‘No Hard Feelings’ co-star details the awkward audition with Jennifer Lawrence
The upcoming Jennifer Lawrence-led comedy, No Hard Feelings, is set to be one of the more risqué R-rated films to hit our screens in recent years. It follows Lawrence as a struggling 30-something who, after being offered a hefty sum, agrees to take on a new job: sleeping with a wealthy family’s virgin teenage son.
If the premise sounds awkward, if not outright problematic, then one can imagine what the auditioning process must have been like – particularly for Lawrence’s co-star, the relatively unknown Andrew Barth Feldman.
Having spent more time in theatre than film or TV, the 21-year-old Feldman has been propelled into the limelight by sharing the screen with A-lister Lawrence, on what the actor has called the “funniest script” she’d ever read.
For Feldman, the nerves of acting alongside one of Hollywood’s biggest stars must have been made all the worse by the film’s subject matter. As he’s recently revealed, the chemistry test between the two made for a particularly awkward encounter that won’t be forgotten for a very long time.
Speaking to Vanity Fair, the young actor revealed the hoops he had to jump through to formally cinch the job. “One of the last things I did was a chemistry read with her. It was down to me and two other guys,” Feldman said. “And I was like, ‘I’m going to have to look Jennifer Lawrence in the eyes today and say, ‘Let’s fuck’. ‘That’s something that I have to do.”
It’s something that even the most seasoned actors may trip over, let alone an inexperienced up-and-coming young man. Nevertheless, Feldman refused to let nerves get the best of him, and as a result, he blew the production team away with his portrayal of Percy. However, once he’d secured the job, one small issue remained: the filming would clash with his school term time.
“I mean, when Andrew left his audition, the door closed and we all looked at each other and we were like, ‘That’s our — that’s Percy,” Lawrence explained to Entertainment Tonight. “Then they were like ‘there’s one complication, he’s supposed to go to Harvard’, and we were like, ‘Is that a joke?'”
Unfortunately, the news was all too real, but that didn’t stop Lawrence and the rest of the No Hard Feelings team from ensuring they had their Percy. “He was fully the character,” Lawrence continued, “So I called him and said, ‘Andrew, I have really bad news you’re not gonna be able to finish your semester at Harvard.'”
No Hard Feelings releases June 23rd, 2023. Watch the trailer below.
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