Liam Neeson Isn’t Aping Leslie Nielsen In The Naked Gun

 There’s one problem with presenting a recent take on The Naked Gun: there’s only one Leslie Nielsen. Across the Airplane! and Naked Gun movies, the actor had his own deliriously entertaining comedic style, one that’s impossible to ape. And so, with the recent The Naked Gun, a Leslie Nielsen impression is not on the cards. No, director Akiva Schaffer – one third of The Lonely Island – instead has entrusted Liam Neeson with lampooning the world of police procedurals; like Nielsen, much of career has been in sedate roles, but with hints that a comic juggernaut is lying in wait.

As the filmmaker tells Empire, Neeson is getting to put his own spin on Frank Drebin Jr., the son of Nielsen’s character. “Liam’s got his own things, but they’re not Leslie Nielsen’s things,” says Schaffer. “It would also be unfair to Liam [to try to mimic Nielsen], because he’d be spending the whole movie trying to match something that is another human being with a whole different — forgive me — set of skills.” Anyone who’s seen Neeson in Life’s Too Short (and, lest we forget, his voice role in The LEGO Movie) will know that he can be seriously entertaining in his own right. “A friend of mine, when I was just starting to write, was like, ‘Feels to me like your assignment is: what’s the funniest thing that you can make Liam Neeson say?’,” says Schaffer. “And, well, that is kind of it.”

Early indications prove that the gambit has pulled off – and that, all these years later, The Naked Gun might have audiences rolling in the aisles once more, a sporadic comedy to hit the massive screen. “We went out to Arizona for a preview, and so many of the cards were like, ‘It had been so long since I just laughed in a theatre with 300 people’,” Schaffer says. “You’re just making something silly. But then some people were like, ‘I found it life-affirming, because it reminded me the world could still be like the way it was.’” Prepare your ribs for a deadly tickling.

Read Empire’s full The Naked Gun feature – talking to Akiva Schaffer, Liam Neeson, Pamela Anderson and more – in the Tron: Ares issue, on sale Thursday 3 July. Pre-order a copy online here. The Naked Gun comes to UK cinemas from 1 August.