Scarlett Johansson has revealed that Joaquin Phoenix was so uncomfortable when she was recording her fake orgasms on the set of Her that he had to flee the studio.
Her, which came out in 2014, follows Theodore Twombly (Phoenix), a man who develops a relationship with Samantha (Johansson), an artificially intelligent virtual assistant personified through a female voice.
During a recent appearance on Dax Shepard’s Armchair Expert podcast, Johansson, 37, spoke about the scene from the film where her character was required to record herself having an orgasm.
Johansson told Shepard that Phoenix was so uncomfortable when she was recording it that he had to leave the film set.
“We tried to get through one take, and he was, like, losing it,” Johansson said.
“I was fine. Joaquin was not – he was so upset about it. He left the studio, and now I’m in this box by myself, and I’m like, ‘I can’t do it alone. I need him to come back.’ He needed a break; he took a break, and he came back in.”
“You don’t want to hear your voice ever. You definitely don’t want to hear what you sound like having an orgasm,” she added. “Ew. It’s so gross. It was so bizarre.”
During the podcast, Johansson also opened up about being “hypersexualised” in the earlier years of her career.
The Marvel star reflected on her experience of being “objectified” in Hollywood.
“I kind of became objectified and pigeonholed in this way where I felt like I wasn’t getting offers for work for things that I wanted to do,” she said.
“But I remember thinking to myself, I was like, ‘I think people think I’m, like, 40 years old.’ It somehow stopped being something that was desirable and something that I was fighting against.”
Johansson went on to note that, while #MeToo has seen improvement in working conditions for young women actors, there is still a lot of work to be done.
She said: “I’ve come to this realisation that it’s important to understand progress and change when it’s really meaningful – it takes two steps forward and two steps back, and then it gets better and then it gets worse.
