Hangover Helper

A hopeless (and hapless) romantic on screens big and small, Ed Helms tells Andrew Goldman about one unforgettable love affair…with a box of cereal

Jason O'Dell/Contour by Getty Images

Here's what you'd sound like if you called your best friend to set her up with funny nice guy Ed Helms (right after she poses the inevitable pre–blind date question: How do I know he's not an ax murderer?): "Well, his daddy's a southern lawyer," you'd say, "just like Atticus Finch.... Not good enough for you? Okay, well, he plays banjo.... Yes, but the maniacs in Deliverance didn't play the banjo. Plus, in his freshman year at Oberlin, he sang in the Obertones, an all-male a cappella group.... No, I'm not kidding. I know, right? Serial killers don't go to Oberlin!" Of course, these days, you could just have your friend turn on The Office to catch the 37-year-old playing doggedly dweeby Andy "The Nard Dog" Bernard, or see him reprise his big-screen role as toothless Stu Price in The Hangover Part II. Helms is obviously no killer. Unfortunately for your friend, he does have a girlfriend—and he remains, unsurprisingly, a one-woman kinda guy.

ELLE:  Did you ever get any worthless advice about women?
ED HELMS:  I did get an awful lot of terrible advice from the older kids on my street. This isn't dating advice, but it will give you an idea of the kind of miseducation I had: I remember the older kids were talking about being hungover, and I said, "What's a hangover?" This kid Josh turns to me and goes, "It's when you wake up in the morning and you hang your dick over the back of a chair."

ELLE:  Any other strange childhood misconceptions about human sexuality?
EH:  I did for a time think that if you touched a woman's boob, she became pregnant. That was terrifying.

ELLE:  Would it have to be skin on skin, or could pregnancy occur after brushing against a breast in an elevator?
EH:  It had to be intentional—if you reached up and grabbed someone's boob, she would become pregnant. I think maybe it was just some really demented math equation in my head about the fact that boobs have something to do with sex and babies come from sex.

ELLE:  You grew up in Atlanta. What parts of the old South still exist in the city's mating rituals?
EH:  The debutante phenomenon still exists. The summer between my freshman and sophomore years in college, I was an escort for one of my friends, and I presented her at the ball. That's pretty old-school. Even though you're wearing a tuxedo and the girls are literally wearing corsets and hoop dresses, these things just turn into DJ parties by the end of the night.
ELLE:  I had a friend who was a debutante in Texas, and she told me that in order to be transported to the events in those gowns, the girls had to be strapped, standing, into huge moving vans.
EH:  Yeah, like a box truck. I'm not surprised. I never saw that, but I believe it.

ELLE:  You had open-heart surgery for a heart murmur when you were 14. If you'd died on the operating table, and I was entrusted to write your posthumous sexual biography, what would have to be included?
EH: That I died with a heartbreaking crush on one of my nurses. And that I'd had lots of sex by that point, but just by myself.

ELLE:  You've described yourself as a high school nerd. Provide me with one detail that proves this.
EH: There are many. My friend and I sang an a cappella rendition of Extreme's "More Than Words" at one of our football pep rallies in a desperate attempt to look cool. For a while, I wore pink Converse All Stars because I thought it made me seem daring and irreverent.

ELLE:  You had me at "More Than Words." Before joining The Daily Show With Jon Stewart, you did a lot of sketch work and improv in New York. Did being onstage come with a period of great sexual bounty?
EH:  I don't know what comedy clubs you're going to. No. You have to understand that, sort of philosophically, I've always had this hurdle with promiscuity. Maybe it's been out of fear and insecurity, but unless a woman pulls me into a closet and rips my clothes off, I'm never confident that I can make something happen. I had a lot of fun in my early twenties, but I don't know that there was ever a period that I would describe as "sexual bounty."

ELLE:  Have things changed significantly since you became famous?
EH:  It's funny—I have, like, skills in that department, but it's not really what I want anymore. When I didn't have the skills, it's all I wanted. As I've become more confident and secure in terms of what I want, I've been much more relationship-oriented, for the last six, seven, eight years.

ELLE:  What's the angriest you ever saw your mother?
EH:  My mom was a health nut, and we never had sugar cereals in the house. Raisin Bran was the sweetest thing we got. I went to my best friend Nick's house and he had Honey Nut Cheerios in the cupboard. I couldn't believe he had unfettered access to it. I kid you not, I ate about 10 bowls in a row in the middle of the afternoon. Nick's mom called my mom and was like, "What the hell is going on? Your son just ate an entire box of my family's cereal." I got in a lot of trouble.

ELLE:  The poignant part of that story is that you gorged on a cereal that in many families would be the healthy alternative to Trix.
EH:  You're right. But my mother said if sugar is one of the first three ingredients, then it's a sugar cereal. Honey Nut Cheerios was on the blacklist.

ELLE:  Tell me about your most awkward interaction with a famous woman.
EH:  A couple years ago I was introduced to Julia Louis-Dreyfus at a party, and I've been such a big fan of hers for so long that I gave her this big hug that was, like, too familiar—one of those hugs that you'd give a dear friend.
ELLE:  Did you feel a tenseness when you were holding on to her?
EH:  She was perfectly gracious and warm, but there was a certain lack of reciprocation. In that moment, I could feel that the intensity of my hug was not being reciprocated. A light went off, like, Oh my God. This is a little much.

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