Joaquin Phoenix reportedly struggled to record the audio for their sexual scenes in Spike Jonze’s 2013 film Her, according to Scarlett Johansson.
Johansson, a 37-year-old Academy Award contender, stated during her participation on the 500th episode of Dax Shepard’s Armchair Expert podcast on Monday that scenes had to be redone because her costar had already finished filming the entire movie before she took over Samantha Morton’s voice role.
She claimed that the artificial intelligence was capturing sex scenes. One of the most difficult jobs I’ve ever had was Samantha, who falls in love with Phoenix’s Theodore Twombly. Phoenix, then 47, found recording sessions with director Spike Jonze, 52, to be unpleasant.
You definitely don’t want to hear what you sound like having a fake orgasm, Johansson said.
She recalled, “I remember we came in that day. “I’ve turned into that actor who says, “Let’s get nasty.” I have to because I’ll be terrified if I don’t. As we attempt to complete one take with Joaquin, he seems to be losing it. He muttered, “I can’t do it.””
“He seemed to be enraged. He had previously [filmed the scene], he had performed it in person, and now when he was with me in this strange theater and I was in this box, he was just kind of staring at me while the lights were dim and Spike was present. It was so peculiar “Johansson kept talking.
“I was good. Joaquin was not; in fact, he was so furious, “Added she. “I’m in this box by myself and I’m thinking, “I can’t do it alone,” since he left the studio. I need him to return. He took a break because he needed one, then returned.”
Despite the challenging recording sessions, Johansson, Jonze, and Phoenix’s labor of love paid off: Her earned an Academy Award for Best Screenplay at the 86th Academy Awards and received four additional nominations, grossing $48 million worldwide against a $23 million budget.
Johansson remarked, “I haven’t viewed that movie in a long time, but I imagine if I did, I would be very ashamed. It’s difficult.
During her Armchair Expert appearance, Johansson, Shepard, and co-host Monica Padman also had an open discussion regarding Johansson’s early acting days.
The Black Widow actress acknowledged during the program that she had grown up around grownups a lot and that she had “certainly been in numerous settings that were not age-appropriate,” which she attributed to her upbringing and job in Manhattan.
Johansson said to the two, “Fortunately, my mom was extremely good about protecting me from a lot of those stuff, but she can’t do that for everything.”
Johansson claimed that despite the fact that sex was “never a significant part of my genuine personality,” she was “hyper-sexualized” as a young actress because of this apparent maturity.
Because everyone assumed I was older and had been acting for a while, Johansson explained, “I kind of got pigeonholed into this odd hyper-sexualized thing.” “That’s the kind of career you have, it was said. These are the roles you’ve taken on, and I thought, “I guess this is it.””
Shepard and Johansson also agreed that women in Hollywood have an early expiration date for this “hyper-sexualized” category.
The Marriage Story actress remembered, “The runway is not lengthy on that and it was scary at that time. “And I put a lot of that down to people thinking I was much, much older than I was,” she continued.