Jason Mewes and Kevin Smith on 28 Years as Best Friends and Professional Partners

Jason Mewes and Kevin Smith, promoting Clerks III: The Convenience Tour, reveal and reflect on what it’s like having played the characters Jay and Silent Bob for 28 years and counting, and being best friends and professional partners to the New York Times.

On a recent afternoon at his home in the Hollywood Hills, Kevin Smith recounted how he became friends with the actor Jason Mewes, who first played Jay to his Silent Bob in the director’s 1994 indie cult debut feature “Clerks.”

Smith, then 20, was working at the local Quick Stop in Leonardo, N.J., made famous in “Clerks.” One day, a couple of Smith’s friends were telling him about this hilarious kid, Jason Mewes, who was 16, and all the funny things that would routinely spew out of his mouth. “I was like, ‘Jay Mewes, the dirty boy from in town?’” Smith recalled.

Mewes, who was sitting next to Smith as he related this tale, laughed. One morning, Mewes showed up at Smith’s home unannounced. So what are we going to do today? he asked. Smith tried to shoo him away. But the two became fast friends, bonding over their love of music and superhero comic books.

Over the past three decades, Smith and Mewes have parlayed their friendship into one of Hollywood’s oddest and most unlikely acting partnerships, both onscreen and off. Performing as Jay and Silent Bob, Mewes is the loquacious and foul-mouthed dope dealer, always ready with an imaginatively crude insult; Smith is, for all practical purposes, mute.

“In the movies, Jay never shuts up, and Silent Bob never says a [expletive] word,” Smith said. “In real life, it’s vice versa. I do all the talking, and Jason is like, ‘Yeah, what he said.’”

“People are delighted to find out that we’re still friends,” Smith said. “That amuses us to no end, because it’s like, all we ever do is work together.”