Interview: Jay Baruchel, Nate Torrence on ‘She’s Out of My League’

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CHICAGO – Jay Baruchel and Nate Torrence, two of the leads of the romantic comedy “She’s Out of My League” dropped by Chicago recently to talk about their new film that has been compared to both “The Hangover” and the work of Judd Apatow. Candid, charismatic, and very funny in person, Baruchel and Torrence are the kind of interview subjects that make this job easy.

In “She’s Out of My League,” Baruchel plays an awkward TSA agent who falls head over heels for a beautiful woman named Molly (Alice Eve) and, much to the surprise of his friends and family, she falls back. Torrence (“Get Smart”) plays his sweet friend who is arguably the most supportive voice in telling the poor guy that Molly isn’t out of his league.

As one might imagine, the conversation started by trying to define exactly what makes a girl a ten. Torrence lays it down somewhat seriously, “Even though the movie hints at it, it’s not obviously about good looks. Do you want to know what I personally find a hard ten? I like low maintenance. That’s what I’m all about. No matter how pretty they are.”

She’s Out of My League.
Photo credit: Paramount/DreamWorks

Baruchel agreed but added a few personal qualifiers including “if a chick likes the Montreal Canadians hockey team,” “likes to eat hamburgers,” and that “it doesn’t hurt when they look like Alice [Eve].”

The producers came to Jay Baruchel with the script for “She’s Out of My League” while he was still working on “Tropic Thunder” and clearly impressing htem with his dailies on that great film. While it was great for Jay to get a lead offer, the original script featured even more references to the lead being repulsive.

Baruchel says, “So it was a weird mix of being flattered but also incredibly f**king insulted. I was like, “Is there any way we can get rid of some of the repulsion?” I saw the opportunity to put my stamp on some of the movies that I grew up loving. To me, this owes less to the movies of the past ten years than it does to some of the John Hughes era of films. This is my chance to be Lloyd Dobler in “Say Anything,” and those are the movies that meant so much to me as a kid and more to me as I got older, because I understood them more. And this is my chance to leave behind one of those movies.”

The chemistry among the four male leads is key to the success of “She’s Out of My League” and it’s something that’s hard to fake. Baruchel says, “Honestly, I count this kid as one of my best friends, and I count TJ (Miller) and Mike (Vogel) as my best friends. I didn’t know any of them beforehand, and because we were in a city that none of us lived in, we all hung out together and spent a lot of time and money at Dave & Buster’s and TGI Friday’s. (Laughs.) I love the guys and get along with them. We come from similar backgrounds and have similar views on things. We all have the same sense of humor. And at the end of the day, we all just really enjoy each other’s company. And it could have gone completely the other way and we would have been just going through the motions. But the four of us on camera - those are real moments and us making each other laugh and loving hanging out together.”

She’s Out of My League.
Photo credit: Paramount/DreamWorks

Torrence adds, “The beginning of chemistry is that you do have just the same senses of humor. What makes YOU laugh makes ME laugh, and that can make a funny scene. I’ve worked with people where we had to stop improvising because what they thought was funny didn’t go where I wanted to go. What makes for good improv is when you literally can make each other laugh. It’s cool when you can have those moments and then see the director use those scenes.”

The tone of the movie was key to Baruchel. “We didn’t want to have a frat boy, alpha male, misogynist point of view because that is just none of us. Nate is married and has two kids. Mike is married and has kids and goes to church every Sunday. Me, I live two blocks away from my mother and have a little sister. To me, the two are not mutually exclusive. In movies, guys are either “Kegger! Big tits!” or the guys who get the sh*t kicked out of them. That’s not how it is in real life. In real life, you can be a slobby, crass guy and still have a good heart and respect people.”

How does one romantic comedy distinguish itself from another? “I think it’s a lot,” Baruchel says. “Not to say that other movies have these people involved, but, at the end of the day, we are not douche bags, and I can’t stress enough that we wanted to satisfy what we needed to satisfy, which was to make a certain type of movie. But, also, I won’t say we wanted to put substance in it, but we did not want to alienate people. And I also didn’t want to make anything that didn’t reflect me because I am not a guy who goes out to parties and bar hops and is like, “Dude!””

“I think it’s all of us being committed to making a movie that we wanted to see first of all. That other stuff we are describing - those are not movies that any of us would watch. We all wanted to make something that we would pay money to see, otherwise what is the point of doing it? I also think that [Director] Jim’s [Field Smith] sensibility is beautifully moving and weirdly hilarious at the same time. You can make people laugh but you can also make them give a sh*t. And those laughs mean so much more if there is a connection, if people identify with the characters and feel like they are in there. To me, that is the cardinal rule of any movie in any genre. If the audience is not in there experiencing with the characters, then nothing makes sense.”

She’s Out of My League.
Photo credit: Paramount/DreamWorks

Baruchel and Torrence ended the conversation comparing embarassing in-law moments, a major recurring theme of the film. Torrence started with a decent one which was then hilariously topped by Jay.

“The first time I ever tried to take my in-laws out for dinner, my credit card got declined,” revealed Torrence. “And it wasn’t even a credit issue—that’s what sucked. At the time it was a debit card, and there was some kind of mix-up. And then (my wife) didn’t have her purse, and I didn’t have any money in my wallet. It was the first time we were ever going out…”

Baruchel one-ups with this tale - “I don’t have any awkward in-law stories but I have plenty of stories of my dad embarrassing the sh*t out of me. I’ve been acting since I was twelve and was on a TV show when I was fifteen. There was a producer that my mother did not get along with. My parents were divorced at the time. This was the night my dad rode his bicycle to the set drunk and picked a fight with the producer! It was the most f**king awkward… He was like, “So you, you’re the one!”

“My dad nearly beat the sh*t out of the umpire at a softball game. He was the first base coach and he went to high-five me for sliding in, and I was to embarrassed to high-five my dad, so I didn’t. And then the umpire was like, “No contact with the player!” All of my stories are of my dad beating the sh*t out of other people. He had no social graces. And they they are antiquers. So at an antique show, in the nicest part of Montreal, my dad beat the f*ck out of a guy. ”

Don’t beat yourself up. See “She’s Out of My League” in theaters now.

By BRIAN TALLERICO Content Director HollywoodChicago.com brian@hollywoodchicago.com