The Naked Gun: Paul Walter Hauser reveals who he’s playing in the reboot (Exclusive)

Our own Alex Maidy recently spoke with Paul Walter Hauser and couldn’t resist asking him about the upcoming Naked Gun reboot, specifically about who he would be playing. When Hauser’s casting was first announced, it was said that he would play Captain Ed, the role played by George Kennedy in the previous Naked Gun movies. Well, we might want to add a “Jr.” to the end of that.

“In Naked Gun. I am playing the son of the George Kennedy character from the originals, Captain Ed Hocken,” Hauser said. “Liam Neeson is playing the son of Leslie Nielsen’s character, Frank Drebin Jr.“

I’m keeping my fingers crossed that they’ll be able to pull this one off, and Hauser added that he believes they found the right tone. “It was really a mastery of tone. That’s one of those things where they got the right guy to make it: Akiva Schaffer, who I love,” Hauser said. “I felt like he and his partners took it so seriously, and they were trying to do low-brow comedy from a high-brow perspective. And how do we make this faithful to the tonality of the originals? And, you know, I think they did. I haven’t seen the movie yet, but everything I experienced, everything I shot. It feels like, wow, they somehow captured this and will make many people really happy.“

In addition to Liam Neeson and Hauser, The Naked Gun stars Pamela Anderson, Kevin Durand, Danny Huston and more. Although Neeson has experience in the realm of comedy, he’s never led one himself. He explained why he wanted to take on The Naked Gun last year. “It’s funny because right before Christmas, my sons and I were looking through the Academy screeners and trying to find something silly, some silly, stupid movie that we could giggle at,” Neeson explained. “There was none, of course, as they were all very heavy and international. I mean, brilliant movies but all very heavy. When Seth MacFarlane approached me about it — this was about two years ago, now — I thought, yeah, I guess I could do that as long as I play it dead seriously and not try and imitate Mr. Leslie Nielsen. He was wonderful. Akiva Schaffer is directing it and he’s from the [Saturday Night Live] world. I’m looking forward to it. It’s a good script, and there’s a few laugh out loud moments in it.” The Naked Gun will hit theaters on August 1st.

Hauser will next be seen in The Luckiest Man in America, a drama which tells the true story of Michael Larson, a man who won over $100,000 on Press Your Luck after he figured out the secret behind the game. The film will be released on April 4th.

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