Welcome to our Weekend Agenda series, in which every Friday we ask the people we most adore to share their weekend plans, and the one cultural thing that’s top on their list for the next 48 hours. Next up: Andy Samberg, whose tennis mockumentary 7 Days in Hell premieres on HBO tomorrow. (It’s been streaming on HBO Now and Go since Wednesday.) Samberg, who co-created the special, just under an hour long, with his childhood friend, the writer Murray Miller, plays Aaron Williams, a mullet-headed, sweat-band-rocking, washed-up bad boy in the Andre Agassi/John McEnroe mold, who also just happens to be the adoptive brother of Serena and Venus Williams. (Serena makes a talking head cameo, as does McEnroe, Chris Evert, Fred Armisen, David Copperfield, and many others.) Aaron’s scandalous career reaches its apotheosis during an incredible, mettle-testing Wimbledon match against his equal and utterly opposite force, Britain’s dim-witted, straight-laced wunderkind, Charles Poole (played by a very un–Jon Snow-looking Kit Harington). Their match ends up lasting seven days, prolonged by all manner of intermissions—like an on-court threesome and the accidental murder of a line judge.
So why did he make this? “That has definitely been the first question from everyone,” Samberg told Vogue.com by phone. “I feel like it’s very much a Jurassic Park situation: It’s like, we didn’t think about if we should, just if we could.”
Read on for more of Samberg’s thoughts on the world of tennis, full frontal male nudity (yup!), and the nineties sci-fi quadrilogy he’s planning to finish this weekend.
So, really, why did you make this? I mean, I’m glad you did!
Same! It feels slightly arbitrary. The short answer to why is that it’s an idea that me and my friend Murray have had since we were teenagers, and we just had enough success to get it done. He’s a writer for the show Girls and has a great relationship with HBO, and we honestly have been friends since tennis camp. When the Isner match happened at Wimbledon a few years ago and it went three days, we were laughing about the idea of a match that just never ended. So we wrote it up and HBO was into it and I had a little down time, so we went out and made it.
Are you shocked that it actually came together?
I’m not shocked, but I’m happy. I’m really pleased with how it turned out. We got this insane cast and so many huge people agreed to come and mess around on it. Anytime you have Serena Williams with a straight face saying my character is her adopted brother and it’s a reverse Blind Side, it feels like you pulled off some sort of small coup in the comedy sense.
So who is the person you were most psyched to get on board?
Well, we were really excited to get David Copperfield. Especially because he came to play. Copperfield shows up a few times in this and he really did not hold back, which was fantastic. Obviously Serena and [John] McEnroe and Chris Evert. You know, anyone who’s not from the world of comedy, I’m always more tickled when they really go for it.
But if I really had to pick one it would probably be Kit [Harington] because I’m such a Game of Thrones fan. And you know Jon Snow is one of the best Thrones characters ever. He was just so up for it and was so funny. And I get to brag to everyone that I’m friends with Jon Snow now.
When you were standing across the court from him, were you seeing Kit or were you seeing Jon Snow?
At that point I was seeing Kit because he shaved his beard for this. There’s footage we shot where he’s supposed to actually be a teenager, because he’s a tennis prodigy. He comes out on this BBC sports show. The host is Michael Sheen. Kit looks like he’s sixteen, no doubt. I’m not being hyperbolic in any way. Everyone who I showed it to is like: Is that him?! It worked so perfectly. He’s got this baby face under his beard.
Are you any good at tennis? When’s the last time you actually played?
The last time I actually played was probably in college with my mom. My mom plays a lot. I’m like just good enough to get the footage we needed for this. I will say there’s a shot that’s in the trailer, where my character hits a line judge with a serve. We were like, we’ll just do it with CG, you know, but I was like, let’s just try a few. I tried one—it was way off. I tried two, and it was a little bit closer. And on my third try I actually nailed the guy like right in the chest. I didn’t literally kill him, but he pretended really well. In retrospect I probably responded in a way that was not appropriate. I was cheering. I threw my hands up in the air, like, yessss. I started running around the court celebrating
Why did you choose Wimbledon as the venue?
It had to be Wimbledon. Wimbledon is the only tournament that has this rule that if you don’t win by two games, the match continues. Any other tournament would get called at a certain point. But at Wimbledon the rule means it literally could go forever.
Why make it seven days then?
You know, it was originally called The Never Ending Match. Then it was called 8 Days in Hell. And Murray and I, we read the script and felt like we didn’t want to outstay our welcome. It reached the moment of the seven-day mark and we both just looked at each other and said, You know, this is just about as far as we can take it. We don’t want to bum people out.
You said your character was based on Andre Agassi and also John McEnroe, who was involved. Did McEnroe give you any notes on how to be McEnroe-y?
Like pointers in petulance?
Exactly.
We actually shot with him after we shot all the tennis stuff. I don’t know if he knew what I was or wasn’t doing. I’ve met him a couple times before because he was in a bunch of digital shorts for SNL. It was really cool making this because I really did watch a lot of tennis and still do. So to get to hang with McEnroe and talk tennis and get him to engage in the joke was really cool, kind of like tennis fantasy camp childhood stuff for us.
Was there anyone you were really bummed that you couldn’t get?
Not really. We kind of got everybody. It was crazy! I’ve never had that experience before, where it was like: They’re down!
So there’s a lot of full frontal male nudity in this.
It was definitely a choice, you know. It’s HBO, so you’re allowed. We were laughing about how there’s so much female nudity generally. We wanted to level the playing field. We felt like if we were going to do any female nudity that we should probably go twice as hard on the male nudity. And also we’re just children and find wangs really funny to look at. So we threw as much of that in as possible.
I salute you. The leveling of the playing field is important.
Oh, thank you. There’s a wide variety of wangs in this one.
Some of them are otherworldly.
Yes. Some of them are beyond the realm of reason.
On that note: what’s the one cultural thing you’re planning to do this weekend?
I actually do have a set plan to do some reading this weekend. I’ve been reading the Hyperion sci-fi novels. I’m on the fourth one, The Rise of Endymion. I’ve been shooting this movie, the Lonely Island movie with Akiva [Schaffer] and Jorma [Taccone] and we just wrapped this week. I’ve been dying to get back to this book. This weekend I’m going to crack it open and try to blaze through it. And I’m really excited. That is the God’s honest truth.
Set the scene. What does Andy Samberg reading sci-fi look like? Where are you? Are you sipping a cup of tea? Are you outside sun bathing?
Definitely sipping a cup of chamomile ginger tea, wrapped in some sort of fuzzy blanket. We’re going to be visiting some family up north this weekend. So I’ll probably be out on a patio. I’ve been long looking forward to this week because it’s my [one] week off this year. Around holiday time I’ll have another one.
What other things will you do? Is it on a lake? Will you be lakeside?
I think there’s some sort of body of water. There might be a river? I’m super pumped. I’m going to see all my nieces and nephews and family and probably, you know, get out on the body of water.
The post Andy Samberg on Spoofing Wimbledon and His Big Weekend Plans appeared first on Vogue.
