Showtime's Kidding brought acting icon Jim Carrey back into households across the globe. His castmate, Judy Greer, suggested working with him proved to be intimidating at first.
"Jim Carrey, I was super nervous to work with him and meet him," Greer, 43, told Newsweek. "But I really fell for [his character] Jeff Pickles, just the idea of people being nice to other people and treating other people with respect."
Directed by Michel Gondry of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind fame, Kidding follows the story of Jeff Pickles as he stars as a beloved television figure on a Mister Rogers-like show for children. Kidding, unlike Mister Rogers, is relatively dark. After Jeff suffers a family tragedy following the death of his son, all areas of his personal life begin to implode. Jeff struggles to adequately cope.
Greer plays Jill, who used to be married to Jeff. It's revealed in the show's pilot episode the couple separated following the death of their son.
The Showtime series tackles dramatic moments in addition to comedic ones. Greer, in turn, pointed out how the show manages to blend the two.
"I think that the visual story that gets told really kind of laces it all together," Greer explained to Newsweek. "The pictures that are being presented are, like, what's making it all flow seamlessly between comedy and drama."
Kidding is Carrey's first recurring role on a television series in nearly two decades. He last appeared on the silver screen on the African-American centered sketch comedy series In Living Color, a run he concluded in 2001. Since wrapping In Living Color, he went on to star in major blockbuster releases like Bruce Almighty and How the Grinch Stole Christmas. Prior to Kidding, he hadn't surfaced in any on-screen roles since 2016. He's instead frequented social media to share his political paintings, which are often inspired by President Donald Trump.
Carrey suggested the reasoning for his TV comeback could be attributed to Kidding's exploration of "the idea of identity."
"The search for [the] identity of who you are; what's an authentic person has always been attractive to me," Carrey said during July's Television Critics Association (TCA) press tour, according to Deadline. "The idea of being hit by a freight train in life and hanging on to the idea of yourself, that's really attractive."
Kidding airs Sundays at 10 p.m. ET on Showtime.
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Dory Jackson is a New York-based entertainment journalist from Maryland. She graduated from Randolph-Macon College—in May 2016—with a focus in Communication ... Read more
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