The “hugely insulting” joke Mike Myers made about his co-star: “I am not an animal!”
Whether it’s acting, directing, screenwriting, or any behind-the-scenes gig, everyone needs a thick skin to succeed in Hollywood. It’s a place where rejection and dejection are rife in equal measure, and the last thing anybody needs is Mike Myers openly mocking their appearance in front of everyone.
Anyone who claims that it isn’t a looks-driven industry is telling at least a little bit of a white lie, and in a place where self-confidence is key, being called out by a household name for looking like a sideshow attraction had the potential to leave a negative lasting impact. Fortunately, it didn’t, but it was still uncalled for.
Of course, there’s also a whiff of irony in the air about a guy who specialises in burying himself under mountains of makeup and prosthetics to build his career on looking like anyone other than themselves decrying another person’s facial features, but that’s another can of worms for someone much more qualified to open, possibly the therapist one of his co-stars suggested that Myers should see.
He may not be a particularly well-known actor based on his name alone, but Kurt Fuller has filled a valuable niche as ‘that guy from that thing you’ve seen’ for decades, whether it’s The Running Man, Independence Day, Midnight in Paris, Ally McBeal, Desperate Housewives, or any of the other hit movies and TV shows he’s appeared in over the years.
In Wayne’s World, he played Russell Finley, the nebbish producer and erstwhile sidekick of Rob Lowe’s Benjamin Kane. Obviously, it goes without saying that the latter is a handsome man with a remarkably chiselled visage, which led Myers to offer a harsh comparison between them after a hard day’s work.
“We’re watching the dailies, and there’s a shot of me and Rob Lowe in a two-shot, and Rob Lowe, at that time, you couldn’t find a more obnoxiously handsome person,” he told Ben Veal. “And in the back, I think it was Mike Myers, went, ‘I am not an animal!'”
Those were the words cried out by John Hurt’s John Merrick in David Lynch’s The Elephant Man, right after he’s chased through the streets of London by an angry mob. Aiming well below the belt, the Wayne’s World co-writer and star thought it would be amusing to compare a character actor to a person who was paraded around and demeaned in freak shows for a good chunk of their life.
Harsh? Absolutely? Did Fuller let it get to him? Mercifully, he did not. The implication wasn’t that he was Merrick’s double, but more that he was staggeringly and jarringly unattractive when sharing the screen with Lowe. Does that make it any better? Not in the slightest, but the good news is that he managed to take on the chin.
“I thought, ‘You know what?’ This is one of the funniest things that ever happened to me, even though it’s hugely insulting,” he recalled. “That’s the kind of stuff I remember from Wayne’s World.” Someone with a thinner skin would have been left reeling, but for Fuller, it was water off a duck’s back.
