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“And changing mediums is fun too, because there’s new things to be found in. It’s good to go from overlooking everything to one very focused thing for someone else. “I get to go from doing something intense like Shadows, where Taika and I are doing everything, to something where I’m just acting. He is also working on Uncle Bertie’s Botanarium, a comedy radio play for the digital comedy network Earwolf, slated for imminent releaseon Howl radio network.Ĭhanging pace on each project is refreshing, he says. The release of People, Places, Things comes at a busy time for Clement. “I guess it intensifies his experience of loneliness.” “He quite liked that the character was from overseas, that he had to stay in New York because he had children there, that he was a foreigner far away from home,” says Clement. He learned an American accent for the role, but Strouse told him to use his natural speaking voice instead. “The accent’s so specific such a small percentage of the world has it.” Some people might wonder why I speak in such a strange way,” he says. Like Clement, the character is a New Zealander, his accent explained with a brief reference to Sir Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings films early in the film. “Maybe it’s because I’m not doing any acting. Perhaps that’s part of it? Clement laughs. Maybe different people get different things from it.”Ĭritics have said his inscrutable bearing allows the audience to project their own assessment of the situation on to his character. “I didn’t see it like that when I read it. He seems bemused by descriptions of the film as a romantic comedy. If I put ‘comedian’ that’s worse, because then they’ll want a joke and they’ll probably search me. “Other times I’ve been offered a main part in a film, I’ve been worried if I was experienced enough to carry it. If People, Places, Things spells the start of a new era in his Hollywood career, he is not over-thinking it. Clement plays Will, a graphic novelist and teacher grappling with the abrupt end of his relationship and his new status as a single father juggling shared custody of twin daughters.Īlthough his performance has been praised by critics for his “unique comic timing”, Clement says the suggestion that the film confirms his status as a leading man “might be overstating it”. He is starring in People, Places, Things, a thoughtful indie comedy directed by James C Strouse, which is playing in the US and about to open in Australia. (The mooted Flight of the Conchords reunion tour is also without a timeframe: “We’ve still got to talk about that.”) would be a musical that doesn’t have that old-fashioned, ‘musical’ feel.”įor now though, the film is on the back burner as Clement juggles other projects. “The idea that Bret and I have been talking about. I feel like people who like music often don’t like musicals. “It’s always so old-fashioned, and it’s so specific to one audience. “The music in musicals is always, you know – musicaaaal,” he says, affecting the tonal equivalent of jazz hands over the phone from his home town of Wellington, New Zealand. The film is “definitely a couple of years away, at least”, Clement told Guardian Australia, but it is likely to take the form of a modern musical, something he has wanted to create for some time.