Actor Jason Segel on playing a Liliputian in his latest film

He’s the lovable goof Marshall on the sitcom How I Met Your Mother and is also the voice of a pint-sized super-villain with a shrink ray in Despicable Me. And now actor Jason Segel plays a ‘little guy’ in Jack Black’s forthcoming film. Excerpts from an interview…

How was it playing the main Liliputian in Jack Black’s film?
I’m in Jack’s pocket for a lot of it or standing on his shoulder or riding on his shoe. There were a lot of times when I was just acting to a tennis ball or something like that, but it was a really cool experience.

At 6’4, you’re this tall guy in real life, and the irony is not lost on many…
I tried really hard to put in a joke that I’m the tallest Liliputian, but it just didn’t translate. We’re all so little that a height difference of like 8 inches becomes literally millimeters when you’re looking at it in that scale. The joke didn’t translate unfortunately.

How much has How I Met Your Mother helped in getting you out there in the acting world?
It’s interesting, everything came together just at the right time. The first season of How I Met Your Mother was the same year I did Knocked Up, and season 2 was the year I did Sarah Marshall.  Everything changed for me all at once. It’s a little hard for me to differentiate what did what, but everything came together really to be honest just when I needed it to. I was getting pretty close to feeling like it wasn’t going to pan out.

How close did you get?
I have no other discernable skills, so while mentally I might have gotten close, there really was a thought like, what was I going to do? I wasn’t going to go back to college at 26. I really didn’t have much to fall back on, so thank God it worked out.

What’re your future projects in hand?
I have co-written and also star in The Muppets, for which we are currently shooting too.