Scarlett Johansson admits that every single day, as she filmed the hilariously black comedy Rough Night, she had to try to stop herself from laughing. She didn’t always succeed. Scarlett plays Jess, who reunites with four college friends—Pippa (Kate McKinnon), Alice (Jillian Bell), Frankie (Ilana Glazer) and Blair (Zoë Kravitz)—for her bachelorette party in Miami.
When things get wild, they end up with a dead (male) stripper on their hands. “Oh my God, we were laughing nonstop!” she says.
“Absolutely, nonstop. Those girls are so good at what they do. Kate, Ilana and Jillian have been making their parents laugh since they were 3 years old, so they are just so sharp and they inspire one another in an incredible way.
“And I kind of bring my own element to it. I love being the straight man for all this stuff and it’s just great, it’s so funny. “I remember working with Jillian Bell and I kept going, ‘You bastard! I can’t keep a straight face.’ The things that were coming out of her mouth were just outrageous. And it was like that so many times on set. I was laughing so much because these girls are just hilarious.”
Rough Night is cowritten by Paul W. Downs, who plays Jess’s intended, Peter and Lucia Aniello, who directs. Both are key members of the creative team behind the critically acclaimed TV show Broad City.
When she first picked up the script for Rough Night, Scarlett knew that it was special. “It’s not all the time that you read a script that’s perfect and you go, ‘Oh yes, this is it.’ Like ‘I can see it and I’m in.’ That’s really rare,” she says. “Normally, there are a lot of other elements. You get the script and you can see the shape of it but there are a lot of other pieces that kind of color in the whole picture.
“But in this case, with Rough Night, honestly, the script was so good and it was so funny, so sharp, it was lean, it was just right there. I rarely get comedy sent in my direction and when I do, it’s never something that’s so sharp like this.”
She read the script during a week-long vacation just before she was due to start filming Ghost in the Shell. “My daughter was pretty young at the time and I was about to start something and I had one week to try and take it easy before I headed into it.’
“I wasn’t looking to get anything but my agent called me and he said, ‘The guys that do Broad City wrote this script.’ And as soon as he said Broad City, I was excited about it and I wanted to read it because I think Broad City is so great.
“I remember reading it on the couch and literally laughing out loud. I thought it was so funny. It was thrilling and it’s crazy to get stuff like that, and it makes you feel like ‘There is original content out there.’ It’s inspiring. It had all those things that I love about smart comedy. I read it and I said, ‘I just need to meet these people who wrote this script.’ I met with Paul [W. Downs] and Lucia [Aniello] and they were so wonderful—collaborative, funny, just a really exciting young artistic team.
“Right at that meeting I said, ‘We’re going to be making this, right?’ And they were like ‘Yeah, I guess we are.’ It just happened in a very organic way.” Jess and her old college friends head for Miami to celebrate her forthcoming wedding to Peter, a food writer. She’s an aspiring politician and the weekend away is an unwelcome distraction as an important election looms on the horizon.
“My character is a very practical, very pragmatic person,” Scarlett explains. “She is engaged to be married to Paul’s character [Peter], who is a food writer for The Washington Post, and we’re a millennial couple living in D.C.
“They’re at the crossroads that a lot of young couples find themselves at when they are in their early 30s and getting married. Career is kind of taking a bit of priority over the relationship in some ways. They are supporting one another, and that’s where we find them.
“She’s totally focused on this very definitive election and her own life and her political career, and she believes strongly that she is the right candidate and she is trying to do better for her community.
“She goes on this detour for her bachelorette party and goes there thinking, ‘Oh, this will be a boozy weekend in the middle of this election cycle, I don’t really have time for this right now.’ So, it’s inconvenient.”
But once in Miami, Jess immediately reconnects with her friends and they let their hair down in style. They drink, they dance and later, back at their rented home, one of the girls decides to hire a male stripper, Jay (Ryan Cooper), to keep the party going.
“Yes, it gets really crazy! A series of events occur and the stripper dies, the accidental death of a stripper. For one reason or another, each character justifies the disposal of this body,” she laughs. “And hilarity ensues.
“Jess is running for state senate and I kind of imagine that my character has always been very politically vocal, politically active, she has this strong moral compass, which I think is what makes the circumstances of the film so hilarious.
“For various reasons, these characters, who are very righteous in their own way, are suddenly faced with these totally outrageous, extraordinary circumstances and, in a way, it’s like good improv [improvisation] where you just kind of say ‘yes’ to everything and don’t really ask questions and that’s the journey they go on. And we go off down this totally unexpected path with all of them.”
For Ryan Cooper, who plays the stripper, it meant that for much of the film he has to play dead and is carried around by the girls as they try to work out how to dispose of the body.
“Ryan was such a sport about it and you know he has to do a lot of acting. It’s crazy when you see the film how realistic he is. He’s really a presence—the body is a character in this movie,” she laughs. “In some ways it’s kind of like the sixth member of this group.
“And you know, he was great. I don’t know how he kept it together because it was so hilarious all of the time. He was really good with his body but I don’t know how he did it. We were all amazed. His faces were so good—like his cadaver face was hysterical and it’s hilarious and it’s so wrong.”
Rough Night is R rated and firmly aimed at a grown-up audience. “It’s a delicate balance with R-rated comedy. But the movie is not vulgar the way that some R-rated comedies are.
The situation is so extraordinary and ridiculous that it allowed for a lot of very dry and funny stuff.” Outrageous and very, very funny it most certainly is, but the story has a lot of heart, too, Scarlett says. “I think what makes this movie work and why people are having such a good reaction to it is because you really care about these characters.
“You can forgive the crazy circumstances because you really believe in the friendship between these women. I think that often our lives get so crowded with work and family drama. We all get caught up in the struggles of everyday life. I think this movie is really about, at the end of the day, looking around and just appreciating the people that remind you who you really are and what you were really put on earth for.
“They remind you of what kind of person you intended to be in the first place, when all of that noise can get so loud and confusing. And I don’t know if that’s a message exactly but it’s kind of what you are left with—an appreciation of those people around you that simplify your life and make you appreciate your life.”
Her own female friends are extremely important and Scarlett enjoys a stolen weekend away with them from time to time. “My favorite times are girls’ trips—when the girls get together and have a destination trip and get to go out and dance and get crazy some nights and have your hangover brunch,” she laughs.
“You know, those times when you relax, gossip, inspire one another, read together. That stuff is great and those are the best times, and I’m long overdue for a trip like that.”
Scarlett clearly enjoyed making Rough Night. Indeed, she’s hoping that the team can reunite again in the future.
“I just loved working with Lucia and Paul so much. I just absolutely loved it. I would love to be able to continue to collaborate with them on stuff and we talked about doing other things together.
“I hope certainly that Rough Night does so well that all of us can get together for another one. We talked about what the next one would be: the honeymoon?! Or the baby moon?!
“It would be great if all of us could go on together. Doing comedy is really challenging. It’s exciting and the improvisational aspect of it sharpens your acting tools. So certainly, I hope I can do more comedy.”
****
Now in theaters across the Philippines, Rough Night is distributed by Columbia Pictures, the local office of Sony Pictures Releasing International.