Leoni Online: The Articles — Zap2it.com
Tea Leoni Talks about Home Life and Dinosaurs By Mike Szymanski July 17, 2001 Although they might be one of Hollywood’s most recognizable couples, Tea Leoni and David Duchovny don’t have much to do on Saturday nights. In fact, the couple have recently begun spending some of their free time practicing a very strange new art form. “It’s ass-art, it’s very serious,” Leoni says, unable to keep from giggling during an interview with Zap2it.com. “I was the one who loaded it and he squat down on the canvas.” Leoni, 35, and Duchovny, 39, have done four such paintings, two of them hang in their home, while the other two fetched $3,500 each for animal rights causes. Leoni says the couple likes to work on the paintings for charity – but only when their 2-year-old daughter West is away with a babysitter. “I know he showed his bottom in (the movie) “Evolution” recently, but that’s not what made us do this,” Leoni laughs, tugging on the fake pearl necklace she’s wearing over her yellow-green Polo sweater. She’s casual today – in faded jeans. “Maybe we were bored.” It’s not like the couple has nothing to do on a Saturday night either. They’ve been married since 1997 and get invitations to go out with their celebrity friends, but the two prefer to be homebodies with their daughter, Leoni says. Sometimes they sneak off to a favorite eatery not far from their house, but it’s usually after they put their baby to bed and the sitter comes over. “Then it’s late, and who wants to eat at 8:30? I don’t, personally. I’m too old… you get gas.” Leoni’s outrageous sense of humor is clearly evident. Even her husband has acknowledged it. “She rarely gets a chance to be as funny on screen as she really is,” he tells Zap2it. Leoni did play funny as a celeb-chasing photographer in the short-lived TV show “The Naked Truth” and was in movies such as “A League of their Own,” “Family Man,” “Flirting with Disaster” and “Deep Impact.” Now she find herself screaming at giant reptiles in “Jurassic Park III.” But she loves it so much that she wants to be in the fourth part, too. Leoni confesses that she begged producer Steven Spielberg to let her character survive this episode so she can get into the next installment. She even has a scenario planned where she has an affair with Sam Neill’s character. Neill, who talked to Zap2it.com from his home in New Zealand, laughs at the thought of his character having an affair with Leoni, and gulps, “Well, that could only be a lot of fun.” When first asked to be a part of the dinosaur trilogy – this one directed by Joe Johnston – Leoni admits she turned her nose up a bit. “Hmmm, I thought, let me get over the fact that I’m such a loser because I wasn’t in the first one or the second one,” she recalls. Then, she saw the supporting cast would include Neill, William H. Macy, Michael Jeter and a cameo with Laura Dern. “If they just wanted to sell cups and toys they could have done it with a whole different roster,” she says, “a much less expensive one, to begin with, and probably a prettier one. So I knew they were serious in wanting to do a good movie.” (By the way, Leoni says she likes the action doll modeled after her character because she appears younger and has bigger breasts.) Leoni also knows the special effects are better, and because the running time is shorter, there’s little time for sappy moments or love stories. It’s all action. Well, except that Leoni is paired up with the unlikely “Fargo” star Macy as a married couple – but the two have surprisingly good chemistry. “People told me I had that with Nicolas Cage in “Family Man” and he is one of the easiest guys to have chemistry with in the world,” she says. “And Bill Macy is totally simple to have chemistry with because you can say anything to [him]. He’s a great bully, he’s got a great sense of humor and he’s kind of geeky, but in a very charming way. He’s classic geek.” The two have some realistic and funny husband-and-wife scenes as they run from the jaws of dinosaurs in this, the most physical film for the both of them. They even survived a few injuries. “I fell off a catwalk. It wasn’t even on camera,” she says. “Too bad, because it was one of my best pieces of physical work. Bill and I were hanging out on the edge (of a bridge where flying dinosaurs roam) – it was supposed to be filled with water and it wasn’t yet because they weren’t shooting that part – and I step off the back and I had a contusion the size of a beach-bucket between my legs. I don’t know how I smacked my crotch and then ended up hanging by my elbow, but you know those things happen very quickly.” She sighs, “We were all getting pretty banged-up. But I gotta tell you I loved it.” She’s already under contract to be in the sequel, if there is one. But that will all depend on how big the box office is for the return back to the island of cloned dinosaurs in the story based on Michael Crichton’s novels. Next up for Leoni is “People I Know” with Al Pacino, then a Woody Allen movie for 2002 and a Coen brothers movie called “Intolerable Cruelty.” Meanwhile, she’s watching her child grow up with a sense of humor inherited from her funny celebrity parents. “She has a better sense of humor,” says Leoni. “She’ll do things, very subtle things, and leave her dad and me just gob-smacked! We’re waiting for her head to start spinning and vomit to start coming out of her. I mean, no child that age should have a sense of humor like that – to stump two parents who are fairly well-witted.” Leoni also said she hopes her daughter has inherited more of her father’s attributes.
“I hope she’s inherited his butt, not mine,” Leoni laughs. “Mine is so flat. David has a fabulous ass. I’m not kidding you.”