Michael Cera has spoken to NME about finally meeting Jackie Chan, however the Hollywood legend seemingly had no idea who the actor was – check out the full interview above.
Michael Cera stars in Wes Anderson’s latest oddball adventure The Phoenician Scheme and was recently in London as part of the press tour. After speaking to Jo Whiley on BBC Radio 2, he was told by a photographer that Jackie Chan was down the corridor, ahead of his scheduled appearance on the Scott Mills’ show to promote new film The Karate Kid: Legends.
“She asked if I knew Jackie Chan, which I don’t, so she said ‘come meet him’. That was that,” Cera told NME, 20 minutes after the surprise encounter. “When I met him though, he was like ‘who is this person, what’s going on?’. We took a picture but I think he thought I was a competition winner. He was like, ‘OK let’s do a picture real quick. Come on.’ Not rudely. But I felt like I was invading his little personal time with his team before he goes on the radio. So I was like, ‘What am I doing here?’ But everyone was very sweet and I got to meet Jackie.” The photo has yet to appear online.
Cera also revealed that the one album that he can’t live without is The Beatles’ 1965 album ‘Rubber Soul’. “I grew up thinking The Beatles were pretty whatever. I didn’t care. But when I was 18, I gave them a proper listen. I started with ‘Rubber Soul’ and I remember from that first track [‘Drive Me Car’] being like ‘whoa’. It’s still my favourite Beatles album to this day and I love it.”
He went on to say that he’s never met any of The Beatles. “It would be cool but also strange. I don’t know what I’d say [if I did meet them]. It would be weird to say anything. They’d be so bored by whatever I had to say, because they’ve heard it eight billion times from every other person on the planet. It must be hard to be a Beatle.”
Elsewhere in the interview, Cera told NME that during the filming of The Phoenician Scheme, he arranged for an electric piano to be installed in the lobby of the hotel where all the cast were staying. “I wanted there to be some musical atmosphere. We had some good music nights together,” said Cera, with actor John Patrick Walter (the husband of actress Hope Davis, who plays Mother Superior in the film) leading sing-alongs to The Beatles songs.
“He’s amazing. It’s hard to get that sing-along vibe going by yourself. However Wes’ editing suite was on the other side of the wall and occasionally someone would come out while he was working and tell us ‘no music right now’.”
Working on The Phoenician Scheme and all that hotel lobby singing has apparently reawakened Cera’s desire to make more music of his own. As well as playing bass and singing in 2010’s Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World, providing backing vocals on Weezer’s ‘Hang On’ and touring with indie rockers Mister Heavenly, Cera released his debut album ‘True That’ in 2014. However he’s not released any new music since 2017’s ‘Best I Can’, a collaboration with Sharon Van Etten that was recorded for the documentary film Dina.
“I haven’t really been creating any music recently,” he told NME. “I play music every day but I have little kids now, so I just don’t have time or focus to do anything productive in that way. I hope to again though. Normally [everything I make] is for a specific project or has a specific intention but it’s just my time management [right now].”
Speaking to NME back in 2014, Michael Cera said: “I’m always working on music but it’s more of a hobby of mine. I don’t really have any desire or ambition to have a career in music, which means there’s no pressure behind it. But hopefully it will yield [another] collection of something that I feel is good enough to share.”
‘The Phoenician Scheme’ is in cinemas now