Giovanni Ribisi barely remembers filming ‘Friends’

“Strange Darling” has a lot of gnarly scenes. Is there something that sticks out as sort of the most challenging scene that you’ve ever had to film personally?

Wow. I don’t know. I get so nervous, sometimes it’s funny. You can have three words that you have to say in a scene, and it becomes the most nerve-wracking thing you’ve ever done. There was a job a long time ago where I was playing a Carabinieri officer and I had to learn and speak Italian with an Italian accent, and I also had to be an interpreter for another actor.

So it was just monologues. And I remember it was just, I think I was trapped in a hotel room for seven or eight days straight, and I realized I hadn’t come out of the room just trying to learn and speak and record. That was definitely challenging for me.

That’s funny, because I think I was expecting you to say something related to “Saving Private Ryan.”

Oh, really? Oh, wow.

Besides recurring on “Friends” and the sitcoms you did as a kid, you hadn’t really done too much TV as an adult actor before “Sneaky Pete.” You’ve mentioned you were initially resistant to doing hour-long dramas for TV. Why?

Not for any other reason than just the time commitment, particularly for the showrunner. Being a television showrunner for an hourlong show is just the hardest job, I think, in entertainment or any visual motion picture. You have to fight to have a life.

And then starring on one as an actor, I think that’s 80-hour weeks, because you’re not just working 14 to 16 hours a day on the set. You have to go home and learn all the pages, eight pages for the next thing that you’re shooting.

I don’t want to sound like I’m complaining about it. I’m really not, because you have to know that’s what you’re signing up for, and you have to take responsibility for it and try to do the best you can and maintain an interest not to not get beat down by that.

You also teamed up with Bryan Cranston for that, which must’ve been cool.

I think Bryan Cranston is truly one of the great American actors that we have, and just to watch him work and be around him is just incredible. He’s also a smarty pants. He’s a smart person. If I could work with him again, I would jump at the chance.

Your dance scene in “Ted” is also just one of those random movie moments that’s ingrained in my brain for some reason.

That was another interesting thing, because that was another decision where I was just hanging out on set watching and knowing that the scene was going to come up.

I think I just turned to Seth [MacFarlane] and I was like, “I just want to dance.” It was like two seconds, then he was like, “Great.” So then we just did it, and then it started turning into something else, and I think it took all of a half hour to shoot, and then suddenly it became a thing.

Was the song always “I Think We’re Alone Now,” or was it something else?

No, it was originally some heavy metal song that, I don’t know, it was a different thing, but then they ended up putting that one in there.

On admiring ‘mavericks’ like Kevin Costner and Francis Ford Coppola

You’re also in Kevin Costner’s “Horizon” Saga. What was filming that like?

The first movie in that series, I’m in it for I think one shot, and that was always the thing. And then the character that I’m doing really shows up for number three and number four. I just got back from filming, I just shaved my beard off yesterday.

I’m really excited about those movies and what he is doing, and also what he stands for as a filmmaker. What Kevin Costner and what Coppola have done, those guys are my heroes.

How so?

Well, just in the true sense, they’re mavericks. They’re taking chances when that means something. These are guys who are just unbridled troubadours, who are truly laying everything on the line where it’s like, whoa. And they’re putting their money where their mouth is.

I just think that that is so commendable. But at any scale, I hope more people can take a cue from that kind of thinking. I certainly am trying to.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

“Strange Darling” is now in theaters.