Jay Baruchel Talks About 'This Is The End's' Big Surprise Appearance
This Is The End is one of those comedies you can watch again and again. Each scene is filled with so much madness you're bound to find new nuance each time you revisit it. But a few of the film's surprises will play best the first time. One in particular is so out of left field, it's almost unbelievable when you see it.
So, when I talked to Jay Baruchel about the film (read the full interview here) I simply had to ask him his thoughts about this spoiler. He explained that, even though it's ridiculous, "our tongues are nowhere near our cheeks at all." Everybody, read what he had to say below. Major spoilers follow.
Here's what Baruchel had to say about the biggest spoiler in This Is The End.
Early in the film, when Jay and Seth are hanging out, "Everybody (Backstreet's Back)" by the Backstreet Boys plays on the soundtrack. Later, once they're in Heaven, Jay realizes he can do anything he wants, so he imagines the Backstreet Boys are there, and they show up, playing out the end of the movie with the same song. Here's what the actor had to say about the huge surprise.
/Film: As a child of the 90's I have to ask about the Backstreet Boys.
Jay Baruchel: Yeah, no shit!
How did that come about? Was somebody a fan? I want to know the Backstreet Boys details!
Well, Seth's five days younger then me — and by the way, the Backstreet Boys broke in Canada. They had a number one single in Canada the year before the record came out in the States, so it was kind of a test market for the Backstreet Boys. We grew up watching them and have such a personal fan-to-musician relationship with them. So when it first came about was the scene towards the beginning of the movie where I am at Seth's house playing video games and smoking weed and leg wrestling and all this stuff. Adding "Everybody (Backstreet's Back)" during that just felt right. There's a degree of nostalgia to it.
So when it came time to do the Heaven sequence, we all kind of addressed the elephant in the room and was like clearly they should be there. And Evan Goldberg said my reaction was how he knew that they were on to something because he said "Jay you are the guy I know who doesn't like The Beatles, but when I told you we could get the Backstreet Boys, you said 'Are you fucking serious?!'"
Know that our tongues are nowhere near our cheeks at all. It was such a huge honor to get to work with them and have them there. It was just one of these things, people see us with them and it's just pure happiness. And whatever way you intellectually rationalize it, it's just a wonderfully fun, happy way to end the movie with incredibly talented singers and dancers alongside our idiot characters.
This is the End is now in theaters.