VIDEO EXCLUSIVE: ‘Super Troopers’ Stars Stars Kevin Heffernan & Steve Lemme On Why They Did ‘The Full Monty’

Kevin Heffernan and Steve Lemme are two comedians from the Broken Lizard comedy group best known for creating and starring in the 2001 cult classic film Super Troopers, in which they played Vermont state police troopers.

Now, they star in a truTV series called Tacoma F.D., which uses much of the same humor except in the context of a fire department. The pair explained to uInterview exclusively where the idea for Super Troopers came from and their favorite moments from making the iconic film, including a scene that included male nudity.

“Back when we were in our early 20s, our friends were starting to drop off and get married, and you know, there’s a couple summers where you just start doing the wedding circuit. And the five of us since we work together and live together and socialize with each other, we would get into one car and just drive to all these weddings and kept getting pulled over,” Lemme explained. “And we were in various states of intoxication and so we were always like ‘God, if that cop knew how high we were he could have screwed with us so much,’ if he had a sense of humor.”

Lemme added this was the main reason that gave birth to the idea behind Super Troopers, and revealed he and Heffernan had a friend who lived on the Canadian border with Vermont in a mostly-dead area.

So what was one of Lemme and Heffernan’s favorite moments to film during the making of Super Troopers? They said there were several, but Lemme confessed that the scene where he is forced to strip naked and wear a bulletproof jockstrap while his colleagues use him for target practice stands out the most.

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“My favorite Super Troopers 1 moment was shooting the scene, I have a scene where I’m in a bulletproof jockstrap and these guys are taking target practice with me, but that scene was shot on at the shooting range of the Fishkill Maximum Security Prison and the wing that was overlooking the shooting range was the worst of the worst where they kept the worst offenders. I think they would have like an hour a day or even like 15 minutes every top of every hour to just be outside, but it was when I was fully naked,” said Lemme.

He continued: “I had the bulletproof jockstrap on and then I take it off and give it to the rookie, and then I’m just standing there naked and in between takes it was very sunny so I had a red kimono and like a parasol that they would use to shield me from the sun. These inmates were just screaming stuff at me that would make you blush: like they were talking about what they were gonna do to me and all that and it was just absolutely ludicrous.”

Heffernan then added the full frontal nudity he did for Super Troopers was “by accident.”

“It was kind of an homage to Rambo: First Blood, where I get hosed down at a police station, I think we were so green that we didn’t know that when you do nudity in movies and that kind of thing you wear nude garments to cover up your… modesty junk,” said Heffernan. “Unfortunately, I didn’t have those and so I was [fully] nude and the cameraman, when I turned to camera, he was laughing so hard that his camera dipped down and got everything that I owned.”

Heffernan and Lemme then revealed they had a light argument with Super Troopers director Jay Chandrasekhar about how much nudity the final cut of the movie should include, with Heffernan arguing that nobody wanted to see his character Farva’s “junk.”

Lemme also hilariously admitted that Indian-American Chandrasekhar brought his family on set one day and extremely appropriate scenes were being filmed in front of several children.

Full interview transcript below:

Q: Where did the idea for Super Troopers come from?

A: Lemme: The idea from that came, you know, back when we’re in our early 20s, our friends were starting to drop off and get married, and it’s that you know there’s a couple summers where you just start doing the wedding circuit, and the five of us you know since we since we work together and live together and socialize with each other, we would get into one car and just drive to all these weddings and kept getting pulled over. And we were in various states of intoxication and so we were always like ‘God if that cop knew how high we were he could have screwed with us so much’, if he had a sense of humor. And then that was kind of the genesis of the idea and then you know as cops who like kind of had a sense of humor, and then we had a friend who had a house right up on the Canadian border and Vermont and Canada and that area of the highway was so dead, and we were like what if you work up on this road like how bored would you be, there’s nothing to do you to have to drum up some business for yourself, and so we kind of married those two things and came up with the idea of cops on this desert and stretch of highway who likes to mess with people’s heads.

Q: What was your favorite moment on Super Troopers?

A: Lemme: My favorite Super Troopers 1 moment was shooting the scene, I have a scene where I’m in a bulletproof jockstrap and these guys are taking target practice with me, but that scene was shot on at the shooting range of the Fishkill Maximum Security Prison and the wing that was overlooking the the shooting range was the worst of the worst where they kept the worst offenders, and I think they would have like an hour a day or even like 15 minutes every like top of every hour to just be outside, but it was when I was fully naked. I had the the bulletproof jockstrap on and then I take it off and give it to the rookie, and then I’m just standing there naked and in between takes was very sunny so I had a red kimono and like a parasol that they would use to shield me from the sun, and these inmates were just screaming stuff at me that would make you blush like they were talking about what they were gonna do to me and all that and it was just it was absolutely look ludicrous.

Heffernan: I guess kinda the weird experience I had was it you know I did full frontal nudity in Super Troopers 1 by accident. it was kind of an homage to Rambo’s First Blood, where I get hosed down at a police station, I think we were so green that we didn’t know that when you do nudity in movies and that kind of thing you wear nude garments to cover up your yeah your modesty junk, and unfortunately didn’t have those and so I was full nude and the cameraman when I turned to camera he was laughing so hard that his camera dipped down and got everything that I owned. And then we ended up in the editing room having a fight, it was me and Jay Chandrasekhar, the director, about how gritty we should make Super Troopers in terms of how much full frontal nudity and I
lost the fight and it ended up being there.

Lemme: In the post, we come in and we watched the rough cut and Kevin was arguing that nobody wants to see Farva’s junk and he was wrong because we felt, the rest of us felt unanimously that everyone wanted to see Farva’s junk. The funny thing too about that day was that was the day that Jay Chandrasekhar invited his whole family to the set, and so there were like children, there were children of various ages on set that day and I guess Jay didn’t know the concept of a closed set, and so these kids like it’s totally surreal, he’s naked being like scrubbed and hosed down, there’s little Indian children all along the the walls watching this thing with like white eyes. I thought of another fun day also which was when we shot the basically the death ride, I think is what it’s called at the end of the movie, when we’re all in the squad car with Chief O’hagan and he goes and trashes the opposing the police chief’s lawn, and we drive around and we were all jammed into the back of this police car was like 4:00 in the morning and Brian Cox, the great Brian Cox is a trained actor, he has acted all over the world, he’s done Shakespeare and Moscow, he’s the original Hannibal Lecter, he’s amazing and he’s in the backseat with us and we’re just being jackasses like just making mom jokes and things like that and he’s just looking at the window and he said, ‘whatever happened to craft!’