Director Peter Farrelly and the Stars of ‘Ricky Stanicky’ on the Movie’s Funniest Moments

It’s time to meet Ricky Stanicky, the best friend we never had! That’s right, the new R-rated comedy is finally streaming on Prime Video and I was lucky enough to speak with director and co-writer Peter Farrelly as well as stars John Cena, Zac Efron, Andrew Santino, Jermaine Fowler, and William H. Macy.

When three childhood best friends pull a prank gone wrong, they invent the imaginary Ricky Stanicky to get them out of trouble! Twenty years after creating this ‘friend,’ Dean, JT, and Wes (Zac Efron, Andrew Santino, and Jermaine Fowler) still use the nonexistent Ricky as a handy alibi for their immature behavior. When their spouses and partners get suspicious and demand to finally meet the fabled Mr. Stanicky, the guilty trio decide to hire washed-up actor and raunchy celebrity impersonator “Rock Hard” Rod (John Cena) to bring him to life. But when Rod takes his role of a lifetime too far, they begin to wish they’d never invented Ricky in the first place.

“For me, the one time I couldn’t… it took a lot to get the scene you’re talking about, and that was the one time I couldn’t hold it together because I loved the joke and it’s in the trailer, it’s when he says, ‘It’s not what you think, it’s just piss.’ And I love that because that was on the day, and that was from Peter’s suggestion on the day,” Cena, who brings the characters of Rod Rimestead and Ricky Stanicky to life, shared. “That hit me so funny and I just couldn’t… we got it, and we got it so it looks like I didn’t break character, but we needed to spend a whole lot of data to get that.”

“Another one that was so funny was… actually, we shot this on the first day, but it was the one where John goes through, like, ten impressions in a row. I think there were probably more than ten that you did on the day, and I think we kept like seven or eight of them,” Efron, who portrays Dean Stanton, added. “We lit the room one direction and shot the reactions kind of first, and then they just turned the cameras around on John, and he just went on a tear and I don’t think there was a dry eye in the house, I mean, from tears of laughter.”

Fowler (Wes Jezenee) pulled the curtain back on what exactly the bible included, telling me, “The bible is one of our favorite things because the art department and the prop department did a great — beyond a great job of piecing it together. Every page is full of details and not just blabs or blurbs, it was like cohesive wording that we would write about Ricky’s backstory or where we were going.”

As for what Santino’s (JT Levin) real-life bible would look like, that’s simple: “Mine would be bar napkins from my travels. I like to take little bar napkins. We have a lot, we have a book in my house. My wife keeps of little bar napkins when we go to a bar or restaurant around the world.”

I then asked Macy, who plays Ted Summerhayes, to reflect on the theme of second chances and when he received a second chance in his own life that he is still grateful for. “I’ve gotten a second chance so many times, so many directors who took a shot on me, my wife has given me second chances,” he expressed to me. “I think everybody deserves a second chance because we’re all so completely fallible.”

Farrelly continued by explaining, “I mean, I looked at my whole life as a second chance, kind of, I was a late bloomer, to say the least, and so, I remember in my mid-20s, completely lost as an accountant and a salesman, and I wasn’t good at them. Then, I just thought at some point, and it was right in my mid-20s, where I just felt like — and they call that the age of reason, 25 and I think it’s true, [it] was for me — all of a sudden, I basically woke up one day and thought, ‘Why am I doing this? I hate this. I’m not good at it,’ and it occurred to me… I had thought about writing years earlier, but it seemed too late. But I thought, ‘Hell with it, let’s go for it,’ and it worked out, so I feel like I gave myself a second chance in life.”