Paul Giamatti tells Stephen Colbert that a baboon showing him his 'a**' is his career's favorite memory
'Billions' actor Paul Giamatti was on yesterday night's (April 30) episode of 'The Late Show with Stephen Colbert'. While making his appearance, the Emmy-winning Giamatti spoke about returning to sketching after many years since "there's not much to do" during the lockdown. He mentioned that it's a wonderful thing to have this kind of time on one's hands to pick up forgotten passions and hobbies.
Giamatti revealed that a lot of his life he wanted to be "some kind of artist, a cartoonist or an illustrator" and he was serious about opting for that as a career.
He also showed off some of his artwork after Colbert insisted to see them. "Nobody else but you would get me to do this because I have never shown my artwork before ever," said Giamatti as he held his drawings. "All I can do is weird faces, sci-fi alien faces," he said while sifting through other drawings. "We'll have this show notarized," joked Colbert.
Impressed by his sketches, Colbert advised him to do a graphic novel and turns out Giamatti has been considering it given the amount of time on his hands, currently. However, he maintained that he would need to put a lot of thought before doing something like that as he hasn't taken any classes for that. On being asked about a memory that sticks out to Giamatti in his long-drawn career, Giamatti mentioned that the memories of him working with actor Vanessa Redgrave is the first thing that comes to his mind.
He further added that he's also had a chance of working with "wonderful animals" in his career and the one memory that sticks out on that front is when he starred in a movie with a baboon. Colbert asked why he was working with the primate to which Giamatti jokingly mentioned that he was brought in "to spice up the film."
Recalling the first scene wherein he had to "yell a lot" at the baboon, Giamatti mentioned that he managed to terrify the animal to a point where he started to "show his a**" to the actor as an act of "submission".
He also mentioned that one of the "chimpanzees was attracted" to him while he appeared on 'Planet of the Apes' in 2001 and they "had to be kept separate".
"Can you blame her? all that goodness!" joked Colbert.
Giamatti's show 'Billions' returns with Season 5 this Sunday with seven episodes. They "wisely stopped filming" mid-season amid the pandemic and the upcoming season will be split into two parts (the second part will feature 5 episodes that will be filmed later)
On being asked if Part 1 will end on a cliff-hanger, Giamatti said, "that show has 10 cliff-hangers per episode" and one shouldn't expect any different.
Colbert asked if the returning season would start with Bobby Axelrod zooming his billionaire action, Giamatti joked that he would love it if they could show him in the opening scene "washing his hands and his produce obsessively."
