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"Wooing Alyson Hannigan for 'Date Movie'"
By BETSY PICKLE , Scripps Howard News Service
 It might be the most flattering thing an actress could hear from screenwriters — that they wrote a role with her in mind. It's what Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer told Alyson Hannigan when they wooed her to star in "Date Movie."
"I've heard that before," says Hannigan. "It's always very flattering to hear, but I'm not sure if I quite buy it. It's just kind of like, 'Yeah, yeah. Are you telling everybody that?' But in this instance, I actually think I do believe them."
Maybe director Friedberg and writing partner Seltzer thought the girl who'd done it all at band camp, according to "American Pie," could handle dancing in a fat suit so energetically that her breasts would swing around to her back.
"I guess they figured they could just put me through the wringer and I wouldn't mind," says Hannigan by phone from Los Angeles. "They were right. I don't know if I should be flattered or not. But, OK."
"Date Movie" hopes to do for romantic comedies what "Scary Movie" did for horror films. (Friedberg and Seltzer were among the six writers of "Scary Movie," and they co-wrote "Spy Hard.")
In "Date Movie," Hannigan plays Julia Jones (a nod to Julia Roberts and Bridget Jones), an overweight young woman desperate to meet her soul mate. After getting a "Pimp My Ride"-type makeover, she finds her prince, Grant Fonckyerdoder (think Hugh Grant plus Ben Stiller's "Meet the Parents" character), played by newcomer Adam Campbell.
 The movie proceeds to spoof such hits as "My Big Fat Greek Wedding," "Hitch," "My Best Friend's Wedding," "Wedding Crashers," "Runaway Bride" and "The Wedding Planner."
"We had such a great time doing this movie," says Hannigan. "Everybody was game for just going for it."
Hannigan, 31, says she didn't dwell on details such as the fact that Eddie Griffin, who plays her father on screen, is only six years older than she is in real life.
"Even worse is my mother (Meera Simhan) was, like, five years older than me or something," she says. "That's warped."
Hannigan was a fan of "Scary Movie" and grew up adoring "Airplane!" and "stuff like that."
"But I never really thought, 'Oh, I really want to do a spoof comedy' until this presented itself," she says. "The idea of spoofing romantic comedies was just too good to pass up."
To see how to act in a spoof, Hannigan rented a few, but she quickly changed her approach.
"I was like, 'Oh, wait a minute. I don't need to rent the spoof movies. I need to rent romantic comedies.' Because it's really just playing it as straight as you can that's gonna make it that much more funny. Because if you comment on, 'Hey, hey, we're doin' a comedy,' it's not gonna work."
Hannigan took her research seriously and even included husband Alexis Denisof, whom she met when they acted together on TV's "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," in the project.
"I made a list of all the ones that were spoofed in the script," she says. "I revisited some of my favorites and watched some that I hadn't seen. It was just a great excuse to watch romantic movies.
"Like, 'No, baby, it's homework. Come on. Let's do this. Come on, baby, I'm being a serious actress right now. You've gotta watch this romantic movie with me. Go make some popcorn.' "
 Hannigan didn't have to binge to play Julia. She put on her extra weight with uncomfortable prosthetics.
"I might have some claustrophobia issues that I didn't have before," she says. "We'll see if I get confined in a small space and start freaking out. Having that stuff glued onto your face for that long, it's freaky. It can definitely do some emotional damage."
Playing an obese person actually caused her to lose weight.
"It was really the heat that was so hard to deal with because it was so hot in the suit," she says. "I must have lost, like, five pounds of water in one day. I was just guzzling and guzzling and guzzling water, and I ... was sweating it all out. I burned a lot of calories wearing that suit."
Hannigan, who was born in Washington, D.C., started acting in commercials as a little girl in Atlanta.
"It was always a passion of mine," she says. "I knew that that's what I wanted to do. Even when I was struggling and just doing whatever movie-of-the-weeks here or there, I loved it. I just always had that in me."
When she moved to Los Angeles at 11 with her divorced mother, she had no trouble losing her Southern accent.
"You get teased a few times, and it suddenly goes away pretty quickly," she says. "But some people say they can still hear it a little. When I get tired it comes out."
While "Scary Movie" became a trilogy, Hannigan hesitates to bet on a "Date Movie" three-peat.
"Let's see the opening-weekend box-office numbers, and we'll talk then," she says.
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