The Naked Gun Director: Liam Neeson Has the ‘Particular Set of Skills’ to Replace Leslie Nielsen

This article appears in the new issue of DEN OF GEEK magazine. You can read all of our magazine stories here.

Even in these divisive times, we can all at least agree on one thing: Leslie Nielsen can’t be replaced. 

Amid his prolific 60-year acting career, which featured hundreds of roles in film and television, the cloudy-haired Canadian American performer became an unlikely comedy legend thanks to his straight man work in slapstick features such as Airplane! and The Naked Gun. No one could deadpan their way through absurdity quite like Leslie Nielsen. Hallowed film critic Roger Ebert went so far as to dub him “the Olivier of spoofs,” though surely even Laurence Olivier would betray a smile during “I am serious and don’t call me Shirley.” 

The late actor’s indispensability is the first challenge that any poor soul looking to reboot The Naked Gun franchise must confront. And the poor soul selected for the task in this summer’s quasi-reboot/quasi-legacy sequel is very aware of that. 

“The first Naked Gun is a perfect movie, and Leslie Nielsen is irreplaceable,” director Akiva Schaffer acknowledges. “He is his own thing, and anybody trying to do him is going to fail, even if they’re the funniest person on Earth.” 

Best known as one-third of the SNL Digital Short-pioneering comedy troupe the Lonely Island and the director of films Hot Rod and Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping, Schaffer is accustomed to high-density joke formats. The Naked Gun, however, requires a PhD course in the Economics of Laughter. 

Created by the filmmaking trio of David Zucker, Jim Abrahams, and Jerry Zucker (or ZAZ), the Naked Gun franchise consists of the TV series Police Squad! and three accompanying films—all of which operate as bullet-paced spoofs of the crime genre, fit-to-bursting with sight gags, puns, and bizarre non-sequiturs.  At the center of all the madness is always the sturdy presence of Nielsen as Lt. Frank Drebin. How could any Naked Gun project work without someone like that? After all, it’s not like there are many other dramatic actors out there looking to make the jump to comedy in their golden years. And even then, it’s not like any of those actors’ initials are “L.N.” with a surname that actually sounds vaguely similar to “Nielsen,” unless… 

“Liam Neeson was the guy who opened up my mind to the world of what the movie could be,” Schaffer says. “Liam does things that no one else can do as well. I don’t want to say ‘a particular set of skills,’ but it’s true. He’s got his own particular set of skills that apply to this.”

Neeson, an Oscar-nominated dramatic actor and star of the Taken action franchise, has a Nielsen-like ability to play things straight, lending his intimidating Irish-tinged growl to both serious and comedic roles in recent years. The experience made him the perfect, if unlikely, choice for this Naked Gun’s lead, right down to that spooky phonetic coincidence of his name.

“On our very first draft script, I made a cover page where I just stole the old poster for The Naked Gun and crudely taped Liam’s face over Leslie’s face, and then just crossed off the names in a way that made it visually very clear how similar [their names are],” Schaffer says. “I just thought, ‘Oh, I’ll take advantage of that.’”

Neeson plays Lt. Frank Drebin Jr., son of Nielsen’s Drebin. The family lineage is made clear in the movie’s first teaser trailer, a viral hit that sees Drebin Jr. kneeling in front of a portrait of his father, expressing his love and appreciation. The scene then shifts to reveal the entire police department tearfully paying homage to their daddies in the Hall of Legends, including one officer who regards a photo of O.J. Simpson’s Naked Gun character, Det. Nordberg, before looking down the barrel of the camera and shaking his head. 

“When you tell people ‘I’m writing a Naked Gun,’ they go, ‘What are you gonna do about O.J.?’” Schaffer recalls. “Obviously, you’ve gotta answer that question right away. I wrote that scene the first week. It’s making fun of legacy sequels and the idea of, like, ‘it’s their son now.’ But what if it’s every character’s sons?”

Another challenge for a new Naked Gun film is to determine its sense of time and place. While the ZAZ movies largely parodied ’50s and ’60s crime series and serials, current audiences won’t be quite as familiar with original Naked Gun targets like M Squad, Dragnet, and Dirty Harry.

“The choice I made is to make it feel more modern or ’90s,” Schaffer says. “There’s so much stuff that’s happened in the procedural, detective, and action genres since 1990. We have 35 years of Law & Order and CSI on TV. And then the Mission: Impossible, John Wick, and Taken movies.”

Helping to ease The Naked Gun’s transition from the late ’80s/early ’90s era into more modern buffoonery is an honest-to-goodness ’90s icon herself: Pamela Anderson. Fresh off an acclaimed role in the 2024 indie-drama The Last Showgirl and ascendant as a cultural force once again, the former Baywatch star is the perfect fit for the tone that Schaffer hopes to achieve with The Naked Gun. 

The director notes that Anderson, as “only” a TV star at the time, is the type of perceived-to-be-B-list level talent that an original Naked Gun movie would have looked to cast and elevate. Now, however, there is no distinction in the Hollywood caste system. A star is a star, no matter the medium. 

“She understood exactly what this was and was so game,” Schaffer says of Anderson. “There’s something about her past that reminds you of this genre, but there’s something of her future where she’s [at the] Met Gala that is very today. She is in this interesting cultural moment that is exactly what the movie is trying to do–reminding you of the past, taking the spirit of it, and doing something totally new with it.”

And if that sounds a bit too heady for a Naked Gun picture, Schaffer wants to make clear that this is all still very dumb.

“All movies are very hard to make. But it’s always funny when the thing that makes it hard to make is like, ‘No, that fart has to sound 10 percent wet!’ That’s what you’re yelling at somebody about. It’s an honor to get to make something silly.”

The Naked Gun opens in theaters on Aug. 1.