Billy Bob Thornton plays an alcoholic thief and nymphomaniac who gets hired as Santa Claus in “Bad Santa”. During the filming of the comedy, the actor took his role very seriously and sometimes landed completely drunk on the set.
bad santa : Santa Clause is garbage
Produced by the Coen brothers, written by John Requa and Glenn Ficarra (I Love You Phillip Morris, Crazy, Stupid, Love) and directed by Terry Zwigoff (ghostworld), bad santa tells the story of a Santa Claus like no other, played by Billy Bob Thornton. Each year, Willie and his dwarf friend Marcus (Tony Cox) are hired into different outfits to don the costumes of Santa Claus and an elf. And during Christmas night, they pierce the coffers of establishments before disappearing.
Alcoholic, nymphomaniac and totally disillusioned, Willie has very hard to show decency during his working days with the children. Things get even more complicated when Gin (Bernie Mac), a security guard at the mall where he works, grows suspicious of him and Marcus. To make matters worse, Willie is followed closely by Thurman (Brett Kelly), a young boy convinced that he is the real Santa Claus.
Lauren Graham and John Ritter round out the cast of this irreverent comedy released in 2003, which Billy Bob Thornton is particularly fond of. At a conference organized for the release of bad santa 2 in 2016 during the EW PopFestthe actor says about the film:
I think it’s an alternative to syrupy Christmas movies and people wanted to see it back then and even more now. It’s a subgenre that was missing. People come to see me all the time to say: “Every year, we watch Miracle on 34th Street, Life is Beautiful and bad santa“. He is now part of the lot.
Billy Bob Thornton drunk while filming
Passing through the show couch surfing ofEntertainment Weekly in 2019, the interpreter of Willie Soke assures that he completely immersed himself in his role during the production of bad santa. Claiming to have adopted the famous Method to embody this character, Billy Bob Thornton reveals that he followed a special diet during filming, and that he was drunk while shooting :
I drank about three glasses of red wine for breakfast. Then I switched to vodka mixed with cranberry juice, before drinking some Bud Light.
In an interview given to New York Times in 2016, the actor already explains:
Sometimes I was drunk, but not every day. I arrived several times with a hangover… I wasn’t the nicest guy to be around.
During a scene of the feature film, Willie arrives at the mall, washed out and lying in an escalator. Billy Bob Thornton says about this sequence:
I was supposed to be standing on the escalator. (…) When I got up, I woke up thinking I was at home. And then I remembered what I had to do.
