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Steve Martin on His Late Career Surge and Contemplating Retirement: “This Is, Weirdly, It” - Hollywood Reporter
Aug 10, 2022 6 mins, 29 secs

After more than 60 years in the business, the comedy legend was ready to wind it down.

Steve Martin keeps telling himself to stop fiddling with the same material, but he can’t help it.

This lifelong impulse made a recent appearance a few stops into his latest tour with Martin Short, You Won’t Believe What They Look Like Today.

At first I thought it was Winnie the Pooh,’ ” Martin explains.

“Getting rid of my line doubled the laugh that he got for ‘B-cup,’ ” he says, pride mingling with “well, duh” embarrassment on his face.

Since the 1980s, he’s been the unlikely leading man of films like Roxanne, L.A.

For Martin, every bit of the work — yes, even sophomoric remarks about baby fat — still demands constant refining.

And even then, he’s not going to trust it.”.

With a confident gait and no words, Martin exited stage right and ceded the next few bits to Short.

Martin, in particular, is the busiest he’s been in years.

His TV series, Only Murders in the Building, premiered in 2021 as an instant hit and quickly became Hulu’s most-watched original comedy.

A dry whodunit set in a Manhattan co-op and based on an idea Martin originally had years ago, the series stars Martin, Short and Selena Gomez as a trio of lonely true-crime obsessives.

Of those, Martin is up for three: best comedy (as producer), writing for a comedy series (shared with co-creator John Hoffman) and lead actor in a comedy — pitting him against Short, his perennial co-star?

“I think Steve learned the joy of collaboration,” says Short, who first worked with him on the 1986 film Three Amigos.

Whether alone or joined by one of his assorted serial collaborators, Martin acknowledges that this boom time may be an unexpected crescendo to a career that, a few years back, was starting to slow down.

“We were very happy just doing the live show,” Martin says.

He’s arrived early, in a crisp navy blue number, and offers a salutatory fist-bump, explaining that he’d been trying to liberate himself from handshakes for years.

“One time Steve was visiting at Saturday Night Live, and I had seen him do [David] Letterman the night before,” says Tina Fey, who has forged a friendship with him over many projects — most recently as his true-crime podcasting foil on Only Murders.

I’m doing Jimmy Kimmel in two months,’ ” says Short.

” ‘And you’re already working on it?!‘ That’s why he’s Steve Martin.

That’s why he’s still Steve Martin.” (Michaels, too, has gotten those calls and is quick to clarify: “Most people I know prepare on the drive to the show.”).

The blueprint for this can be found in Born Standing Up, the 2007 memoir of his stand-up years — “I don’t know a comic who hasn’t read that book,” says Amy Schumer.

“He’s in the comedy DNA of me and everyone I know” — in which he recounts the often surrealist routine he honed over the course of the 1970s.

The decades since may have compressed this career arc down to a few catchphrases and indelible images for the general public, but his iconoclastic sets forever minted Martin as a god to the comedy community?

“I knew it was kind of gimmicky, but when it started, it was crazy,” says Martin.

His keyed-up physical comedy remained intact, but Martin began marrying it with more emotional work in such films as Planes, Trains and Automobiles and Parenthood.

“He created that transition for himself,” says filmmaker Nancy Meyers, who has worked with Martin on four projects.

“On set, he’d say, ‘Once you’ve gotten what you need, let me know if I can try something else,’ ” says Meyers.

Throughout promotions for the first two seasons of Only Murders, he’s almost exclusively been flanking Gomez or Short — casting himself as a cheerleader rather than the series’ creator and de facto star.

He and his wife of 15 years, Anne Stringfield, spend summers in Santa Barbara, where Martin likes to bike into town.

Martin likes hosting dinner parties, but he doesn’t cook — save poached eggs, which he makes with the help of a new machine he’s eager to evangelize.

“I have a family life that’s really fun,” says Martin.

This bicoastal life that largely bypasses Los Angeles has allowed Martin to escape the daily incursions of Hollywood banter, though the surprise success of Only Murders has made that harder to sustain.

He doesn’t like to keep up with industry gossip but is still curious enough to riff on the news of the day — in our case, Netflix’s latest fraught earnings call — for a spell before he cuts himself short with a shrug: “I’m happy not to know too much about the business.”.

There are plenty of asks the entertainment industry might make of Martin that he says he’ll no longer consider2

But there is one ask that he often can’t avoid, the quintessentially Hollywood offer of, “Let’s do lunch.” “I’ve had meetings with X, Y and Z,” says Martin, his ambiguous lament for too many wasted afternoons to count.

As they were finishing up, Martin casually floated an idea he’d been kicking around about three aging male amateur sleuths who investigate only the murders that take place in their eccentric New York apartment building

And there was some coaxing — Martin would agree to act only if Short also starred, filming took place in New York and he could be home every night by 6

(“That part didn’t work out,” he concedes.) And then Hulu gave the septuagenarian a rare first: After a half-century working in Hollywood, Martin finally had his own TV series

Martin sports a genuine grin when he talks about working on Only Murders

He’s not often home by dinner, but he doesn’t complain about the hours when he’s reworking lines with Short and Gomez or sharing scenes with so many performers from his past

“I don’t want to make them think, ‘There’s plenty of people who can do that,’ ” says Martin, referencing his nostalgic comedy tour more than Only Murders — a series that frequently throws punches to the heart alongside its one-liners

Maybe 15 minutes after theatrically fleeing the Hollywood Bowl band shell, Martin returned — banjo in tow

“After the show, he’s really happy,” says Short, who notes that they rarely wait for the applause to subside before rushing to Emily, the teleprompter operator, to move lines, change words and make other adjustments

He’s very modest in some ways, but he’s also aware of his position in show business — which, I guess, is as high as it gets … certainly in the realm of comedic influence.”

1 on the call sheet, is quickly undercut by a passage about his work in Meyers’ 2009 feature It’s Complicated, in which Martin played No

(“Steve was really more of the 2.5,” observes Meyers.) He’s also making a documentary about his years in the business with Oscar-winning director Morgan Neville for Apple TV+

Martin says he wants to wind down, but he somehow continues coming up with new ideas and finding people who inspire him to turn those ideas into actual work

“My wife keeps saying, ‘You always say you’re going to retire and then you always come up with something,’ ” says Martin, adjusting the cross of his legs to grab a glass of iced tea

Martin may not have anticipated this latest act of his life, but what’s clear — in speaking with him or watching him onscreen — is that he’s not taking it for granted

Steve Martin has always been one to show up

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