When watching the Home Alone movies, we tend to cheer for the kid who is on the offensive and pranking his invaders, but many of us would be lying if we didn’t admit we sometimes feel bad for the bandit characters as they slip down steps, dodge foam blaster bullets and get knocked around. In the latest installment, Home Sweet Home Alone, Ellie Kemper and Rob Delaney play a married couple who become desperate to grab a priceless item in the home of Archie Yates’ Max just as he finds himself unsupervised. The actors' experiences in the roles proved to be quite physical.
When CinemaBlend spoke to Rob Delaney and Ellie Kemper about Home Sweet Home Alone, they shared that a lot of the stunts you see in the movie, now streaming on Disney+, they really achieved themselves. Kemper said this:
For me I knew reading the script there would be a lot of physical comedy involved here, but I didn’t completely understand the scope of it. And so when we actually started getting into it and started performing the stunts, I was surprised about A) how hard it was but B) how satisfying it was to actually be the one doing most of the work. It was fun. It was rewarding.
If you’ve seen Home Sweet Home Alone, it’s quite obvious how demanding it must have been for the pair because Archie Yates’ Max really doesn’t hold back in defending himself. Rob Delaney, who famously starred in Amazon’s Catastrophe and as Peter in 2018’s Deadpool 2, expanded on the stunt aspect of the role:
And to do a big-budget enough thing where there’s time to rehearse and practice the stunts. I’ve done a lot of smaller budget TV, where you spend months slaving over the script, so they're totally perfect and with this, they’re like you’re going to need a few days to learn how to literally fly or fall off a building or whatever. I was like ‘wow, we have time for that?’ Big leagues.
Although their stunts were painful and difficult, they luckily had the time and budget to really practice and get them right without injuries. The actors shared the stunts they are most proud of, which they didn’t necessarily agree on. In Delaney’s words:
[The pool scene] was the most fun to do, but it was the one we were comfortable enough doing where we could put a little flavor and humor to it.
Ellie Kemper, who memorably has worked with some of the funniest people of our time between her roles in Bridesmaids, The Office and Tina Fey’s The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, jumped off Delaney’s words. As she shared:
You can see I have something else in mind, which is the driveway, where we’re falling on the ice, because I felt like we spent a lot of time rehearsing that and actually filming it. It was hard. I was very sore, so I might be the most proud of it, because it took the most effort. I tend to associate pride with effort.
So it’s between the pool scene and the slippery ice scene for the comedic pair. They’re both solid scenes and it’s kind of insane to think that it’s really them (most of the time) falling into water and slipping on ice during the film. While we’re watching the movie, we’re thinking about the story and what it means for the characters, but on set Rob Delaney and Ellie Kemper we’re attempting some really difficult stunts they had to take time to train for.
Home Sweet Home Alone is the sixth Home Alone movie and the first time the franchise has been revisited in almost a decade. It includes loads of references to the original 1990 movie and even a cool connection to Kevin McCallister. Home Sweet Home Alone is streaming right now on Disney+.
