Owen Wilson on taking Bob Ross art classes for Paint and trusting in that glorious wig
- Oops!Something went wrong.Please try again later.
Owen Wilson believes his late father, a TV executive who worked at a PBS station in his native Dallas during the late 1970s, would have gotten a kick out of his new movie Paint.
The comedy from director Brit McAdams stars Wilson as a Bob Ross-inspired artist named Carl Nargle, Vermont's No. 1 public television painter — the epitome of a local celebrity. But his faith — and status — is shaken when a younger, better artist comes along to revitalize the station. It's a world the Loki star is deeply familiar with, having visited his father on set as a child.
"I remember as a kid, my mom taking us down to visit my dad and you'd see the cameras and cables and the hustle and bustle," Wilson recalls to EW. "There was something exciting about seeing that as a kid, and also seeing how small potatoes it was with the pledge drives and always trying to raise money."
He notes, too, that there were some Carl Nargle lookalikes walking around the station in those days. "Maybe not the hair, but the fashion that Carl is rocking was well represented there."
IFC FIlms Owen Wilson in 'Paint'
Paint, now in theaters, taps into that familiar, nostalgic world, painting what Wilson calls a funny and poignant portrait of an artist.
In the film, Carl Nargle has it all: adoring fans who hang on to his every brushstroke, a groovy custom van, and a glorious signature perm. When newcomer Ambrosia (Ciara Renée) is added to the station's lineup for a viewership boost, an envious Carl is left reeling and re-examining not-so-forgotten dreams. Wendi McLendon-Covey, Michaela Watkins, and Stephen Root also star as offbeat admirers and colleagues in the artist's orbit.
It's comedic, but "there's nothing funny to Carl about what's happening to him," Wilson says. "It's painful. I played that in the way I would imagine that would feel. We've all had experiences of feeling like you don't fit in or being rejected."
To tap into the role, Wilson took painting classes with Bob Ross instructors and even had some help from pal David Arquette. "My two boys joined in and we took a class," he says. "And then David Arquette, actually, I went over to his house one day [and] he had even gone to Florida to take Bob Ross [Art Workshop classes]. We worked on some paintings." Wilson contends his pieces are pretty good, too: "I mean, they're good enough to get hung up in my house, so that's saying something."
IFC Films Owen Wilson in 'Paint'
The larger-than-life permed wig also helped.
"You have to have a lot of trust in the people coming up with it and putting it on every day, that it would feel real for this character," Wilson says of the kooky headpiece. "Luckily, we got to a place where it did, but it was a struggle. Some of the early incarnations of Carl Nargle's wig were wildly off base and would not have worked. One of the wigs, we were saying he looked like a keyboard player for a band from the '80s that didn't get many gigs out of town."
Ross, who died in 1995 at age 52 from lymphoma, made his PBS debut in the early '80s with the program The Joy of Painting. Though it went off the air in the '90s so he could focus on his health, Ross' legacy continues to endure as he finds a new generation of fans in the social media era. "It's just a quality that he had: that kind of encouraging, supportive quality you would hope to find in a good teacher," Wilson says of his impact. "And also the act of painting, doing something creative: for human beings, that feels good."
Want more movie news? Sign up for Entertainment Weekly's free newsletter to get the latest trailers, celebrity interviews, film reviews, and more.
Related content:
