Will Arnett on Leafs fandom, Wendel Clark and ‘Is This Thing On?’

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As a lifelong Toronto Maple Leafs fan, Will Arnett knows all about heartbreak.

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He narrated the Amazon docuseries All or Nothing: Toronto Maple Leafs, which captured the club’s deflating 2020-21 NHL season. More recently, he’s watched the squad fall to the Florida Panthers multiple times in the NHL playoffs.

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But the losing has given Arnett a new perspective. It’s taught him a new word: toughness.

“I think that being a Toronto sports fan teaches you to be resilient,” the Toronto-born comedian and co-host of the SmartLess podcast (with Jason Bateman and Sean Hayes) said last month while in the city to promote his upcoming divorce comedy Is This Thing On?

After a streaky start, the Maple Leafs blanked the Tampa Bay Lightning 2-0 this week.

Arnett, 55, says that when — not if — Toronto wins its next Stanley Cup, it’ll be all the sweeter for Maple Leafs fans.

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“They will break through and it will be all the sweeter when they do,” Arnett says.

Sports anguish is an apt jumping off point to be talking about Arnett’s latest film, the divorce comedy Is This Thing On?, which opens in Toronto on Dec. 19 before expanding to additional theatres across Canada on Jan. 9.

In the film, Arnett, who split from his second wife Amy Poehler in 2016, plays Alex Novak, a struggling father of two who tries his hand at standup comedy as a way to deal with his divorce from his wife Tess (played by Laura Dern).

Bradley Cooper directs the feature based on a script he co-wrote with Arnett and Mark Chappell. The life of British comic John Bishop served as the movie’s inspiration.

“From the time I met John Bishop to our first screening was seven years and a month. It was a long road,” Arnett says.

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The part is the most demanding one Arnett has taken on in a career that stretches back to the 1990s and is highlighted by his breakout role as George Oscar “Gob” Bluth II on Arrested Development.

“There was prepping for the standup and prepping as an actor; stripping away everything I thought I knew about acting to portray this character in an authentic way … That was probably the most daunting part of the whole thing,” Arnett says.

In Toronto for Hall of Fame Weekend last month, Arnett spoke to Postmedia about the buzzy new movie and explained what being a fan of the Blue Jays and Maple Leafs has taught him about life.

You co-wrote, produced and starred in Is This Thing On? How did this come about?

It’s inspired by a true story. I met a comic, John Bishop, years ago and we were having lunch and he told me the story about of how he started doing standup when he was breaking up with his wife. He stumbled into a bar when they were doing open mics, and didn’t want to pay the cover charge so he put his name down. He was there and didn’t know how to talk about what was going on in his life and he just started talking about it onstage. That really got me. I just loved that idea that he could find relief doing this thing … I thought it was a really good way to tell a story about a marriage and about this transformation of this middle-age guy.

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So you’re doing standup as Alex Novak in these New York City comedy clubs. Did you try your act out in real life? Because initially, he can’t be too funny.

I would go to the Comedy Cellar in New York every night for about six weeks while we were in prep. I would go up a few times a night. I had them introduce me as Alex Novak and I went and worked on that first moment where he doesn’t know what he’s doing. Then I’d go back and work on other sets. We had all these different (routines) we were working on to really try and track where he’d be as a person and in his standup. But he couldn’t be too good. He couldn’t be the Michael Jordan of comedy. He couldn’t come out and be Richard Pryor.

We know you’re a huge Toronto sports guy and massive Maple Leafs fan. We know all about heartbreak. But what’s the best part of being a Toronto sports fan?

You’ve got to have a certain amount of unwarranted optimism. The Jays came so close. The stars misaligned for the Jays in Game 7. It could have gone either way, and it certainly did. It’s just the way that it goes. But as a life-long Leafs fan, I hear people say, ‘Life-long suffering,’ it’s tough, but those are the joys of life. To have those moments … It teaches you that no matter what, you’ve got to get up the next day and keep going. There’s something very Canadian about that which I like. Yeah, that sucked. Dust yourself off. Here we go.

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Is there an ultimate Maple Leafs player for you?

Yeah, Wendel Clark. I got to spend a little time with him the other night and that was amazing.

So what’s it like when you meet Wendel Clark?

The first time I met Wendel Clark was during the NHL All Star Game a couple of years ago … He’s such a cool dude and I ended up texting him six months ago for something … By the way, the most embarrassing thing is my avatar, when I texted him, is a picture of him. I realized that after I sent it that he’s going to see my avatar … the one guy that I don’t want to be embarrassed in front of. I was super embarrassed.

mdaniell@postmedia.com

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