Shedding the Layers for Comedy: Doug Jones is Taking His Career In New, Fun Directions
While he’s arguably the world’s best known prosthetic actor, Doug Jones sheds the rubber and strips down for yet another comedic turn in ‘Operation Taco Gary’s’.
When you’re a lithe performer standing almost 6 foot 3”, have a background in mime, and the perpetual yoga core of a 20-year-old, you may be resolving yourself to a lifetime of character roles. Then again, you may want to reinvent yourself like workhorse monster-maker Doug Jones.
Jones was one of my first celebrity interviews years ago when I was doing some volunteer content creation for Wizard World. In Chicago, 2012, Jones spoke about how he loves being a generational performer. He commented that those who watched ‘Hocus Pocus’ (where he plays the immortal, somewhat zombified Billy) are now showing it to their kids, and eventually, it will likely be a Halloween treat for those kids’ kids. That was even before some of his more notable work in ‘What We Do in The Shadows’ and ‘Star Trek: Discovery’, in fact it can be argued that with all the work he’s done, and all the characters he’s created under layers of prosthetics, Jones is more recognized when he’s unrecognizable.
“Those kind of characters have come looking for me over the years” admits Jones. “Being tall, skinny with a mime background, the creature affects. People in Los Angeles were just like, glommed onto me immediately when I became available as an actor, and I started getting one creature role after another. So I loved those monsters and creatures and aliens. They have been so good to me, and the fans who love those things have also been so good to me over the years.”
To watch the full video interview, click below, or continue scrolling for the remainder of the article.
As Jones tells us, that type of performance was never what motivated a self-proclaimed “dye-in-the-wool Christian from the Midwest” to make his way to La La Land and begin an acting career. “I grew up watching comedy” Jones tells us, but to no surprise. “I grew up watching sitcoms and variety shows and laughing and anything that was musical or funny. That's what I wanted to dive into as an actor. My career took a left turn somewhere.”
But without that left turn, we wouldn’t have had the dramatic beauty of Guillermo del Toro’s melancholy masterpiece “Pan’s Labyrinth”, where due to several monstrous performances as the Faun and the Pale Man, Jones brought del Toro’s dark vision to life. That relationship has lasted a generation as well, with Jones partnering with del Toro in ‘Hellboy’, ‘Crimson Peak’ and ‘The Shape of Water’, which won several Oscars, including Best Picture. Jones could easily keep playing these characters for the remainder of his career, but instead, he’s choosing moments like ‘Operation Taco Gary’s’ to take another left turn. Or at least, veer left a little.
“I don't want to be the old guy in a rubber costume with anyone ever looking at me on a set saying, ‘He used to be so good,’ I don't want to ever hear that. So I wanted to phase out the rubber bits while I was still at the top of my game and transition into human roles that have come to me. They have been so colorful - I've been playing corrupt sheriffs and scientists and doctors, both good and bad, and I've been playing lots of funny roles. When Operation Taco Gary's was offered to me, what a great transition piece that is because, I'm still an alien, I'm still something otherworldly, and it's still in the same wheelhouse, but it looks more like me and less like a rubber clad monster.”
That isn’t to say that this latest film isn’t still fairly bizarre, regardless of the fact that Jones may only be wearing gold hot pants and grey body paint. There is one… ahem… appendage that is certainly otherworldly, and arguably one of the funniest parts of Operation Taco Gary’s. When asked if anything is too outlandish at this point, Jones didn’t even hesitate. “When I've had almost 40 years in the science fiction, fantasy, comic book, and horror genres, nothing's too outlandish when you're playing in that world. Comedy is much the same when it's all for the funny, outlandish usually works. All bets are off and we can all laugh.”
Yet that 40 years of experience has combined both rubber bits and comedy. Most notably, Jones had a recurring role as ‘The Baron’ in What We Do in the Shadows where, often covered in prosthetics to make him look like a vampire who has survived the centuries, Jones put out some of the best timed comedic lines in a show known for impeccably timed comedic lines. With experience making funny with both his own face, and some beastly creatures, it begs the question - was one easier? Surely trying to pull a funny face, or the subtlety that comedy can often utilize has gone right out the window when you’re playing an immortal monster.
“You know, honestly, a character is a character, to me,” Jones reveals. “Whether it has some prosthetics or not. I've been funny in rubber bits, and I've been funny outside of rubber bits. When you're delivering a funny moment, first of all, you must say it with conviction, as though you believe every word you're saying and you mean it from your heart. And if it's something bizarre, that's where the funny lives, when you're committed to it. There are some rubber bits which will block facial subtleties. I will give you that. So without prosthetic makeup on, with my own face showing, I do have the chance to rely on subtleties, such as a hint of an eyebrow or maybe a quick expression drop. That may not play as well in prosthetics as it does with my own face. There's pluses and minuses to both.”
There will undoubtedly be pluses and minuses to seeing the great Doug Jones out of makeup, as well. Not that he hasn’t earned the right to use his own face in his performances, of course, just that so many of us have grown up not knowing the man behind some of our favorite creatures. If he is truly leaving the ‘plastic parts’ behind as much as he can, it will be up to the next Doug Jones to bring some of these terrifying, but often tender monsters to life, but nothing will replace the original.