"I'm not back in the same way": Jim Carrey opens up about working in Hollywood and his eventual return in Showtime's 'Kidding'
Jim Carrey has been absent from the big screen for quite a long time until his most recent project with Showtime's 'Kidding', and he probably has some good reasons for his reluctance to be back in Hollywood. He did not admire the business since it was not the creative output that he was looking out for, as a result of which he grew particular about choosing his projects.
During his interview with The Hollywood Reporter, 'The Mask' actor opened up about his disappointment with Hollywood's depleted state. "I just didn’t want to be in the business anymore. I didn’t like what was happening, the corporations taking over and all that. And maybe it’s because I felt pulled toward a different type of creative outlet and I really liked the control of painting — of not having a committee in the way telling me what the idea must be to appeal to a four-quadrant whatever.” Although his much-anticipated comeback with 'Kidding' is eagerly being looked out for, Carrey disowns the entire burden of pushing it all over the edge.
He said, "I'm not back in the same way...I don't feel I'm little Jim trying to hang on to a place in the stratosphere anymore — I don't feel like I'm trying to hold on to anything." Carrey has had his own reservations about working on a TV show for years and in order to get him on board with the project screenwriter Dave Holstein, along with Showtime's CEO David Nevins signed in the director of 'Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind', Michel Gondry. It soon became a reunion as Carrey joined the team soon after Gondry, with whom the actor has been trying to collaborate for a long time.
The writer of 'Weeds' confessed to The Hollywood Reporter that it was Carrey who was in his mind when he penned down the character of Jeff Pickles in 'Kidding'. He said, "I had been obsessed with Jim's performances in 'Truman Show' and 'Man on the Moon', and so I had sat down to write that Jim a TV show." The actor who was the first to demand a $20 million cheque for a movie has recently been feeding his Twitter handle with a number of political lampoons. In most of his works that he ascribes with vote.gov, Carrey pens down satirical sketches of politicians, specifically the U.S. President, Donald Trump.
The 'Ace Ventura' actor has also been warned by his manager to not do this on social media. "My manager used to be like, 'Don't do stuff on there. You're fucking insane.'" However, that didn't stop him from going ahead with his caricatures, and soon his work became quite popular on Twitter after he put up a GIF of Trump's ex-lawyer Michael Cohen which racked up close to 800 tweets within a couple of hours. "I knew sooner or later I'd find a worthy way to use Twitter."
Carrey is probably now all set to play the entertainer in Showtime's 'Kidding'. As the plot synopsis goes Jeff, aka Mr. Pickles, is an icon of children's television, a beacon of kindness and wisdom to America's impressionable young minds and the parents who grew up with him - who also anchors a multimillion-dollar branding empire. But when this beloved personality's family - wife, two sons, sister, and father - begins to implode, Jeff finds no fairy tale or fable or puppet will guide him through the crisis, which advances faster than his means to cope. The result: a kind man in a cruel world faces a slow leak of sanity as hilarious as it is heartbreaking.
Probably enacting a character like Jeff is almost an opening up process for Carrey as he said, "You're always waiting for that thing that you recognize as some part of yourself...And the life experience here matched up. I've gone through great loss, and somehow I ended up on the other side in a place where I can look anybody in the eye and feel like I'm on the same page. I understand how the river of grief can grab you at some point in your life and just throttle you." The series will premiere on Showtime in the US on September 9.