Jerry Ferrara returns as Turtle. He talked a little bit about the movie’s plot. “The drive of any of the stories has always kind of been what kind of happens to Vince is what happens to all of us, but with this particular one, it’s all on the line. Not only the acting reputation, but, you know, past mistakes from movies these guys have made like Medellin, so now these guys are trying to right all the wrong. But our footprint and handprints are all on this movie. If this movie fails, he’s in acting jail, directing jail, producing jail—he might not ever get out. So, it’s all on the line.” Turtle may have a new love interest, too. “Sort of, you could say that—definitely an interesting one. So everyone kind of has their own little mini arc within the movie, but like I said earlier, the main drive is always Vince and his career.” On reuniting with everyone Ferrara reflected “It’s actually weird that it’s not weird if that makes sense. I mean, the first—we had to shoot a couple days in Miami before we really got started, and I remember being, like, nervous the night before, and then nervous after we did the first take. And then, by take two, it was as if we were just doing season nine, and nothing else has changed. It’s kind of always been that way with us, I mean, we have taken a year off in between seasons at times, so it’s not that foreign. And it’s like we never missed a beat.”
On getting back into character, he said, “it’s not like it does take crazy amounts of research to get ready for this. It’s really more about getting a sense of the camaraderie back and, again, lucky for us, it doesn’t really take that long. We’ve been doing it a decade now. That’s really what it was: Just get as familiar as you can with the script, and just get that camaraderie back with the guys. Maybe go out to a club or two.” On the evolution of the story and script Jerry said,“Yes, a lot has changed. I guess you could say it always—not always—but kind of the way Doug Allen is working. Sometimes there were scripts of the show that came out early and never changed. For the most part, Doug is obviously a great writer, but he becomes an even better writer while he’s actually watching that scene and making little adjustments. But yeah, you know, things are constantly changing. Cast members are changing—who’s coming in, who’s doing it, who’s not doing it. So the script was always ever evolving. It still is to some degree; I think we’re shooting something Thursday that is still yet to be fully finished. And I think it’s like that with a lot of movies.”
Something about the character is that he was always trying to find his place in the world outside of being Vince’s guy. On if Turtle is still looking for his place Jerry said “yes and no. In a weird way, I always kind of thought he was going to be the last one to find that. Like, when the story started, and even down to the pilot, you always knew Johnny Drama wanted to act, and E wanted to be the business model, and Vince was an actor; Turtle never really had a direction. Towards the end of the series he did, and when you kind of open on him now—when we ended the series, he was a millionaire, and now they’re trying to figure out how much money he has and he won’t tell anybody. So it definitely is a full circle moment. But what I love about it is, the character’s a millionaire, yet he still is driving Vince to his meetings, and that dynamic just has not changed. And that’s kind of what I think the show was about: No matter which one of these guys made it, they were all going to back each other up and go along for the ride.” Turtle still smokes a lot of weed, too. “Yes. A lot has changed since we did the show, I mean, there’s medicinal places now, and there’s all sorts of vaporizers. So it’s more about how he smokes. Yeah, yeah, he still smokes weed. He smokes the movie version of weed.”
On what E is up to at the start of the film Kevin Connolly said, “We find him just a little bit further down the road from the show. Sort of with Sloane, working it out, doing the best they can to…doing what they can to make the best out of a difficult situation.” Connolly is excited to be back on set with the guys. “It’s great. You know, we always said, eight years and a movie. How many people can say that? So few people can say that, so we really are, we’re a lucky bunch. Not one person has taken one day on this set for granted, so we’re all just happy to be here. It’s a bummer that I’m spending my last week in this cast, because I was really looking forward to it, kind of the last week and that sort of stuff. It’s been a tremendous experience, and again, we’re so lucky. There’s been lots of great shows, but very few great shows have parlayed that into a movie, so it’s quite an accomplishment.” On why he thinks the show has connected so well with the masses, Kevin Connolly said, “I think—and it’s nothing against myself or my fellow cast mates—I think that there’s an average quality about the guys that people just sort of relate to. I mean, I think people watch the show and think, Yeah, these guys are nothing special! If these guys can make it, then maybe there’s hope for me out there. You know?” On if he has actually learned anything from the characters Connolly said, “You know, I’ve been in this business for thirty-five years or something crazy, so I’ve had a pretty good insight into the business. You know, if anything, maybe the characters could have learned a little something from me, maybe the opposite. But I, you know, I certainly learned different sides of things.”
On actually getting to film in Los Angeles, Connolly said that was “just one of the things that was always special about Entourage was the locations were always the sixth character. It’s always the sixth location. You know, every day they wake up and go The Urth Café, or the farmers market, or just places you frequent in your everyday life. It always felt special to me. And that’s one of the greatest things about the show is being able to go home.” On E being a father, Connolly said, “Well, he’s not a dad in the beginning of the movie. It’s just sort of something that maybe happens later on towards the end, so … we’ll learn about that.” On working with Emmanuelle, Connolly said, “Emmanuelle is a doll. We’ve worked together for years obviously, and I think the world of her. She’s been very supportive of my foot, and she’s always calling offering to bring food or dinner over, and anything I may need. But at the end of Season 8, it’s funny because people come up to me and make reference to us being back together, and that was not my understanding. I was always of the opinion that the ending was ambiguous, and that we were going to try to work it out, but it didn’t feel like we were back together. And it turns out that Doug agreed with me, so that’s sort of where the characters are. They want to do the right thing by their newborn baby, so they’re just trying to see if they can figure it out and get past some of the terrible things they’ve done to each other. So that’s their struggle.” On the impact of social media, Kevin Connolly said, “It’s amazing how—and you guys know this—but it’s just amazing to me, when we first started, we shot the pilot in the fall of 2003, there was nothing. There was no anything, there was no TMZ, there was no Perez Hilton, there was no online presence at all. You were either in the New York Post or you were in the National Enquirer, you know. … Now it’s just instant kind of information across the board. It’s changed so much, and I think for the better. It’s nice to have that sort of information at your fingertips. You know, sometimes it’s a little tricky, as you guys all now I’m sure. We don’t tackle social media that much, per say, in the movie, but certainly in real life it has had its effect on how we approach this movie and what we’re allowed Instagram. There’s all sorts of guidelines and rules that we’re sort of learning as we go along.”
On working with Kevin Dillon, Connolly shared, “Working with Dillon is fantastic. My favorite thing to do is to watch him eat. I mean, this guy was blessed with the metabolism—it’s unbelievable what this guy can eat. It doesn’t go anywhere. But no, Kevin is our commander-in-chief on the set. He’s a veteran, and we all look to him.” On the show’s cultural impact Connolly said, “there’s no way you could ever have in a billion years anticipated that it would be even a tenth of that. When you’re doing a pilot, you’re just hoping the show gets picked up. For it to be referenced on Sports Center and that kind of thing exceeded all of our expectations times a hundred, literally.” On the full frontal moment, Kevin Dillon said, “They were happy they weren’t in that shot … I can’t tell you guys too much! You won’t actually be seeing me, my persona, private parts. Let’s just say there’s prosthetics involved. There’s a little – going on.”
So what’s up with Drama? “Drama always gets a little piece of what Vince does. He feels this is the best piece he’s gotten in a little while, and he might be able to take his career to the next level. He’s kind of got a juicy role; he’s hoping that it changes things for him. He’s had a rough time, you know?,” Kevin Dillon shared. On the realistic nature of Drama’s journey in Hollywood Dillon said, “You know, so many actors come up to me to tell me that they’ve been through something similar, and, you know, one bad audition where the producers and casting are looking at their cell phones the whole time. So I’m kind of carrying the torch for a lot of struggling actors out there. And it really is like that, it’s a tough racket.” Yet Drama remains optimistic, “Yeah. Well he gets kicked down a little bit, and he’ll get down on himself or get down on the business, but he always kind of dusts himself off and gets back on his feet and just keeps plugging away at it. And that’s probably one of his best qualities. He’s got a lot of bad qualities, but that is definitely one of his best ones.” On how much has changed along the way for the film and his character Dillon said, “A lot. A lot. The script changed over and over and over again, and still changes when we’re on the set. You know, Doug will mix it up a little or change it, and we’ll kind of throw something in there. You know, but most of it’s written; we’ll do a little bit of improv—occasionally we’ll have an actor come in out of the blue and do a cameo. Like, Jon Favreau came in and we had to figure out what we were going to do, so we do a little improv, and in the end it came out great. We just saw DB Sweeney, he’s a friend of mine on the lot out here. Now we’re trying to figure out, what can we get DB in here? It’s always a little surprise with something like that.”
On reuniting with the guys Dillon said, “It feels good. You know, I love the guys and I love the character. The character is—I would say it’s the best character I ever played, and I miss playing him. Because he’s so nuts, he’s so crazy, and that’s what I love about him. And just the whole pacing of it, the walk and talks, which we were doing a lot of until Connolly broke his leg. It just feels great to do all these things again. We do these things called one-ers, where you do four pages of dialogue without a cut. I love that, it’s one of my favorite things to do. I hated it before the show. I thought, oh, you’ll lose a lot of this stuff in here, and then I realized, it’s got more energy. It feels more alive, I like to see no-cut, continuous acting. It makes your day easier. It makes your day go faster because you just banged out four pages in one take, you know. It’s nice.” To get back into character, Dillon said, “I watched some episodes, I should have thrown that one on because I love it. You know, the look—just to take it back to that—the look on the face when I found out they heard everything, that was my favorite part of the episode. But, just watched a couple episodes just to get a feel for them. You know, I kind of grew out the beard and moustache a little bit more, to get that going. Just started thinking about that a little more and that got me in the right space.” When the show ended Dillon felt there was more story to tell, “yeah we always talked about a movie. Talked about a possible movie, so I had a feeling it could happen. I also felt the show had legs, I felt we could have done two more seasons easily, so at least we’re getting to do this and carry on a little bit. It really feels like we’re picking up where we left off.” So what is Johnny Drama’s dream role? “A lead—just a lead. The lead in something. He thinks he’s a leading man, and he’s still living the glory days of Viking Quest, but you know, he wants to get something bigger. I don’t think he’d be too picky about it, as long as he’s the lead in something. You know, he’s dedicated to his craft and he thinks he’s really good. He might just be the best actor in his family, at least he thinks so in his mind. Vince is great, but in his mind, he’s the best.”
Doug Ellin, the film’s writer and director, mused “You know what? It’s like high school. When you see your best friends, it all kind of—same old—you get right back where you started. It actually feels like we never stopped.” Will all this good old Entourage camaraderie translate successfully to the big screen? You will just have to wait until June 3 to find out.
