The legend of Ron Burgundy may be kind of a big deal, but Brick Tamland’s legend has legs, too.
“I heard that at Wimbledon [last year] during a break in the play, somebody yelled, ‘Loud noises!’ ” Steve Carell, 51, tells The Post of a particularly quotable line from his “Anchorman” character. “So I was very proud of that.”
This Wednesday, Carell returns as the dimwitted weatherman for “Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues.” This time around, the action’s set in the 1980s. So there are some pretty epic three-piece suits.
“It definitely brings you right back into the character when you put on those clothes,” says Carell. “Frankly, [my clothes] weren’t as nice as the ones I wore in the movie. I owned a handful of three-piece suits — but most were made of double-knit polyester, not the rich wool that you see in the film.”
After spending the ’80s “desperately trying to chase women, to very little success,” Carell joined Chicago’s Second City comedy troupe, where Stephen Colbert was his understudy for a time. The two later worked together as correspondents on “The Daily Show.”
Paul Rudd is Brian Fantana in ‘Anchorman 2.’Gemma LaManaIn 2005, Carell broke through with television’s “The Office” and “The 40-Year-Old Virgin,” which launched his movie career. This year alone, Carell starred in “The Incredible Burt Wonderstone,” “Despicable Me 2” and “The Way, Way Back.”
After several years in New York, he now splits time between Los Angeles and a small town in his home state of Massachusetts, with his wife Nancy Walls (also a former “Daily Show” correspondent) and kids Elisabeth, 12, and John, 9.
So much of what makes the “Anchorman” movies hilarious is the improvised dialogue, like Carell’s ridiculous “I love lamp” line from the first one.
“One of the great things about working with all these people is that we’re very like-minded. We sort of have a shorthand with each other, too,” the actor says of his co-stars. “When one person’s on a roll . . . everyone else knows how to support that and get behind it and be a good ensemble.”
Underneath the absurdity, “Anchorman 2” offers smart satire on the way society consumes news these days — lampooning, for example, how a car chase can become a national headline. Despite the changing times, Carell says his main source for news is AOL.
“Paul Rudd and I, I think, are the last two [AOL users],” he says, with a laugh. “But honestly, I get my headlines from AOL when I log in in the morning.”
Given his upcoming projects, he’ll be seeing a lot of his own name in the headlines. Next year, he stars in the adaptation of the kids’ book “Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day” and in the wrestling drama “Foxcatcher.” And Carell and Walls have written a comedy pilot, which he plans to direct, for TBS.
And maybe he’ll have to find room in his schedule for another “Anchorman”? “Oh gosh, let’s let this one get out there,” he says. “[But] if people love it and . . . Will wanted to make a third, I would pretty much follow [him] anywhere.”







