ReelzChannel.com talks to the red-hot Carell.

Steve Carell has made a quick transition from Daily Show regular and movie sidekick to in-demand leading man. He’s gone from the villainous Evan Baxter in the first movie, Bruce Almighty, to the lead hero character in the sequel, Evan Almighty. He’s taking a dramatic turn later this year in Dan in Real Life, voicing the Mayor of Who-Ville in Dr. Seuss’ Horton Hears a Who, he almost finished filming next summer’s hotly anticipated Get Smart remake and he’s returning for another season of the hit series The Office next season.

So what’s his secret to keeping up with his hectic schedule and newfound superstardom?

“Highly-caffeinated sports energy drinks is the answer,” jokes an always quick-witted Carell to a room full of press.

Carell’s latest is his biggest role to date, literally, as he takes on a task from God (Morgan Freeman) to follow in the steps of Noah and build an ark for an impending flood that no one knows about. Of course, since he’s the only one that’s actually seen God, everyone around him pretty much thinks he’s lost his mind.

In the first movie, Evan Baxter was the rival for fellow newscaster Bruce Nolan (Jim Carrey). This time around, Baxter has cleaned up his act and been elected to Congress. He’s moved his family to the nation’s capital and gotten ready to start his brand new life. That is, at least, until God got in the way.

Carell is always on his game talking to press, clearly enjoying his time in the limelight and doing his best to entertain as he promotes his latest movie.

All the same, Carell isn’t getting a big head, well aware how fickle the public opinion can often be. “I’m the type of person who’s always waiting for the other shoe to drop, so I’m not taking any of what’s happening now for granted. Essentially, I know that there’s a window of time where I can do these things and I’m just trying to take advantage of that now…”

When Carell first played Evan Baxter four years ago in Bruce Almighty, he never could have expected what the role would one day become. “The first movie I ever did was Bruce Almighty and Tom [Shadyac] took very good care of me. It was funny, [because] when I went to the premiere of that I had no idea I’d even be in the final cut… [And] there my scene was in tact. I had so much fun doing it… To work with Tom again on a one-on-one basis was sort of like a dream come true… When he came and pitched it to me, I thought he was going to pitch the idea of a sequel starring Jim and maybe featuring me as another sort of thorn in his side sort of character. So when he said, we’d like you to play the title character, ‘You had me at hello.’” (Laughs)

Some members of the press have questioned the religious motives of these movies, but Carell doesn’t agree. “I don’t see it as a biblical comedy… I don’t see it as a religious comedy in any way, shape or form. It’s a fable, it’s a tale about a guy who has to make a huge leap of faith. In terms of my own personal beliefs or convictions, that’s such a personal thing that I don’t want that to infuse my promotion of this movie. I also think that narrows it because I think the movie is for everybody. It is for any faith or non-faith. I think the message behind it is just that people could be a little kinder...”

Evan Almighty also afforded Carell the opportunity to interact with just about every species of the animal kingdom.

So what animals did he enjoy working with the most? "Giraffes and Elephants. Very soulful faces, kind and sweet, gentle.” And the least? "Reprehensible? The baboons were horrifying. There’s one scene where the baboons bring me lemonade and on one take, one of the baboons spilled the lemonade and I went off [script] and said, like, ‘Hey man, what are you doing?’ And the baboon thought I was getting aggressive with it and it bared its teeth and took an aggressive stance with me and scared the hell out of me. And after the take, the trainer came up to me and said, ‘You know, what, don’t do that, really don’t talk to the baboon. As a matter of fact, don’t look the baboon in the eye…’” (Laughs)

“In a closed space, a camel’s breath can change the atmosphere of the room… It’s so disgusting. It’s like they have eight stomachs, each one more rancid than the next and it just all comes out of their mouth…”

He also had to work with some species of the scary, slithery variety. “The snake that you see was CGI. The snake’s positive that they used, they couldn’t use, because they kept crawling down the back of my jacket. And these were Pythons. These were serious, big, nasty snakes but they couldn’t use them because you couldn’t see them. They were there, but they were just in my clothes…. [So] I did suffer for the art. You have to know that.”

Being a big fan of The Office, I had to ask Carell about the show, but I also felt it would be best to tie the question into the movie at hand. So I asked Carell how he thought Michael Scott would handle the same task from God as Evan?

Carell laughs.

“How would Michael Scott, like, become a modern day Noah? Wow, that’s interesting. I have no idea. He would probably get Creed to come in and build the ark. He wouldn’t want to do it himself. And Jan would convince him not to do it because she sort of rides rough shot over him anyway, so he probably wouldn’t end up doing it because, in his mind, Jan might be more powerful than God himself.”

Up later this year is Dan in Real Life, which should provide a more serious turn for Carell. “It involves a guy who is fairly recently widowed… He’s been rasing these three daughters on his own and they are reaching a point of their young adult lives that he doesn’t know what to do… He still has one, the baby little girl, that he can still manage.”

“One of the themes of the movie is that he doesn’t take his own advice and he lets things sort of get away from him in terms of his own kids… Did I take my own personal [advice]? I don’t know. I don’t even know if I have a take or a mental manual of how I’m raising kids. It’s really, I think with everybody, it’s just day-to-day and you try to deal with each situation as they come. And I think that’s essentially what that character does as well…”

Next Summer Carell will step into the role of Maxwell Smart opposite Anne Hathaway as Agent 99. “Get Smart [is] just something I loved growing up with as a kid. Getting the chance to bring that to movie screen… We’re almost done shooting that and I think that’s going to be fantastic…”

When asked whether he has a specific trajectory for his career in mind, Carell admits that he’s just been lucky so far. “I don’t really have a path set, [like], ‘Well I need to do this kind of movie and then that…’ I don’t look at it that way…”

“I am willing to take almost any job offered to me at this point…”