Scarlett has a dead good time
SCARLETT Johansson admits that every single day, as she filmed the hilariously black comedy Rough Night, she had to try to stop herself from laughing. She didn’t always succeed.
Scarlett plays “Jess” who reunites with four college friends – “Pippa” (Kate McKinnon), “Alice” (Jillian Bell), “Frankie” (Ilana Glazer) and “Blair” (Zoë Kravitz) – for her bachelorette party in Miami. When things get wild, they end up with a dead male stripper on their hands.
“Oh my God, we were laughing non-stop!” she says. “Absolutely, non-stop. Those girls are so good at what they do. Kate, Ilana and Jillian have been making their parents laugh since they were three years old, so they’re just so sharp and they inspire one another in an incredible way.
“I remember working with Jillian Bell and I kept going, ‘you bastard! I can’t keep a straight face’. The things that were coming out of her mouth were just outrageous.”
“Jess” and her old college friends head for Miami to celebrate her forthcoming wedding to “Peter”, a food writer. She’s an aspiring politician and the weekend away is an unwelcome distraction as an important election looms on the horizon.
“My character is a very practical, very pragmatic person,” she explains. “They are at the crossroads that a lot of young couples find themselves at when they are in their early thirties and getting married. Career is kind of taking a bit of priority over the relationship in some ways. They are supporting one another and that’s where we find them.
“She’s totally focused on this very definitive election and her own life and her political career and she believes strongly that she is the right candidate and she is trying to do better for her community.
“She goes on this detour for her bachelorette party and goes there thinking ‘oh, this will be a boozy weekend in the middle of this election cycle, I don’t really have time for this right now’. So it’s inconvenient.”
But once in Miami, “Jess” immediately reconnects with her friends and they let their hair down in style. They drink, they dance and later, back at their rented home, one of the girls decides to hire a male stripper, “Jay” (Ryan Cooper) to keep the party going.
“Yes, it gets really crazy! A series of events occur and the stripper dies in an accident. For one reason or another each character justifies the disposal of this body,” she laughs. “And hilarity ensues.
“My character, is running for state senate and I kind of imagine that ‘Jess’ has always been very politically vocal, politically active, she has this strong moral compass, which I think is what makes the circumstances of the film so hilarious.
“For various reasons, these characters, who are very righteous in their own way, are suddenly faced with these totally outrageous, extraordinary circumstances and in a way, it’s like good improv where you just kind of say ‘yes’ to everything and don’t really ask questions and that’s the journey they go on. And we go off down this totally unexpected path with all of them.”
For Ryan Cooper, who plays the stripper, it means that for much of the film he has to play dead and is carried around by the girls as they try to work out how to dispose of the body.
“Ryan was such a sport about it and, you know, he has to do a lot of acting. It’s crazy when you see the film, how realistic he is. He’s really a presence – the body is a character in this movie,” she laughs. “In some ways it’s kind of like the sixth member of this group.
“And you know, he was great. I don’t know how he kept it together.
“He was really good with his body but I don’t know how he did it. We were all amazed. His faces were so good – like his cadaver face was hysterical and it’s hilarious and it’s so wrong.”
Rough Night is R rated and firmly aimed at a grown-up audience. “It’s a delicate balance with R rated comedy. But the movie is not vulgar the way that some R rated comedies are. The situation is so extraordinary and ridiculous it allowed for a lot of very dry and funny stuff.” – Entertainment Reporter ● Rough Night is scheduled for release on June 15.