DAVID

interview| STEVE CARELL
Who’s
WHO
Steve Carell provides the voice of the most important Who of them all, the
Mayor of Who-ville, in Horton Hears a Who! But, quite frankly, the much-in-demand
actor is still a little shocked he’s an actor at all I BY JIM SLOTEK
The Hollywood trade papers painted
it as something of a reunion when
Jim Carrey and Steve Carell were cast
as the lead voices in Horton Hears a Who!,
the CGI adaptation of the Dr. Seuss classic.
They had played opposite each other
in Bruce Almighty, with Carrey as God’s
vessel Bruce and Carell as Bruce’s office
rival Evan. And Carell — an A-lister after
the success of his romantic-comedy
The 40-Year-Old Virgin — inherited the
less-successful sequel, Evan Almighty.
So it’s ironic (but not surprising given
how animated films are made) that while
Carrey and Carell’s characters share
plenty of screen time, the actors never
even saw each other while making the
movie about an elephant who encounters
an entire race of tiny people living on
a speck of dust.
“I never saw Jim Carrey once,” says
Carell during an L.A. interview last
November, just as his work on Horton was
drawing to a close. “But I still have a few
more sessions to do, so we might just run
into each other, you never know. I must
say it’s looking really cool. They really
captured that Dr. Seuss look, but at the
same time it’s very three-dimensional
and feels alive. It’s going to look good.”
famous 36 | march 2008
Of course, Seuss fans know that the
titular Horton and Carell’s character,
the microscopic Mayor of tiny Who-ville,
inhabit separate worlds on screen. Having
discovered a world of people literally at
his feet (“We are HERE! We are HERE!
We are HERE!”), Horton is treated like a
lunatic by his fellow pachyderms.
Meanwhile, the Mayor is similarly disbelieved
— even by his own wife (Amy
Poehler) — when he first spreads the
news that their entire universe is in
danger of being crushed by elephants.
“He’s kind of an insecure mayor, given
the circumstances,” Carell says, “I play
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PHOTO BY JONATHAN ALCORN/WIREIMAGE
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