Jennifer Lawrence will do anything for a laugh.
In her raunchy R-rated comedy “No Hard Feelings” (in theaters Friday), the Oscar winner kicks through a door, gets punched in the throat and fights off beach thieves in the nude.
“It was a blast,” says Lawrence, who’s also tasked with climbing a flight of stairs in rollerblades. “If you see a shot of me rollerblading up a hill, that means I rollerbladed up that hill like, 12 times. That was the most exercise I’ve had in a long time.”
Best known for dramatic roles in “Winter’s Bone” and “The Hunger Games” franchise, Lawrence had been offered broad comedies before this, but says they were never funny enough. That changed when she read “No Hard Feelings,” in which she plays a cash-strapped Uber driver named Maddie whose car gets impounded.
At risk of losing her late mom’s house, Maddie answers a Craigslist ad placed by a wealthy couple seeking someone to “date” their awkward 19-year-old son, Percy (Andrew Barth Feldman), before he goes to college. In exchange, they’d give her a car. The film is loosely based on a real-life Craigslist post discovered by one of the film’s producers.
“I read it and was like, ‘Who are the parents that put this out, and who’s the woman who answers this?’ “ says director Gene Stupnitsky, Lawrence’s longtime friend, who’d been searching for a comedy they could make together. “Anyone who’s ever seen an interview with her knows how funny she is. She’s really put through the paces in this movie, but … everything she does is 100%.”
Natalie Morales (“Parks and Recreation”), who plays Maddie’s bartender friend Sara, echoes Stupnitsky’s praise: “I’ve always wanted to work with Jen. She’s so talented.”
USA TODAY spoke to Lawrence, 32, and Morales, 38, about the movie, their strangest Craigslist stories and more:
Question: People couldn’t stop talking about this movie when the first trailer arrived in March. Were you at all surprised by the excitement?
Jennifer Lawrence: I wasn’t really surprised people thought it was funny. I read the script and thought it was the funniest thing I’d ever seen. There’s always nerves, of course, before you release anything. Sometimes you release things and everyone’s like, “We hate this! We hate you! Die! Argh!” (Laughs.) So there’s always that possibility.
It seems like the sort of “hard R” comedy that Hollywood doesn’t really make anymore. Did it feel that way to you, too?
Natalie Morales: In a lot of ways, yeah. Also, the types of comedies that are made like this are always reserved for male leads. So that was very special about it to me.
Lawrence: Yeah, and I mean, you’re aware that you’re making something that’s so offensive and so wrong. And you have it in your mind like, “God, I haven’t seen a movie like this in a long time,” but more, “Oh, no. Is this going to be OK?”
How did the two of you meet?
Morales: We were on a beach, it was freezing cold, and we had to pretend it was summer. It was so rainy, and they were like, “Pretend you’re really hot!” I had a giant, fake pregnant belly in the movie, so it was fun to get to meet people and have everyone be really nice to me when I was wearing that.
Lawrence: And then in rehearsals, they’re like, “Boo, get out of the way! We’re not going to offer you a chair!”
How would you describe your high-school selves?
Morales: I was like the “anti-theater kid,” in that I didn’t know any musicals and still tried to fit into that group. But then I was president of the school senior year, so I promised pizza parties and delivered on those. I don’t know if I had any superlatives in the yearbook, though.
Lawrence: I got “most talkative” two years in a row, but that was middle school. By high school, I was an auditioning teenager without any friends, so I was probably more like Percy at that point.
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Did you have any bad jobs before you became full-time actors?
Lawrence: I just babysat, and then I would give kids pony rides (on her family’s horse farm in Kentucky). And I’d charge them an arm and a leg!
Morales: It wasn’t the “worst” job – as in, the person who gave me the job was really nice – but I sold mattresses on Craigslist when I moved to LA.
Lawrence: Oh, my God, I can’t believe you’re still alive.
Morales: I can’t either. It was not a scam, but I feel like they were refurbished mattresses, which is not a mattress anyone wants. You don’t want a mattress that came from another mattress.
Do you have any weird Craigslist stories, Jennifer?
Lawrence: I have a great Craigslist story. Gene Stupnitsky’s writing partner, Lee Eisenberg, bought a toilet from my mom.
Morales: Really? Why a toilet?
Lawrence: I don’t know! It wasn’t me, thank God! She sold a toilet on Craigslist and somehow Lee Eisenberg was like, “You know this is Jennifer Lawrence’s toilet.” (Laughs.)
Morales: That’s so funny. I’ve known Lee for so long and did not know that.
Lawrence: You probably used the toilet!
(Editor’s note: Eisenberg has since denied buying the fixture, writing on Instagram, “I’ve never bought Jennifer Lawrence’s old toilets, but maybe this will open the door.”)
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