In her new movie Trainwreck, Amy Schumer plays a magazine writer who’s no stranger to a messy one-night stand. Still, even the commitment-averse Amy is thrown for a loop late into the film, when she has one aborted s*x romp that’s so out-there and incredibly misjudged that it convinces her to finally get her personal life in order. How did that bonkers s*x scene come together? We asked Schumer, but first, here’s a little bit of SPOILER-y scene-setting.
The encounter in question comes after Schumer’s character has
broken things off with Aaron (Bill Hader), the sweet sports doctor she was
dating. At a personal low point, loaded with alcohol and possessed with a
fuck-it attitude, Amy decides to go home with her magazine’s weird intern
Donald (Ezra Miller), though she’s unprepared for just how kinky and wiggly
he turns out to be: Donald climbs all over Amy in bed, orders her to
manhandle his pierced “tits,” gets in a few surprise slaps, and treats every
kiss like he’s a fourth-grader making out with his own reflection. And then,
just as Amy is looking frantically for an exit, the real bomb gets dropped.
Donald’s mom bursts in on the two of them hooking up and shrieks, “He’s
16!”
When I asked Schumer about the queasy-crazy s*x scene a few
weeks ago, she couldn’t help but laugh. “I’ve never seen two people have
less chemistry,” she said. “I love that, though! The horrible dissonance
that it causes just when you see the two of us going in to kiss, you’re just
like, ‘Nooooo!’”
How did she and director Judd Apatow get Miller
in the mood? “We actually had a rehearsal before, because he was like, ‘I
don’t really understand where this guy’s coming from,’” Schumer explained.
“And I said, ‘This guy would want to be on top. Like, he would want to ride
me.’ And Ezra was like, ‘I’ve got it.’” From that moment on, the two of them
were off to the races: “We were rehearsing and he was slapping me, just
being the girl, kind of. Being a s*xy kind of hip-hop wife. It was just
perfect.”
Miller credits his time in the makeup truck for getting him
even more into character. “I’d say getting my nipples faux-pierced was
inspiration enough,” Miller told me. “And we had to shave my chest! Oh, I
was getting titillated all day long. And then you’ve just got s*xy people
around like Judd Apatow, strutting his stuff, and I’m getting hot and
bothered. And he’s saying things like, ‘Hold it, hold it, and now …
release.’ That’s pretty much how it went down all day.”
If you wanted even more awkward moments between Schumer and
Miller, just wait for the Blu-ray: ‘We had a whole other part that we shot
with these s*x toys,” Schumer recalled, “and we didn’t even need it.” That
raises the question, then: Though Schumer (who also wrote Trainwreck) seems
to have an enviable embarrassment threshold, does she ever find herself
scripting moments that are so outrageous that she has second thoughts once
she’s on set performing them? “It’s the opposite, actually,” she said. “The
writer in me is like, ‘Do I really want to write myself popping out of a
cake? Then I’ll have to be crouched in a cake all day.’ And then when I’m
there on set I’m like, ‘More cake! And wouldn’t it be funny if I dumped it
all over my face?’ In the moment, I’m such a clown ready to get the biggest
reaction possible.”
