Exclusive: More so than any of his previous films, Judd Apatow‘s next movie is being kept firmly under wraps. We know that it’s a spin-off to “Knocked Up,” focusing on Paul Rudd and Leslie Mann‘s characters from that film, we know that Rudd’s character now runs a record label, we know it’s being referred to in some circles as “This is Forty,” although that’s not the official title, and we know that Apatow has assembled a typically salivating supporting cast, with Albert Brooks, John Lithgow, Chris O’Dowd, Lena Dunham, Melissa McCarthy, Annie Mumulo, Ryan Lee, Wyatt Russell, Robert Smigel, and a few returning alumni of the 2007 comedy, including Jason Segel and Charlyne Yi, although not, it would appear, Seth Rogen.
As such, people have been filling in the blanks a bit, but we spoke to one of the big actresses who’s new to the Apatow fold, “Transformers” veteran Megan Fox, who’s in Toronto in support of her role in Jennifer Westfeldt‘s “Friends With Kids,” and while she didn’t give the game away — fair enough, considering the film won’t be released until the end of 2012 — she was at least happy to undermine some of your assumptions about what her role in the film might turn out to be.
Fox told us that she’s just wrapped on Apatow’s film, and told us when we asked about her role that she couldn’t say too much, but “I can tell you what I don’t play, because I know what people are assuming.” Indeed, with Fox being one of the most widely-desired women on the planet, and the film focusing at least in part of a marriage, we assumed that she’d be playing some kind of extra-marital temptation for Rudd, but it seems that won’t be the case. “My character has nothing to do with Paul and Leslie’s marriage. There’s no weird love triangle or anything like that, I’m not connected to them in that way at all. That’s what I can tell you.”
It’s good to see that Apatow’s gone beyond the obvious route here, and we’re interested to see what Fox’s role turns out to be. The actress is moving more into comedy these days, between the Apatow, “Friends With Kids” and Sacha Baron Cohen‘s “The Dictator,” and you can expect to hear more from our talk with Fox on the subject in the next few days. — Interview by Christopher Schobert