“Saturday Night Live” star Will Forte is too grounded and self-deprecating to think of himself as a big-time celebrity.
But he does acknowledge that being on TV has boosted his profile to the point where he feels it necessary to be cautious about his behavior among the masses.
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“I’ve never been a huge public nose-picker, but I’ve forced myself to put a complete stop to that,” he says. “I don’t want people to see me and say, ‘Ew, there’s that guy from “SNL” and he’s picking his nose.’ And another thing: I can no longer get super-drunk when I’m out with my friends.”
His public visibility could get a considerable boost if “The Brothers Solomon,” opening Friday, resonates with moviegoers. The low-budget comedy contains the first big-screen starring role for Forte, who shares top billing with Will Arnett. Forte also penned the script.
“It’s pretty crazy,” he says of his head-spinning foray into feature films. “The whole way through, I kept saying, ‘Oh, they’re not going to make this. They’re not going to make it.’ Even as the cameras were rolling on the first day, I was going, ‘Are we really making this?’ “
The film has Forte and Arnett playing “very smart, but socially clueless” siblings whose father is dying. When they realize their dad’s chief regret in life is not having a grandchild, they rush out to enlist a surrogate to produce one for him.
“And they’re not very good at it. Not at all,” says Forte, who describes the tone of the film as “uplifting and slightly absurd.”
In the movie, which also features “SNL” vet Kristen Wiig, Forte and Arnett share a very tight bond — one that more or less reflected what was happening on the set.
“It was so much fun making this and getting to know him at the same time,” Forte says. “In the script, we play these incredibly close brothers, and by the end of shooting the film, I was incredibly close to him. The whole production was like going away to summer camp.”
Forte, who began his career in comedy after a brief but miserable stint in a brokerage firm, originally developed the Solomon bothers as characters for a sitcom while working as a writer with Carsey-Werner Productions. When “SNL” came calling in 2002, Forte asked to break his contract, which the company approved with the stipulation he write a movie for them.
Thus, the bumbling Solomons made the jump to the big screen. And it was through his new late-night gig that Forte got to know Arnett, the husband of “SNL” castmate Amy Poehler.
Though he hopes he has more big-screen projects in his future, the low-key, aw-shucks Forte has no illusions of becoming another “SNL”-bred feature-film personality along the lines of Will Ferrell or Adam Sandler.
“I would love to get into a situation where I can make movies and have creative control,” he says. “But it’s hard for me to imagine becoming a movie star.”