Jennifer Lawrence got high to play weed-smoking 'Don't Look Up' character: 'Everybody was f****** with me'
Jennifer Lawrence went method while filming her highly anticipated new movie Don’t Look Up — at least when it came to her character’s fondness for weed.
The Oscar-winning actress admitted she got high on the Boston set of the Adam McKay-directed social satire while playing a PhD candidate who calms her nerves with cannabis after discovering a planet-killing comet hurtling towards Earth.
It was McKay who first referenced her, uh, commitment to the role during a post-screening Q&A in Los Angeles Thursday night in which they were joined by co-stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Meryl Streep.
“I know what you’re going to say, and I wasn’t pregnant [at the time],” said Lawrence, who announced in September she’s expecting her first child with husband Cooke Maroney.
“You were not pregnant,” agreed McKay before asking her permission to spill the beans: “Can I say this?”
“I think so, just nobody tell my mother-in-law,” Lawrence cracked to a Westwood theater full of awards voters and press.
McKay explained that the 31-year-old Hunger Games alum asked for permission to partake before filming a scene opposite Streep in which she had no scripted lines of dialogue.
“Because my character was getting high in the movie,” Lawrence interjected.
“So Jen was like, ‘Are you gonna throw me some improv?,’ which we always do,” recalled McKay, the veteran comedy director (Anchorman, Step Brothers) who has turned to Oscar-contenting social satires (The Big Short, Vice) in recent years. “And I was like, ‘No, you can get high.’”
McKay, then, admitted he had to resist hazing his blazing star.
“I kept turning to my script supervisor, Cate Hardman, and was like, ‘I just want to say, “Hey Jen. I think I have a monologue idea for you.”’ And I would look at Jen and was like, ‘I can’t do it. It would be too mean.’ So I left you alone."
“I was a real target,” responded Lawrence, who noted earlier in the Q&A that Jonah Hill teased her throughout production with claims that their veteran co-star, Oscar-winning Bridge of Spies actor Mark Rylance, was upset with her. “Everyone was f****** with me… I guess because I was high. Easy to f*** with.”
The uproarious film, which has shades of Dr. Strangelove and Idiocracy as DiCaprio and Lawrence’s astronomers desperately try to warn apathetic, celebrity-obsessed Americans about impending doom, is the biggest comedy the Silver Lining’s Playbook actress has done to date.
She was especially excited to work with McKay, saying she grew up quoting Anchorman and went to see Step Brothers “only” four times while it was in theaters. Lawrence even admitted to showing up for a meeting with the filmmaker when she was 18 with a binder of materials to impress him.
Lawrence has long been candid about her casual weed usage, admitting she took a bong hit before one Oscars ceremony and got into a fight with a woman over a Port-a-Potty after smoking at Ellen DeGeneres’s birthday party.
And then of course there was all that time spent with Woody Harrelson on the set of The Hunger Games.
Don’t Look Up opens in theaters Dec. 10 and on Netflix Dec. 24.
Watch the trailer:
