Steve Carell has revealed that he was far from impressed when Warner Bros. landed on the title Crazy, stupid, love to the 2011 romantic comedy, admitting that he simply didn’t like it at first.
The actor, 63, opened up about the name saga in an interview with Entertainment tonightwhich explains that author Dan Fogelman had submitted the manuscript without a title at all.
“I never liked that title,” Carell said.
“I do now, but when Dan Fogelman wrote it, he didn’t give it a title. He didn’t call it anything. It was the Untitled Dan Fogelman Project.”
From there it became something of a creative free-for-all.
Everyone involved seemed to have a proposition, but nothing clicked. Finally, the studio stepped in and called.
“Finally, Warner Bros. just said, ‘We’re calling it Crazy, stupid, love,” Carell recalled, admitting his reaction at the time was a distinctly unenthusiastic “Okay.”
The film, which starred Carell alongside Ryan Gosling, Julianne Moore and Emma Stone, was both a critical and commercial success, which Carell says taught him something about the relationship between a title and a film’s quality.
“I firmly believe that if it’s good and people like it, people will like the title,” he said. “It doesn’t matter what you call it.”
Carell also touched on another of his most beloved roles, Michael Scott on the office, continues to express surprise at how far the NBC comedy’s audience is reaching, especially among younger viewers.
“I think it’s funny how young people are when they first start to see The office” he told NBC Insider in June 2024.
“Which was always a surprise to me because I never thought it would appeal to a younger audience.”
Ultimately, he put it down to the universality of the series’ characters, suggesting that they translate beyond the workplace setting.
“I think part of it is that each of the characters is an archetype that translates to people they know at school,” he explained.
“They’re all people that you can identify with, whether you’ve ever worked in an office or you’ve just been around these people at school.”
