Smulders, Scott’s bring experiences with parenthood to ‘Delivery Man’

TORONTO – In “Delivery Man,” Vince Vaughan plays a speed-talking adult adolescent who freaks out when his girlfriend informs him she’s pregnant — before he finds out that he’s already fathered 533 kids through his prodigious sperm-donating.

Canadian actress Cobie Smulders portrays that long-suffering girlfriend, but the real-life mother says she actually identified with the pre-parental anxiety experienced by his character.

“I think as a pregnant woman, it’s a hard, sort of emotional time and you don’t know — there’s a lot that goes on,” said the statuesque Vancouver native, who’s married to “Saturday Night Live” star Taran Killam.

“It’s a generalization, when women decide that they want to have kids that they’re like, ‘Come on, let’s have kids!’ And the guy has to grow up quickly and face this responsibility. I didn’t find that in my personal life. My husband could not have been more excited that we were having a baby and I was a bit more fearful about it.”

In the film, Vaughan’s David Wozniak gradually rises to the parental occasion as he surreptitiously tries to get to know his vast brood, 142 of whom are suing for the right to unearth their birth father’s identity after a sperm bank admitted to over-using his apparently effective samples.

With lovable “Parks and Recreation” oaf Chris Pratt offering unsolicited advice as his best friend/overwhelmed lawyer, Wozniak starts to forge a real connection with some of his offspring — leaving the typically glib Vaughan portraying an unusually earnest, chastened character.

Canadian writer-director Ken Scott adapted the film from his own French-language hit “Starbuck.” He said that in the very first meeting he had with Dreamworks executives — including Steven Spielberg — they had already dialled in on Vaughan as their dream lead.

Given that Vaughan is onscreen in almost every scene of the film, Scott said the 43-year-old’s charisma was essential. Smulders, meanwhile, points out that it’s not too drastic a departure for the “Wedding Crashers” star.

“I think that Vince usually has played a lot of men who are trying to figure it out,” said the “Avengers” and “How I Met Your Mother” actress, clad in a form-fitting blue dress.

“He plays the frustration, the trying-to-figure-it-out guy so well.”

Scott has high praise for Smulders’ performance, and she jokes that she was hired for the film due to her Canadian heritage, laughing: “I have this red phone with a Maple Leaf and Hollywood North just comes calling.” (In fact, Smulders is in the process of trying to attain her U.S. Green Card, and has been surprised by the extensive bureaucracy involved given that she’s married to an American).

Meanwhile, Scott says that Pratt brought an uncommon level of commitment to his role as Brett, a divorced bumbler whose four kids aren’t interested in listening to a word he says.

It’s a scene-stealing turn from the 34-year-old, who surprised his director with a request early on.

“I remember sitting down with him at breakfast to talk about the character and he asked me if I felt that he should put on some weight, if he should put on 40 pounds. I said, ‘Well, can you put on 40 pounds?’ He said, ‘Yeah, my (wife’s) pregnant, so I’ll just join in on the binge eating,’” said Scott of Pratt, who’s married to actress Anna Faris.

“He actually gained 60 pounds. He came to set huge. He just committed to the character … and he was very funny. He brought a lot of heart to Brett.”

Scott says he didn’t have to change much in adapting “Starbuck,” noting that the biggest change was shifting the action to New York. The film was shot in Brooklyn, and Scott points out that the location change made sense for practical purposes too — where else could it be remotely believable that Wozniak could track down so many of his unintentional children?

And like Smulders, Scott was inspired by his own parenthood in penning the script.

“It’s about all the different moments that you can experience if you’re a father today,” said Scott, who has three kids. “I think it would have been a very different movie if we’d made this movie 15 years ago. I think today fathers want to be there. There’s something very real and authentic about that.

“Nowadays, I’m surrounded with dads that actually want to be there. It’s not like 15 years ago or 20 years ago when we’d hear so many stories about dads not being there. I guess in the future, when movies are going to be made about these kids coming out, they’re going to be mostly about dads being TOO present. It’ll be the other way around.”