Raunchy talk with new ‘CHIPS’ stars Michael Peña and Dax Shepard

LOS ANGELES—“CHIPS” is definitely not the wholesome TV series some of you might remember from the late ’70s to the early ’80s.

It’s a raunchier version of “CHiPs,” the show that starred Erik Estrada and Larry Wilcox as California Highway Patrol officers.

As a result, our talk with Michael Peña, who has the “Ponch” role, and Dax Shepard, who directs from his own script as well as stars as Jon, was raunchy, too.

Michael arrived earlier than Dax at The London West Hollywood Hotel, so we asked him first about one of the movie’s funny risqué scenes.

Following a physically strenuous day, Jon finds himself unable to move his exhausted body and can’t even reach for his medicine. He calls a very hesitant Ponch to carry him to the tub for a therapeutic soak.

Reluctantly, Ponch carries the nude Jon to the shower, but he falls. Ponch’s face lands right into Jon’s crotch.

“Dax actually wrote that a week before we started shooting,” Michael began with a grin. “He texted me about it. He didn’t call me. He was like, ‘I wrote a new scene. You’re not going to like it.’ I was like, ‘Oh, you son of a b****.’ I read it, then my wife read it. She was like, ‘It’s really funny.’ I was like, damn it! I was hoping she’d say something like, no, or whatever.

“Oddly enough, on the pubic hair that was supposed to be on Dax, they angled his body away so he wore like a good-sized merkin (pubic wig), like a Don King kind of merkin (laughs). It was this way (demonstrates how big with his hands), and I was supposed to plant on it.
“But it was great, because it was a good cushion (laughs). We only shot that twice, thank God. So it was cool.”

Teased that he has a new skill set that he can include in his bio, Michael laughed and said, “Exactly! What’s funny is that you put on the sock (cloth pouch for genitals), then you put the merkin on. You just comb it over.”

The Chicago native revealed that as a result of this role, he bought a motorbike. “I bought the safest motorcycle you can get,” he said. “Like the fourth gear goes 40 miles an hour (laughs), because I only had four weeks of motorcycle training. Dax is doing this (demonstrates Dax dancing while riding the motorcycle), especially in the end credits, and I am like, ugh, just holding on for dear life.”

When Dax arrived, he apologized for being late and explained, “I got a haircut. My wife (Kristen Bell, who plays his ex-spouse in the movie) goes, ‘What’s going on with the back of your hair?’ So, I had to cut it.”

The Michigan-born actor-director-writer heard a bit of Michael’s remarks about being a rookie motorbiker. “Michael is too modest,” Dax said. “He had never sat on a motorcycle before, but he was driving down the highway going 65 (miles per hour) while doing three pages of dialogue.”

“I felt like I was doing 90!” Michael exclaimed.

Dax shared that he always had Michael in mind for the role that made Erik Estrada a household name at the peak of the series’ popularity.

“Oh, 100 percent,” Dax pointed out. “When I pitched the movie to Warner Brothers, I didn’t think I would be playing Jon Baker. I just knew that I wanted Peña to play Ponch.

“I was just trying to get a writing job and, hopefully, a directing job. Greg Silverman, then (WB) president, said, ‘No, you play Jon Baker, as well.’”

Michael acknowledged that his Ponch is a bit of a sex addict who has a weakness for women, especially those in yoga pants.

As the film’s production notes tout, “Ponch requires so much ‘alone time’ in the bathroom multiple times a day.”

On how he fleshed out Ponch and Jon so they aren’t mere rehash of the ’70s cop partners, Dax said, “The traditional approach to a buddy cop movie is that one guy is strait-laced and the other guy is a loose cannon. I felt like we have seen that played out and actually perfected in ‘Bad Boys’ and ‘Lethal Weapon.’

“What I was more interested in was approaching these guys as more traditional gender rolesc… I’m an emotional genius, and he is a logical genius. I am like, OK, that’s homophobic if you don’t want to hug a dude. He’s like, that isn’t the definition; let’s be clear about this. I don’t desire to hug guys. That doesn’t mean I’m afraid of gay people.

“So, it’s more of a Mars and Venus debate throughout the movie, than it is a dumbass and a genius or someone with the power or not. We both could foil each other quite easily. It wasn’t like one guy got to call the shots, and the other guy didn’t.”

Michael added, “But also help each other at the same time. It’s like ‘When Harry Met Sally,’ but on motorcycles (laughs).”

Asked about directing Kristen, the man who broke out via the prank show, “Punk’d,” replied, “It’s incredibly fun. I directed her in this car chase movie we made before this called ‘Hit and Run.’ We have been together for almost 10 years. We audition a ton, she more than I.

“So she is probably my favorite actor to direct, because she’s always perfect on take one every single time. She is incredibly talented.”

Michael cracked, “I know—Dax was directing me so much I was like, ‘Don’t you want to tell Kristen anything (laughs)?”

Dax jested, “Like, ‘You are only coming across as a nine in this scene, can you be a 10 in this?’”

Riffing on the plot about Jon trying to woo back his ex-wife, we asked both actors how far they’d go to save their marriage.

“I’m still married, so that’s pretty far,” replied Michael, who has been married to Brie Shaffer since 2006. They have a son, Roman, who was born in September 2008.

“Save her from a burning building?” Michael said. “I would do that (laughs). If she was falling from a cliff, I’d try to save her. We get along pretty well. If King Kong was after her, I would be like, ‘Oh, man, this is a tough one. It means we’re both going to die.’”

For his part, Dax, who married Kristen in 2013, said, “I have two kids, so I told Kristen, ‘You could get away with murder now because I will wake up in the same house with those kids, no matter what.’”

E-mail [email protected]. Follow him at https://twitter.com/nepalesruben.

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