Reese Witherspoon was amazing in the 1996 psychosexual thriller Fear — but she was not a fan of filming that infamous roller coaster scene with Mark Wahlberg.
In a new interview with Harper’s Bazaar out on Tuesday, the actress recalled working on the film at just 19 years old. Both stars were in the early stages of their careers, and their performances helped rocket them to movie stardom. Their chemistry on-screen even sparked dating rumors while they were doing press for the film. But looking back, The Morning Show star is ready to reveal she was actually really uncomfortable filming the movie’s most memorable scene — the one where she has an orgasm on a roller coaster.
Related: Reese Witherspoon’s Daughter Ava Comes Out About Her Sexuality
If you haven’t seen the movie, Reese’s character gets pushed into new territory by her dangerous new boyfriend, who turns out to be more dangerous than expected. In the unforgettable scene, which even made its way into the trailer, he fingers her during a roller coaster ride, resulting in her simulating an orgasm onscreen. Addressing the cult classic, the 47-year-old complained:
“I didn’t have control over it.”
Reese now says the script did NOT have her character having an orgasm onscreen — something she didn’t want to do. She continued:
“It wasn’t explicit in the script that that’s what was going to happen, so that was something that I think the director thought of on his own and then asked me on set if I would do it, and I said no. It wasn’t a particularly great experience.”
Despite saying “no” they shot the scene anyway, just as the director wanted. It’s unclear if they convinced her or pressured her. But she did the scene. She does say she requested a body double for the below-the-waist shots, which also ended up being more NSFW than expected.
When the journalist expressed her sympathies for having to go through that at her young age, Reese replied:
“I’m certainly not traumatized or anything by it, but it was formative. It made me understand where my place was in the pecking order of filmmaking. I think it’s another one of those stories that made me want to be an agent for change and someone who maybe can be in a better leadership position to tell stories from a female perspective instead of from the male gaze.”
She has certainly done that. In 2016, the Legally Blonde star launched her own production company, Hello Sunshine, to give women a platform to tell “their stories in their own words.” The company was starting up around the time of the #MeToo movement, which she was actively involved in while being a key player in fundraising for Time’s Up. She’s since sold Hello Sunshine to Candle Media for $900 million.
Sadly, this scene in Fear wasn’t the first (or worst) time she was placed in an uncomfortable position on set. In 2017, the Big Little Lies lead also revealed she was sexually assaulted by a director when she was 16. Ugh. So awful. That must have made her interaction with the director of Fear even more traumatic — even if it was all simulated.
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Elsewhere in the conversation, the star recalled when she was in her late teens and early twenties she was “very competitive and jealous of other women and not supportive.” She said of her career at the time:
“I was really unhappy. I was not seeing the abundance of opportunity.”
Things were especially frustrating for her after she “went hard” for two massive movies at the time, Clueless and Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet, neither of which she booked. She said:
“Oh my God, I wanted to do Romeo + Juliet so badly, so badly. Of course, Claire Danes was amazing, but it was devastating to me that I didn’t get it after screen tests and getting really close.”
Part of the reason she was so competitive with other women is because she believed, at the time, there was a feeling that “only one girl would make it.” But getting pregnant with her daughter Ava Phillippe at 22 changed everything. She recalled:
“Who do I want my daughter to see? I really want to be a woman she looks up to… I worked on it a lot.”
In the end, it all fell into place. She shared:
“I got Election and I created Tracy Flick, and I ended up being in Pleasantville, which was amazing. Ava was asking me the other day about where I come up with these characters, like Tracy Flick, Elle Woods, and [Melanie Smooter from] Sweet Home Alabama. I created them all within the span of five, six years in my 20s… Sometimes I look back and go, ‘How the hell did I do that?'”
Hah! It all worked out the way it was meant to… We’re just so sorry she (and many other women, for that matter) had some icky incidents in the industry! Thoughts? Let us know (below)!
[Image via Universal Pictures All-Access/YouTube & MEGA/Judy Eddy/WENN]