In the new Paramount plus film Jerry and Marge Go Large, a couple, played by Bryan Cranston and Annette Bening, beat the lottery by exploiting a loophole in the math and use the winnings to benefit their town.
Larry Wilmore plays the couple’s accountant, and he tells ABC Audio the script fell into his lap when he needed it the most — during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“I really [needed] something to give me hope,” he recalls. “And just that story of Jerry and Marge, you know, just how simple it was. I mean, the guy…just he just wanted to figure out puzzles, you know? He wasn’t trying to win money. That was like a bonus…And then the fact that he got the whole town involved, that was fantastic. I love that part of it.”
The multitalented 60-year-old comedian whose numerous credits include serving as executive producer on the ABC sitcom, black-ish, and as a co-creator, with Issa Rae on the HBO series Insecure, reveals that once upon a time, math was actually his thing, but comedy eventually won out.
“I was taking calculus as a sophomore in high school…I was on that math track,” he explains. “But after a while, comedy just became a little more fun than the math, you know?…I’m not like math genius type of thing, way far from that.”
Wilmore says he used to play the lottery “all the time” back in the day, but not so much these days.
“I’m a big-stakes lottery guy,” he shares. “If it’s like 25 million, I’m like, come on, lottery. You got to do better than that…But when it’s like 500 million?…I’m like, okay, you can get my $2, on 500 million.”
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