Kathryn Hahn Says Some of Her Naughtiest and 'Darkest' Bits in Step Brothers Were Improvised

Kathryn Hahn reviews some of the craziest improvisations ever Step Brothers — and some that aren’t.

The Agatha All together star, 51, was Jesse Tyler Ferguson’s latest guest on his podcast Dinner is on mewhere he pumped Hahn for details on unscripted moments in the 2008 film.

Step brothersdirection Big short Academy Award winner Adam McKay, it centers on Brennan (Will Ferrell) and Dale (John C. Reilly), two middle-aged man-children who become half-brothers when their parents (Mary Steenburgen and Richard Jenkins) marry. Hahn plays Alice, Brennan’s sister-in-law who develops a hilariously obsessive attraction to Dale after he hits her husband Derek (Adam Scott).

“It was also a special time in comedy,” Hahn told Ferguson about making the film. McKay, she said, “wrote something brilliant and hilarious, I think, with Will, that you could just do it. But then you’d always, you know, do that thing where it was like, ‘Okay, now throw it away and let’s go just roll.’ ”

Kathryn Hahn in ‘Step Siblings’ in 2008.

Columbia/courtesy of the Everett Collection

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Hahn previously talked about how much improvisation happened on the Step brothers set. “We would do it once as it was written and then we would leave. And sometimes it had nothing to do with whatever story was on the page,” she said Vanity Fair in 2021

“There was room for real new scenes,” she continued Dinner is on meadmitting that she would sometimes make a list of potential gags to do on set the next day.

In fact, some of the film’s cheesiest scenes were improvised, including one in which Alice tells Dale that she’ll enjoy thinking about him hitting her husband, adding that she wants to “roll” [him] into a small ball and push [him] up [her] vagina.”

“That whole scene, when I tell him I’m going to put him in my vagina,” she told Ferguson, “that wasn’t actually in the script.”

John C. Reilly and Kathryn Hahn in ‘Step Brothers’ 2008.

Columbia/courtesy of the Everett Collection

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“I mean, it came from the deep recesses of a recovering Catholic,” Hahn joked.

Ferguson, 49, had several questions about another memorable scene in which Alice and Dale have sex for the first time while standing in the men’s bathroom. Afterwards, Alice, with her foot still in the bathroom sink, tells Dale that their lovemaking was “just how I imagined it.”

“Okay. That’s probably me,” Hahn admitted.

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Kathryn Hahn in December 2024.

Kevin Winter/Getty

She couldn’t take credit for another absurd moment where her character lifts up her skirt and pees in the urinal. “That was our first ad,” she said. “He suggested it and I said, ‘Brilliant.’ ”

In her 2021 Vanity Fair career breakdown, Hahn also talked about a murder plot she and Reilly improvised during a bathroom scene that didn’t make it into the film. “I mean, John C. Reilly and I, our story could have been a lot darker than what ended up on camera,” she said at the time.

In a conversation with Ferguson, she revealed who their intended victim was.

“So we were, you know, in that bathroom, like, planning the murder of Adam Scott,” she said. “Like, we’re down to the darkest rabbit hole [hole]. Like, so dark.”

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Source: HIS Education