Almost ten years after the release of the film Her, Scarlett Johansson decided to indulge in a sex scene shot with Joaquin Phoenix during which the actress had to fake an orgasm. The least we can say is that it left him with very bad memories.
“It was one of the toughest roles of my career.” During a long interview given for the Armchair Expert podcast, Scarlett Johansson returned in detail to her worst filming anecdotes. One of them focused during the filming of the film Her, released in theaters in 2013 and where the actress held the leading role with Joaquin Phoenix. A decade later, Scarlett Johansson opened up on a ‘very weird and disgusting’ moment that she had to shoot during a sex scene with the American actor: the simulation of an orgasm.
During the film Her, Scarlett Johansson was to embody the computer program named Samantha, installed by a writer in depression (Joaquin Phoenix) on his personal computer. Designed to adapt and evolve on its own according to its interactions, this artificial intelligence and its owner end up falling in love as the story progresses. During a scene in the film, these two very special lovers had to shoot a sex scene. A complicated moment to believe the actress.
Scarlett Johansson: ‘It was disgusting, I didn’t like it at all’
“We tried to do a first take, and Joaquin Phoenix totally lost it. He had to leave the studio to take a long break”Scarlett Johansson began, before continuing: “Then it was me who found it very complicated. You know, it’s very hard to hear the sound of her voice when faking an orgasm. It was disgusting, so weird…”. On top of that, the American star didn’t like the way the filming went at all.
Scarlett Johansson thus pointed the finger “a very exhaustive work with scenes that have sometimes been shot more than forty times”. Especially since to soak up his role, which is therefore only a voice of artificial intelligence, the actress was forced to be “locked in a little box, like a broom cupboard”. In short: the filming of the film Her was “one of the toughest jobs” of Scarlett Johansson’s career. And she did not hide it.
As the interview given to the podcast Armchair Expert, Scarlett Johansson also returned to the fact that she has always been “hypersexualized” since the start of her career. Even though she was just a teenager. “I was typecast in such a way that I felt like I was never getting roles for my acting skill alone. Now that I’m almost 40, it’s betterbut it was still very complicated not very long ago”. Yes, Scarlett Johansson really confided in an open heart.