Before Winning an Oscar, Kevin Kline Was Warned About Getting Involved With ‘These Monty Python People’
While the Academy Awards don’t often honor actors for comedic work, over the decades a few funny performances have still slipped through the cracks, such as Marisa Tomei, who won for My Cousin Vinny. And even then, some people tried to claim that her well-deserved win was really due to some kind of La La Land-esque screw-up.One memorable comedy win came in 1989, when Kevin Kline took home the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for playing the psychotic dum-dum Otto in A Fish Called Wanda. This probably would have been the biggest shock of the night, if not for the fact that it was the same ceremony that opened with a trainwreck of a musical number starring Rob Lowe and Snow White.During his speech, Kline shouted out the film’s screenwriter John Cleese, who he jokingly claimed once told him, “I want to write a movie where you get run over by a steamroller and eat a lot of Michael Palin’s tropical fish.”In a 2018 interview with Entertainment Weekly, Kline went into more detail about how he landed the part. It’s true that Cleese wrote it for him specifically, after discovering his “silly side” when they were working together, and rooming in the same apartment, during the production of Silverado. But Kline didn’t actually see the script until he was making the drama Cry Freedom, about apartheid-era South Africa, helmed by Sir Richard Attenborough. But the legendary filmmaker (and future dinosaur park magnate) had serious qualms about Kline making Wanda.Kline said that Donald Woods, the real-life journalist he played in the film, relayed Attenborough’s concerns to him. “He sort of confided in me that Dickie (Attenborough) had mentioned to him that he was worried about ‘Kevin involving himself with these Monty Python people,’” Kline recalled. “I mean, Dickie had seen me play Hamlet, and cast me in Cry Freedom, and I think thought of me as a serious actor, which I suppose I can be, when the situation merits. Anyway, I just thought it was funny that Dickie was worried. He just thought I was maybe trashing my reputation.”What Kline may have been overlooking is the possibility that Attenborough was still miffed about his portrayal in an old Monty Python’s Flying Circus sketch. Obviously, Kline agreed to make the movie, but he was a “little perplexed” by Cleese’s script. And that sense of uncertainty carried into the production. “I remained slightly confused throughout the filming, because the character had so many wonderful inconsistencies,” Kline explained. “He seemed to be preternaturally, lethally stupid but, although it was mostly posturing and posing, there was some attempt at intelligent, recognizably human, behavior.”Eventually Kline just “went with the wonderful inconsistencies and just embraced it,” but not before Cleese had T-shirts made reading “Who is this guy?” because the actor asked that question so often. Maybe they should have given him a second Oscar for putting up with Cleese.
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