JB: Oh, massively, yeah. With comedy, you stand on the stage, and you tell people what’s going on. You can just get up and unload.
GQ: Back in the early 2000s, men weren’t as quick to go to therapy. Comedy probably forced you to confront your feelings about the divorce.
JB: That’s exactly what happened. I ended up talking about stuff on the stage in a comedy club that I couldn’t talk to me mates about, because we’d have all felt awkward. Now. men are more emotionally aware, but at that time, if I was to say to me mates, “This divorce is really doin’ me head in, and I’m dead upset. I keep breaking down crying and I don’t know why I’m living like this, because me kids are living in a different house than what I’m living in, and it’s not what I ever thought would happen.” Me mates would go, “OK… So do you think you'll stick with five at the back on Saturday?”
GQ: [To Melanie] Not to put you on the spot, but did you feed much in during the filmmaking process?
MB: Obviously, we had to trust a lot and share a lot. Laura [Dern] reached out to me probably about a year before they started filming. I said to Laura, “Just keep it safe.” And from me reading the script [to watching the final cut], it was how I pictured it – it just captured everything that we wanted it to.
GQ: [To John] Did you cry when you watched the film the first time?
JB: I’m not tellin’ ya. [Laughs]. Maybe we had a little tear on the first screening. And you know why? Because you hand over [your story] and you don’t know how it’s going to go. And there’s a lot of faith involved, and whatever you read on a page is not always what you’re going to see. And then when we saw it, there were certain moments in it that are so powerful, but so small, and it was like watching a memory.
There’s a scene where [Alex] is emptying the washing machine, that was one that choked me, and [one where he is] sat outside the house watching the [kids’] bedroom [window] light getting turned off. I said to Will, “They’re the ones that got me, those things that you put in.” He said, “Well no, we didn’t put them in. You told us them.” But also, you’ve got to remember this film has been made by Will, by Bradley, by Laura – they’ve all been through divorces. They all know what it’s like when you’re in that stage of your life.
