Mark Wahlberg on Seth MacFarlane's 'Ted'
Somewhere between The Hangover and The Tooth Fairy — or, more aptly, between Family Guy and Walt Disney — lies Ted, the feature film directing debut from Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane. About John, a grown man (Mark Wahlberg), and Ted, the adorable teddy bear his childhood wish brought to life (voiced by MacFarlane), the film aims to tell the story of what happens after the happily-ever-after ending of most family-friendly fairy tales. According to the red-band trailer that hit the web on Sunday, that apparently includes pot smoking, some profane dating advice, and John and Ted cowering from a thunderstorm in bed with John’s girlfriend (Mila Kunis) while singing their comfort song with the rousing chorus, “F— you, thunder!”
In other words, Ted is that lifelong best buddy who keeps you from fully entering adulthood. But that doesn’t mean he isn’t a crapload of fun — like when he goads John into unspooling a litany of white trash girls’ names. You need to see it to believe it; watch the NSFW trailer below:
So how on earth did Wahlberg handle firing off all those names?
“I was just sitting here trying to think if I can do that again,” Walhberg told EW last month after MacFarlane presented roughly 10 minutes of footage from his film at the SXSW Film Festival. “I always pride myself on knowing my lines and showing up on time and being prepared. But that’s the only time I ever had trouble with it.” Wahlberg said he usually starts working on a script a couple months before production, but for that scene in particular, he wrote out each name by hand “something like 1,000 times.”
“He’s being very modest,” countered MacFarlane. “[He is] the single most prepared human being. It’s astonishing. I would be dead in the water if I had to memorize that many names in a row. I was expecting to have to have cue cards. And Mark said, ‘No, I got it.’ He just rattled them all off from memory. It was insane.”
And how hard was it for MacFarlane to come up with all those names in the first place? “Oh, this is America,” laughed MacFarlane. “Not too hard.”
Ted is due to arrive in theaters July 13.
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