Jennifer Lawrence has opened up about a scene in her new film No Hard Feelings, where she gets in a naked fight. Because of course she does.
The 32-year-old actor is back on our screens as Maddie, in a rom-com which sees a woman hired by a teenager’s parents to date their awkward son. As the official synopsis explains, “Maddie thinks she’s found the answer to her financial troubles when she discovers an intriguing job listing: wealthy helicopter parents looking for someone to ‘date’ their introverted 19-year-old son, Percy, and bring him out of his shell before he leaves for college.
“But awkward Percy proves to be more of a challenge than she expected, and time is running out. She has one summer to make him a man or lose it all.”
Getty Images
One particular scene sees Maddie and Percy go skinny dipping, but their clothes are stolen while they’re in the water, so Maddie decides to start a fight in a bid to get them back. Naked.
Opening up about the scene to Variety, J Law insisted she was all good with it from the get-go. “Everyone in my life and my team is doing the right thing and going, ‘Are you sure? Are you sure? Are you sure?'” she said. “I didn’t even have a second thought. It was hilarious to me.”
Andrew Barth Feldman, who plays Percy, added: “Every situation that these characters end up in, you’re laughing your butt off. We became so close instantly that nothing ever felt weird or unsafe. It was entirely professional. I felt it was an exclusively sterile and professional environment.”
Getty Images
No Hard Feelings has received a mixed reaction, with some questioning whether the premise of an older woman dating a teenager feels, at best, inappropriate and, at worst, wildly problematic, with accusations that the leads’ 13-year age gap glorifies grooming.
However, writer-director Gene Stupnitsky insisted to The Hollywood Reporter that it’s instead a “cautionary tale” about parenting: “If you are a helicopter parent who puts your child in such a bubble, they do not know how to exist outside of that bubble, you are going to make the exact opposite and insane choice, which is what they are doing here.
Stupnitsky added that it was a “very satirical look at what can happen” when you don’t give your children freedom to discover life for themselves.
