Ed Helms is recalling how nervous he was for his “very socially conservative” parents to see 2009’s The Hangover.
The actor recently appeared on SiriusXM’s Where Everybody Knows Your Name podcast, where he looked back at the R-rated comedy that also starred Bradley Cooper and Zach Galifianakis.
“I grew up in kind of a repressed Southern home. Politically, very progressive, but still a very socially conservative kind of environment,” Helms explained to host Ted Danson. “And so The Hangover is nuts. That’s not what they [his parents] raised me to do, to be in a movie like The Hangover.”
“So my parents — at that point they’d seen me do crazy stuff on The Daily Show and The Office — and so there was some sort of acceptance already, but, still, I was nervous for my parents to see The Hangover. I was like 35 when that movie came out, and I’m still nervous about my parents,” he quipped.
The Hangover, directed by Todd Phillips, follows three friends who wake up from a bachelor party in Las Vegas with no memory of the previous night and the bachelor missing, and must make their way around the city to find their friend in time for his wedding.
Despite his nerves, Helms said he still took his parents to the film’s premiere. However, their reaction actually caught him by surprise.
“I’m looking at my mom, the lights come up, and she’s crying,” he recalled. “Tears streaming down her face, and, for a second, I’m like, ‘Did I just break my poor mom’s heart?’ She says to me, ‘That was so funny,’ and just [gave me] a big hug. I’ll just never forget that was such a special moment.”
Helms added, “The Hangover was such a pivotal moment in my career, in my life, and for mom to just be all in on it, it meant so much.”
The 2009 comedy was ultimately a success, grossing more than $277 million at the box office. It also spawned two sequels, The Hangover Part II and The Hangover Part III.
Helms previously told People magazine that he would also be down to reprise his role as Stu in a fourth installment of the franchise.
“I mean, [costars] Bradley [Cooper],Zach [Galifianakis], [director] Todd [Philips] — these are some of my favorite people on the planet, so I would do anything with them,” he said in 2023. “Oh my God, I would do anything with those guys.”