Dynamic duo
Steve Carell and Anne Hathaway ‘Get Smart'
Steve Carell and Anne Hathaway 'Get Smart'

By George Lang

Published: June 20, 2008

LOS ANGELES — Battling bad cases of the giggles, pinkeye and an overall descent into KAOS, Steve Carell and Anne Hathaway gained CONTROL over themselves and managed to "Get Smart,” even though they differed on whether to watch the classic '60s spy comedy or to let the DVD box sets sit on the shelf.

The evidence is out there, in old clips from "The Daily Show,” episodes of "The Office” and even his brief Paul Lynde impersonation in the otherwise misbegotten "Bewitched” — Carell could do Adams to a tee. But when it came time to play Maxwell Smart in the current update of "Get Smart,” Carell chose to pull the old "avoid the Nick at Nite reruns” trick, chief.

"I steered away from it because I didn't want to do an impression of Don Adams,” Carell said during a news conference at the Four Seasons Hotel in Los Angeles. "I figured there was no way to improve upon what he had done. And I thought the more I watched of him, the more I would be inclined to do an impersonation because he was so good and so definitive in the role. So, no, I sort of backed off of that.”

Carell took another path that still left plenty of room for death-defying klutziness and special appearances by the shoe phone and the cone of silence. His Maxwell Smart is an intelligence analyst for CONTROL, the super-secret government agency doing constant battle with the Eastern Bloc terror organization KAOS, and as much as he wants to be a secret agent — and loving it — the Chief (Alan Arkin) just doesn't see Smart as a slick action hero.

Naturally, Smart finds his way to the front lines, working with the alluring Agent 99, played by Hathaway. The "Devil Wears Prada” star took a different tack from Carell and fully immersed herself in the original, taking cues from her predecessor, Barbara Feldon, and the tone set by series creators Mel Brooks and Buck Henry.

"I wanted to revisit it because I was one of the last people cast, so I unfortunately missed the whole collaborative, ‘This is the movie we're making,' part of the process,” Hathaway said. "I wanted to make sure that I understood what tone we were trying to achieve. And I really think that in the final product, we've managed to kind of have that silly, sweet yet sophisticated feel that the original series had.”

Once Carell and Hathaway felt comfortable with their characters, they had to pass certain physical tests. Hathaway honed her "Prada”-bred ability to run at track-and-field levels in six-inch heels, while Carell allegedly "worked out and made my body a physical specimen to be admired.” But then came the onscreen chemistry, culminating in a kiss fraught with spontaneous laughter and contagious diseases.

"Making out with him is like the yummiest lollipop ...” Hathaway begins.

"You are so full of it,” Carell interjected.

"Dipped in sunshine ...”

"Stop it!”

"And wrapped around in a masculine wrapper,” she said. "That's the only way I can think to describe it.”

But it was never really that sensuous or sensual, Hathaway said, and the following account could destroy fanboy illusions that the actress is somehow flawless and immaculate.

"OK, so you've got to hear this,” she said. "Somehow there was a health scare last year. A certain contact solution, I won't say the name of it, but it was the one that I used, gave you conjunctivitis. And I had a sinus infection at the same time, so I had to go up to Steve, my eye is red, puffy and dripping green, I am just snotty, and I'm just like, ‘Come here.'

"And the worst thing was we didn't know that I had conjunctivitis at the time, so I had to call our producer, Alex Gartner, that night and say, ‘Yeah, you might want to call Steve and let him know I had pinkeye, and my tears kind of got in my mouth, so he might want to worry about that,'” Hathaway said. "So it was very glamorous, and I'd do it again in a heartbeat.”

Travel and accommodations provided by Warner Bros. Pictures.

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