Scarlett’s mind control
‘Anything was possible’ for Scarlett’s ever-brainier character in ‘Lucy’
In the action thriller “Lucy” (opening Friday), Scarlett Johansson plays the title character, an unremarkable young woman studying in Taiwan whose life is changed forever after she is kidnapped by a drug-smuggling ring.
Lucy is forced to be a “mule,” with a packet of a dangerous substance surgically inserted into her belly. When the chemical leaks into Lucy’s system, it unleashes her brain capacity to unimaginable levels — from the 10 percent utilized by normal humans to an ever-increasing percentage, veering dangerously close to 100 percent.
Johansson, who is expecting a child, phoned to talk about the film.
Q. Not seeing you but just hearing your voice is like having a personal version of “Her” [in which Johansson was the voice of an operating system with whom
Joaquin Phoenix fell in love.]
A. I’m acutely aware that when I talk on the phone now, that’s what most people think. I now often feel like a character in my own life! [Laughs]
Q. You’ve played action roles before, but was “Lucy” different?
A. When I first met with Luc
[Besson, the film’s writer and director], there was no real script to read. English for Luc is a second language, so there weren’t a lot of huge visual descriptions. It was the core of the work he was show- ing me, which was pretty basic and raw. Accompanying that was this massive mood book and different visual images — sort of like a flip-book into the way his brain works! That’s the vocabulary he uses, a very visual one.
I knew going in that my character was a pretty unremarkable person and not that fascinating. What’s extraordinary is this journey she goes on that is one of a constant state of transition, and the challenge of playing that — being in that state — was what kind of drew me into this project.
Q. It looked like there’s a lot of physicality in this film for you. True?
A. The fight scenes I’m involved in are about my character, who is not a professionally trained fighter or athlete. So, I’m kind of someone being thrown around and abused by others. When you first see her, she has no skill set along those lines — everything is primal in the way she reacts and is totally instinctual. She’s not a particularly graceful character. There’s a surge in her, and I wanted that to be there all the time. Anything was possible. She’s almost like that lioness that’s about to pounce.
Q. There is an irony, I would think, that Lucy has this CPH4 chemical growing inside her — something that naturally does happen to pregnant women — and now you have that happening to you as well.
A. Who knows how these things happen? I was going, “What is this CPH4?” This hormonal thing is so hard for me to get my head around! It is funny, indeed, how in the film there’s this life force that I’m ingesting — and then it happens to me naturally in real life.