Jim Carrey Urged Jeff Daniels to ‘Go All the Way’ With ‘Dumb and Dumber’ Toilet Scene
Jeff Daniels won an Emmy for his serious role in The Newsroom. He’s been nominated for Tony Awards for his dramatic work in To Kill A Mockingbird, God of Carnage and Blackbird. So cut the guy some slack if he was worried that “a couple of hours of porcelain gymnastics” in Dumb and Dumber might be a career killer.
His agents were even more concerned than he was. “I had agents, who weren't wrong, telling me, 'You're a serious actor. This is not the direction you need to be going. We're going to stop this and get you off this movie,'” Daniels told USA Today. “But I wanted to shake it up with a comedy. And I wanted to work with Jim Carrey.”
The risks were greater than ruining his reputation with an epic toilet scene. He’d be competing for laughs with Carrey at the height of his comic powers. That meant nailing his funny showcase scenes — or else. “It was like, I've got scenes. I knew I was going to score,” he says. But if Daniels’s bits fell flat? “If they cut those, the movie was going to be ‘Jim and the other guy.’”
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Daniels knew his spot in the comedy hierarchy, deferring to Carrey in their odd-couple scenes. “Let Jim, as Lloyd, be the leader. You want him to do that, don't try to compete with him," Daniels advised himself during filming. “Let him go through the door first and you follow like a puppy on a leash.”
For his solo scenes, however, Daniels was ready to go all in. That didn’t make him any less squeamish about his infamous toilet tour de force. When his character Harry drinks tea spiked with laxatives, he endures a painful rite of passage in the bathroom. It wasn’t exactly Shakespeare in the park.
“It's one thing to read the toilet scene, but then the day comes and we're actually going to do the toilet scene," Daniels said. “I told Jim, 'This is either the beginning of my career or the end of it.' Jim, who is fearless, told me, 'It's going to be great. You've just got to go all the way with it.'”
Daniels went Method in one of the movie’s most memorable gross-out scenes, emoting for two hours of gastric distress. “And that close-up when they pop in tight on my red face. I had been doing it so long, I had almost passed out.”
Hey, it happens to the best of us — even Clint Eastwood. Daniels told USA Today about the time the iconic actor and director introduced himself at a celebrity golf tournament. “Clint says to me, ‘I just saw Dumb and Dumber and you know, the toilet scene? That happened to me,’” he said. “And then he tells a story about dating this woman that he really wanted to impress, but the shellfish hit him the wrong way from lunch.”
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