The Naked Gun director on stars Liam Neeson and Pamela Anderson being 'little dirty flirts' on pr...

Plus, how we secured that cameo from two OG franchise stars, and how the Super Mario Bros. theme was once part of Anderson's jazz scat. The Naked Gun director o

Plus, how we secured that cameo from two OG franchise stars, and how the Super Mario Bros. theme was once part of Anderson's jazz scat.

The Naked Gun director on stars Liam Neeson and Pamela Anderson being 'little dirty flirts' on press tour

Plus, how we secured that cameo from two OG franchise stars, and how the Super Mario Bros. theme was once part of Anderson's jazz scat.

By Staff Author

Published on August 9, 2025 09:30AM EDT

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Pamela Anderson kisses Liam Neeson at the July 2025 London premiere of 'The Naked Gun'. Credit:

John Phillips/Getty

- *The Naked Gun* director Akiva Schaffer tells EW about watching Liam Neeson and Pamela Anderson's relationship go public.

- He tells all about OG franchise star Priscilla Presley's cameo — and whether her character is really Frank Jr.'s mom.

- Schaffer also details how the Super Mario Bros. theme was once part of Anderson's jazz scat scene.

Akiva Schaffer is breathing a big sigh of relief.

His *Naked Gun* franchise reboot — starring Liam Neeson and Pamela Anderson — opened last weekend to (mostly) positive reviews and almost $17 million. It's not lost on the *Saturday Night Live* writing alum and one part of the Lonely Island trio that comedies haven't been getting a lot of theatrical love lately.

"Historically, spoof comedies get really ripped apart," Schaffer, donning a *Naked Gun 2 1/2: The Smell of Fear* ballcap he found on eBay, tells ** in a virtual interview this week. "In the past, even if they got ripped apart, there was enough of a built-in audience of people who love the genre that they could still do okay at the box office just because they were in the habit of being like, 'Yeah, I see funny movies. Oh, there's a new funny movie.' Whereas that audience is not built in anymore."

Schaffer, Neeson, Anderson, and company were fortunate not to get ripped apart.

Pamela Anderson and Liam Neeson in 'The Naked Gun'.

Frank Masi/Paramount Pictures

"No one wants bad reviews — they hurt your feelings. So I was very relieved when I felt like the reviews were either really good or even the mixed good ones, I was like, 'That's fair. I agree with that,'" he acknowledges. "Comedy is subjective, but they were still seeing all the choices we made going into it and all the effort we put in, and that it was not cynical and it was a labor of love and all the details and all the careful legacy sequel choices being made to try to not be disposable like a lot are, and not just be fan service and be a real, on-its-own, new movie, while also not just being a random movie that put the *Naked Gun* title on it."

But will they get to do it again? How did he secure those cameos by two of the only people to appear in all three of the original movies? And what does he think about Neeson and Anderson's budding romance? We chatted with Schaffer about all of that and more, below.

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Paul Walter Hauser, director Akiva Schaffer, and Liam Neeson on the set of 'The Naked Gun'.

Paramount Pictures

**: Pamela has said she's absolutely game for a sequel. It sounds like Liam is into it. What's the word? Have conversations been happening?**

**AKIVA SCHAFFER:** I don't wanna jinx something like that, so I don't even talk about it very much. I think it would have to be a smash right off the bat to get the call the first day. So I think the jury's still out — that'd be my guess. I wouldn't have dared to wish for anything better than what we were already experiencing. So, I'm very happy. And on the box office, the money side — which is what they care about — we're very solid.

**Pamela's jazz scat number, "Sassafras Chicken in D," originally included some Super Mario Bros. theme music. Ultimately, we know that corporate legal approvals can certainly make or break these kinds of things. But how worried were you that having to lose that or anything else would ultimately affect the end product of the song? **

First off, let me just start with this: I love Nintendo. I have a Switch 2. We play it with my kids all day long. It's the best. In this case, there was a beat of it where she's doing her scat and you hear her in the background [singing "Mario, Mario, Mario"] while Liam's beating up the guy, and then it comes back to her and she's just like [singing the Super Mario Bros. underground theme]. And the band kind of looks at each other and then starts playing with her [as she gets to the next part of the song], and then she went, "Jazzzzzz" [*with jazz hands*]. And then it cut back.

We knew we had to clear it — especially when you're singing someone else's music, you have to clear it. And so we went to Nintendo and we had to track down the right person, we found a guy, he was a really nice lawyer, and he got all the info from us, and he had to present it to them. It's all about their corporate strategy at the moment, and all these big things. We're just celebrating that it's part of the culture. I didn't even use the main theme; I used the underground theme. [*Hums the main theme*] It is made with such joy. And the test audience loved the moment. You could see when it clicked in, and they were like,* Wait a second*.

Pamela Anderson and director Akiva Schaffer on the set of 'The Naked Gun'.

Paramount Pictures

**I would've thought with parody laws, you would've been able to get away with it?**

Yeah. But it's hard with music. You can do it, but it's hard in movies and with music. It's right on the edge. In hindsight, when they said no, then I was like, oh, s---, we shouldn't have asked. But once you get a no, then you can't go back. That's true for all parody law. If you ask the person, they say no, now you've lost your right to fair use.

I think it was a blessing in disguise because I think what's in the movie's actually funnier.... There's so much stuff that was just Pam doing these scats with so much energy and earnestness and silliness that I think where we ended up was actually funnier. And there's a few things like that — I won't sell out the people that said no too — but where at first I was like, "What are we gonna do?" And then I came to something else and was like, "Oh, that's better."

**Let's talk cameos. Star of the original franchise, Priscilla Presley, popped in very quickly. How many options did you guys present to her for how and where she might pop up?**

Priscilla was a last-minute addition. She lives in L.A., but we shot in Atlanta, and in Atlanta, we knew it would be so great to ask her to come be in this, but I didn't want to make her get on a plane unless I was *sure* it would be in the movie. We knew we were shooting 115 pages plus; every day had five pages of alt jokes. And I knew the movie was going to be 85 minutes, so I knew everything we shot every day might not be in the movie. So I just couldn't bear asking her to do that [and it not make the final cut]. And that's just based on me and my love of the originals and love of her and respect. We had not communicated yet, so it wasn't like I talked to her and she was like, "It better be worth it." We had not spoken. I didn't even want to ask her unless I got something good. But we were leaving stuff [to film in] L.A. So then we edited the movie for like three months, focused on what we're shooting in L.A., and that's when we asked her. So by then it was just really clear, "There's this spot where we can just cut to you." I just wanted it to be so easy for her, too.

Leslie Nielsen and Priscilla Presley in 'Naked Gun 2 1/2: The Smell of Fear'.

Paramount/Courtesy Everett

**A Stan Lee, Marvel-type cameo.**

Exactly. I just wanted her to tip her cap. And so once we had that, then we shot her doing different stuff. We had her say it like she used to in the old movies, "Oh, Frank." But it just opens this can of worms: You don't want to think about the details of how this is Frank Drebin's son — and this is not canon, I leave it to the [world to discuss] — but I don't think Priscilla Presley's his mom.

**That was my next question!**

The math doesn't make sense. Listen, he's a handsome guy. How old is he, 60 in that movie? 62? The one thing we know about him is that he gets off the plane in the beginning and is heartbroken, so he's had love before. He's not a virgin, is my point. So there's a lot of years there, 40 years, when he could have fathered a child...he probably did. And that's who Liam is.

'Weird Al' Yankovic at the July 2025 New York premiere of 'The Naked Gun'.

Dia Dipasupil/Getty

**So Priscilla's Jane is not Frank Jr.'s mom.**

Yeah. But is a late-in-life stepmom. But I'm just making that up. If it makes you happier to think that she is and that those little kids at the end in that fantasy sequence, if you wanna think that's him, that's fine too.

**Weird Al — he's a really incredible throwback to the original film. You, of course, appeared in the Weird Al film starring Daniel Radcliffe. Did you make a connection with him that made this an easy yes? How did that happen? **

As part of Lonely Island... we make fake music; he does parody music. We have known Al for 15, maybe even 20 years. We obviously grew up idolizing him at the exact time that we were idolizing *Naked Gun*. We've done photo shoots with him for *GQ*, and he had a cameo in *Popstar*, where he's almost unrecognizable. We did a *Carpool Karaoke* episode with him. So anything we can do with Al, we always wanna, and we've always been so thrilled that he invites us to do things with him as well.

He was not just in the first *Naked Gun *— he was in *Naked Gun 2 1/2*, and he was in *Naked Gun 33 1/3*. He's one of the only living people, besides Priscilla, who was in all three movies. So he had to be in this. The moment the story broke [that I was making the movie], I got an email from him before I even had a chance to ask, just being like, "I'm here if you need me."

Pamela Anderson and Liam Neeson at the July 2025 Berlin premiere of 'The Naked Gun'.

Sebastian Reuter/Getty

**Liam and Pamela's personal relationship — for all the bad things happening in the world, people are really latching onto this and love seeing this amazing thing happen. Do we officially have you to thank for that? **

I dunno. I mean, how do you capture that lightning in a bottle? The spark of love. But yeah, it's me. I'll take it.

**Did it feel inevitable to you that the press tour was going to become their hard launch? Or did they surprise you with how they handled it?**

I certainly hoped it would. I certainly was rooting for them, and I thought others would too. I think when you have a story that people want to cover attached to a press cycle, that doesn't hurt. I'm sure it reached a different audience than our stuff would've reached. So them being little dirty flirts — why not?

*This interview has been edited for clarity and length.***

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