Billy Bob Thornton and ‘Bad Santa 2’ Cast Share Their Thoughts on Jingling the Bad Bells

In the sequel to the wildly popular dark comedy “Bad Santa,” Billy Bob Thornton’s Willie Soke plays the role of St. Nick to come down the chimney for that one last big heist. Thorton and his castmates Kathy Bates, Christina Hendricks, Tony Cox and Brett Kelly, along with director Mark Waters, recently discussed the making of “Bad Santa 2” and going nuts with the off-the-wall characters.

For Kathy Bates, playing Willie Soke’s even wilder mother, Sunny, was a liberating experience. “I had seen the first one, so when they said, ‘Hey! You want to play Billy Bob’s mother?’ I said, ‘Where do I sign?’ I loved playing a biker chick because I always wanted a motorcycle. I’ve always wanted tats. I’ve always wanted a mohawk. I’ve always wanted to do all of these crazy things and not give a you-know-what. So I got to do it with this wonderful character.”

Christina Hendricks, who plays Willie’s love interest Diane, also needed little persuasion to come aboard for this sequel.  “The first movie is sort of legendary, so I was nervous and excited and they all made me feel very welcome,” Hendricks said. “I have always wanted to do something where you could just throw yourself into complete abandon and one hundred percent be raunchy and silly and just have a great time, and that’s what it was for me.”

The returning actors also loved revisiting their characters after 13 years. “It was like old times for me,” said Tony Cox, who plays Willie’s partner in crime, the elf Marcus Skidmore. “I mean, working with Billy again and to go after him… It was just like a family again.”

Brett Kelly, who was just a child when he first played Willie’s pal Thurman Merman, recalled preparing for that role the first time around. “Everyone always thinks with the first one, ‘Oh, you must have been scarred, because you were only 8 years old, running around with this Thornton.’ But, no, because I had auditioned six or seven times for it and every single time I had to run lines with my dad. So once you get accustomed to taking this abuse from your own father, it’s pretty easy to have someone else do it.” He had little trouble becoming an older version of the sweet and possibly autistic young man. “When we got back into it, even before we started shooting, when me, Billy and Tony had our first meeting for it, within five minutes it felt like we had never been apart. It was like it hadn’t been 13 years since we did the last one. It was really seamless, the transition, slipping back into it.”

Thornton spoke about Willie’s unlikely bond with Thurman. “I think people see that Willie was just a neglected, abused kid and he kind of sees himself in Thurman, because he sees that Thurman never had much of a chance either. I think Willie probably is the kind of guy that wishes that he could be close to people but he’s afraid to because he’s afraid that’ll go down the shitter too.”

He went on to discuss why it felt right to pick up Willie’s story after all of these years. “We took three or four years looking through scripts and several different incarnations before we decided on this one…, and I think in a lot of ways it helped us, because you do have that distance and, also, now Thurman is 21, so you get to see a different guy as opposed to that kid again. To me, it’s funny that Willie is still alive. Not only is he alive, he’s even more suicidal. That just automatically makes it funny to me. The movie doesn’t apologize for anything, and yet the new one is more emotional than the first one, and it actually brings it closer to being an actual Christmas movie, because you do see that Willie is – Well, you see where he came from and you kind of understand more why he’s the way he is, and also, you see his love for the kid, which he can’t really admit, but you know he has it.”

The only time Bates and Thornton appeared on screen together before “Bad Santa 2” was almost 20 years ago in one scene in the political film “Primary Colors.” However, the two share Southern roots. “We’re from the same neck of the woods,” Bates said.

“Kathy’s from Memphis,” Thornton said, “and I’m from across the river in Arkansas. We’ve had not only similar backgrounds in a lot of ways, but we’ve had sort of parallel careers. In other words, we didn’t become movie stars because we were Calvin Klein models. We weren’t 20 years old. We both became sort of movie star-types by playing characters, so we both have an understanding that when you play a character, you can’t play it 70 percent of the way. If you’re going to do something, you do it all the way. If you’re playing Pat Boone, you gotta play Pat Boone. You can’t say, ‘Can I be a little more edgy?’ You gotta play Pat Boone, and if you’re playing Charles Manson, you can’t say, ‘Well, I don’t want to look bad.” You gotta look bad.”

The original plan was to give Willie a father named Sonnie but that got turned into a mother named Sunny. But that was rejected. “The problem with having a father was you had two Willies,” Thornton said. “And somebody said, ‘Hey, what if it’s the mother?’ And then all of us said, ‘That’s brilliant.’ And then somebody said, ‘How about Kathy Bates?’ And we said, ‘That’s brilliant.’ That’s how it happened. It was very quick and easy.”

Director Mark Waters said: “The emotional long con that Sunny does works so much better, because even though he kind of hates and distrusts her, you secretly still want him to love [his] mother, so even though he resists, resists, resists, you eventually believe that he’s going to get sucked into her web again.”

As in the first film, Willie has no problems finding female companionship despite being so crude and slovenly. Hendricks talked about his sex appeal: “I think it’s because he’s dirty and he’s naughty, and that sort of ‘I don’t give a shit,’ and somehow girls like that. It’s like the person who doesn’t like the cat; the cat always comes and sits on your lap.”

Bad Santa 2” opens Nov. 23 nationwide.