NEWSEd Helms Says Starring In 'The Hangover' Was 'Very Overwhelming' As It Brought On 'A Whole New Level' Of Fame: 'I Was Spinning Out'
Dec. 28 2022, Published 4:58 p.m. ET
Though The Hangover became a bonafide hit when it premiered in 2009, Ed Helms, who played Stuart Price in the flick, admitted that it was really hard to take everything in.
“It was a tornado of fame and a lot of buffeting,” The Office alum, 48, said on a recent episode of the "Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend" podcast of his career taking off. “It was very overwhelming.”
Prior to appearing in the blockbuster movie, which also starred Bradley Cooper and Zach Galifianakis, the Georgia native was a regular on The Office and The Daily Show, but nothing compared to being on the big screen.
“I really was reeling a lot of the time, like in the aftermath of The Hangover… I was getting scripts for all these different kinds of projects. ‘Like what do I do? I don't know.’ I was kind of spinning out and panicking about different things. Like, ‘Well, what kind of a career do you want?’” he recalled.
Helms admitted he felt "lucky" he was getting many more roles due to the success of the comedy, but he “definitely felt a lot of anxiety and like identity kind of — just turmoil.”
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“I will say one of the — one of the craziest things about a massive jump into fame like that, and what I think people who have never dealt with that or been close to it just can’t understand, is the just total loss of control of your environment," he noted.
The comedian, who also appeared in The Hangover II and The Hangover III, also gave a shout-out to Cooper and Galifianakis for helping him navigate that crazy time in his life. “If it wasn’t for those guys, I don’t think I would’ve stayed sane,” the Father Figures lead stated. “But we all had each other to kind of be like, you know, I don’t know, just to commiserate and measure ourselves… and I think we kept each other from drifting too far. And being too unprofessional.”
