By now most of you know have seen the commercials or at least know about the movie….but if you haven’t, here is the synopsis:

Steve Carell (The 40-Year-Old Virgin), reprising his role as the polished, preening newscaster Evan Baxter of Bruce Almighty, is the next one anointed by God to accomplish a holy mission in the hilarious new comedy Evan Almighty.  Blockbuster comedy director Tom Shadyac (The Nutty Professor, Liar Liar, Bruce Almighty) returns behind the camera for this next episode of divine intervention.  This time, however, his cast grows two-by-two. 

Newly elected to Congress, Evan leaves Buffalo behind and shepherds his family to suburban northern Virginia.  Once there, his life gets turned upside-down when God (Morgan Freeman) appears and mysteriously commands him to build an ark.  But his befuddled family just can't decide whether Evan is having an extraordinary mid-life crisis or is truly onto something of Biblical proportions...

To help promote the movie most of the cast did some interviews on the Universal lot in Hollywood about a week or so ago. All the interviews were done via press conference – meaning about twenty something journalists each took turns asking questions. That’s why some of the questions are a little off topic as each journalist had an agenda and needed to ask certain things.

Anyway, the interview below is with Lorelai Gilmore Lauren Graham. In the movie she plays Steve Carell’s wife and it’s her job to try and keep the family together when it looks like Steve has lost his mind.

During the press conference all the usual questions were asked as well as a ton of "Gilmore Girls" questions. For a show that’s off the air I was really surprised how many people kept asking about it.

As always, if you’d like to listen to the interview you can click here to download the MP3.

And before getting to the interview, if you’d like to see some clips from “Evan Almighty” click here.

"Evan Almighty" opens this Friday.

What were the biggest challenges in being cast as the wife in a movie like this? What do you bring to the table in trying to make this character more interesting and comedic and colorful?

Lauren Graham: Well, I don't try to think about it that way because that's not my job, kind of, in this. I love movies like this and I think somebody has to be the straight man. And also to me, one of the things I liked about this movie was the heart of it, and the sort of emotional, real story of this man who seems to be going crazy, no one believes him, and I think that's an important part of the story. I have had years and years of talking fast and being sassy, and I'm as happy to do something simpler. [laughs] So it's not about trying to turn it into something else, it's just trying to do a good job with what this is. So that's what I tried to do.

Gilmore Girls has created you as a cult...

I'm a cult? Wait... [laughs] "Cult status," would you say? I'm a cult figure?

What do you want to do with your career now that Gilmore Girls is over? Did you catch the Joan of Arc reference?

[laughs] No, it didn't occur to me until somebody said it to me. And then of course, my grandmother, who knows every book of the Bible, was like, "Well, her name was Sarah, so I don't know why they called her Joan." Wait, what was the first thing? "I'm a cult." I think what my hope is is that the only downside of having a steady job on television is, I think for all actors, there's a piece, there's some adrenaline, and part of the love of the job is not knowing what's coming next, and the variety. And I remember having this a couple years into the show, I was like, "There's some feeling that I miss. What is it?" And it was kind of the unexpected, and not knowing what the next thing might be, or if I would get it or not get it. And so kind of to begin to get back to that unknown is...I'm sure after a while, it will drive me crazy, but for now, it feels really nice, and I'm doing a movie now, and I'm going to do something else in like a month, so I know what my next couple things are, and I'm just really excited to have different experiences. And I feel I've kind of earned that, you know? [laughs] It's sort of like I feel like I've put in a lot of time in medical school. Because Gilmore Girls is kind of like medical school, you know what I mean? [laughs] And now I'm going to go do my residency. Can anyone help me with this analogy? And I'll try to be a doctor in one area... [laughs] I just am going to really enjoy the variety.

How is Gilmore Girls like medical school?

[laughs] Did you not get my joke? [laughs] I just mean I put in a lot of time at one thing, and now I sort of get to reap the benefits, is how I think about it. But if you think about it this way, I could be a doctor by now, had I gone to medical school instead of going to Gilmore Girls. Seven years. That would be about right. [laughs] "Graham Thinks She's a Doctor: Confused?" I'm writing your article for you.

If someone you cared about in your life went this nuts, how would you deal with it? Would you stick with them or bail?

Well, I think I kind of go through all the colors in this because you want to believe them, you look for a rational explanation, you finally decide you can't take it anymore, and the Morgan Freeman is your waiter and he tells you what to do. That's pretty much how I hope it would go. I don't know. You can't possibly know. I think the movie raises the question of, "How far will your faith take you? What do you do in the face of doubt? Is the power of love enough to get over what you perceive to be the reality of something?" And I don't know the answers to all those questions. But we ask them here, in this little PG movie! [laughs] It makes you think!

What was like working opposite Steve Carell, and what did you think of his metrosexual makeover?

I thought that was really funny, because when I saw it...I mean, first of all, I got so used to seeing him in that stuff every day that he would just look weird when you saw him without it. [laughs] And the metrosexual stuff I thought played really well. It was great. I mean, again, we sort of had the more dramatic scenes in the movie, so I wasn't like holding my sides laughing during them because that wasn't the tone of the scene. [laughs] But he's a very funny guy. I really appreciate how he approaches things. He's a real actor, you know? I liked his work in 40-Year-Old Virgin because I thought, "This is so interesting. It's so small and subtle, and he's coming from the character. He's not coming from like, 'I'm doing something wacky and big!'" And I just like that. So it was fun.

In this movie and in Gilmore Girls, you're the sexy mom...

Thanks.

Not skinny at all, but very light...

Mmm...Wow, there's that. Not at all? You wouldn't say at all? [laughs]

What do you do to...

To be so not skinny?

Do you work out?

[laughs] Well, thank you for part of that question. I don't have really any awareness of that. What I knew is that I thought that...You know, we sort of discussed that I didn't think she worked. And so I wanted her to feel kind of casual and natural, especially in opposition to this guy who's very buttoned up and has kind of gotten into this more professional time of his life. I felt like this is a girl who's known him a long time, and knew him before all this stuff happened. And so I just wanted her to be kind of a counterpoint for him. And the other stuff is like, if I did anything I wanted to do, I would be like a lot... [laughs] This is me like running and doing everything I can. I'm sort of fighting a...I could go really far the other way, so this...I work out a lot. I watch what I eat. It's very hard won even to be this not skinny. [cheers for making it through the question] Yes! Next...

What were your encounters with the animals you worked with?

Well, it's amazing to me...Like everything in this movie, one thing that was really striking was how every single person in every single department was the best at what they do. And that's from transpo to props to all the ADs. They work at a level that is so high, so the amazing stuff with the animals was less what was my interaction with them, but watching these trainers get them kindly and very simply to do what they wanted them to do. Because I just thought, "These giraffes have not been training to do Evan Almighty like their whole lives. How do they know to bring him the hammer?" You know, so much of the stuff is real that you see in the movie. So that was really amazing. I mean, we weren't like sitting around petting the lions or anything, but it was cool to watch them walk by. [laughs] You're like sitting drinking coffee, and you just got strangely used to it. But I didn't like sit down and talk to anybody. The animal we dealt the most with was...We've all talked about it, so you probably already heard about Toothy the alpaca, who had an underbite? You didn't hear about Toothy?

The sound of all the reporters saying no.

Well, he's our favorite! He has this huge underbite, and he was really unattractive. And I think we made the trainers mad because we called him Toothy and that's not his name. But the little boys got really into Toothy as like a mythical figure, even though he was right there. But they'd be like, "Do you think Toothy knows we're rolling? Do you think Toothy knows we're home?" [laughs] And like we'd be at dinner, and they'd like, "What do you think Toothy's eating for dinner?" So he was the one that somehow, became of his unusual appearance, struck gold in our hearts. [laughs] We loved Toothy!

Have you worked with animals before?

It was totally new. I've been on a show where I walk and talk until the cows come home and then suddenly we're doing, again a lot of it was real enough that it wasn't like reacting to nothing. It was more that when I see the movie there are thousands of animals. When I did the movie, there were five. When I see the movie, there's a huge amount of water. When I did the movie, there was a hose. But there was enough that you weren't just creating something out of nothing, but it was all new to me.

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