Adding to its ever-expanding list of original films, Netflix has just released the highly-anticipated movie Don’t Look Up which has no shortage of big name stars, from Leonardo DiCaprio and Jonah Hill to Jennifer Lawrence and Meryl Streep.
As for the plot, it’s a little less fantastical and a little little closer to home, following the journey of a young astronomer (Jennifer Lawrence) who discovers that an asteroid is headed for planet earth. She then teams up with fellow astronomer (Leonardo DiCaprio) to warn the world of the impending danger, but they have great difficulty convincing people to take it seriously. While in theory, it sounds like a dystopian dream, it’s oddly unsettling in its realistic portrayal of the fragility of human existence. Granted, it’s still wildly absurd a great way to kill some time in the Christmas/New Year limbo period we’re currently living in. If anything, you’ll get a few hours of entertainment and Ariana Grande’s and Kid Cudi’s new song, ‘Just Look Up’ stuck in your head for hours.
While it’s undoubtedly enjoyable for us to watch, Jennifer Lawrence has revealed that it wasn’t always enjoyable to film, and one scene in particular still has her rattled.
During her virtual press tour for the film attended by Decider, Lawrence opened up about one scene in particular which she found especially painful to film — and it happens within the first few minutes.
The opening scene sees Lawrence’s character sitting at her desk, eating toast and rapping a few lines of Wu-Tang Clan’s song, “Ain’t Nuthing ta F’ Wit.”
“Because something happened with COVID, that ended up being my very first scene [to shoot],” the actress recalled.
It was horrifying, because I’m in this huge hanger, and it’s so quiet. And I don’t know anybody, and I had to rap Wu-Tang Clan. It was just horrendous. And then what’s [used] in the movie is like, five seconds. I really wish I had known that.”
That day on set was, as Lawrence put it, “the worst day of my life.”
While we might have only seen five seconds of her epic performance, Lawrence says that memorising the song took her “a few weeks,” but of course she learned the rap in its entirety, because she’s nothing if not a professional.
After the scene had been shot, director Adam McKay chimed in to tell her what a great job she’d done, to which she replied “Hey, I knew my assignment. I did know every word, I still do.”
Lawrence, who is currently expecting her first child, had recently taken a break from acting due to exhaustion.
Speaking to Vanity Fair, the actress revealed that she had been trying so hard to please everyone, that she felt it had taken a toll on her performance.
“I was not pumping out the quality that I should have,” she told the publication. “I just think everybody had gotten sick of me. I’d gotten sick of me. I felt like I reached a point where people were not pleased just by my existence. So that kind of shook me out of thinking that work or your career can bring any kind of peace to your soul.”
Her stint in Netflix’s film marks her return to the big screen, and all we can say is, we’re glad she’s back.
Don’t Look Up is available to stream on Netflix now.