The big-haired, sleepy-eyed standup is an Oscar-winner, one of America’s best-loved comedians and ‘a car that has no gears’. Now, his deadpan style has won him a perfect role in The Emoji Movie
There are answers, and there are Steven Wright answers. Who else – responding to questions over the phone from London to Rhode Island, where he loves to vacation – would compare owning an Oscar statuette to “seeing Neil Armstrong bouncing down your driveway as if he was walking on the moon”? Who else, reflecting on 38 years as one of America’s best-loved standups, would describe themselves as “a car that has no gears”. Wright elaborates: “I just started at an open mic night in the 1970s and I’m still going, still doing now what I started to do then. I know other people might look up to me. But really, I’m just me after a bit of time has gone by.”
That’s true, to a large extent: Wright’s comic style has remained remarkably consistent over four decades. But the 62-year-old isn’t being “just me” right now. He’s being an emoji, in an animated movie to be released this summer. That’s where the transformation ends, however, given that the deadpan-bordering-on-catatonic Wright has been cast as Meh, the only emoji characterised by a complete lack of emotion.
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