It was a Hunger Games reunion on the set of Red Sparrow — but it wasn’t always comfortable.
Jennifer Lawrence revealed at a New York City press conference for the film on Friday that the familiarity between her and director Francis Lawrence, who also helmed the latter Hunger Games movies, sometimes got them into trouble on the Russian spy thriller. It was especially hard when she had to get nude in front of the crew she had worked with when she was younger.
“The reality of shooting them is so different from watching. With Francis, he’s almost a paternal figure to me and the camera guys I’ve know since I was little,” Lawrence, 27, said of the nudity scenes. “It was almost like being in a nude house, like those families who get naked in front of each other. It felt like that. Like, I accidentally flashed the camera guys and they were like, ‘Oh my god!’
Lawrence often had to strip in the film where she plays a character forced into sexual espionage after she witnesses a murder done by the Russian government. Her character has to learn how to use seduction to get closer to her target — Joel Edgerton’s CIA operative.
And although Lawrence said “there was a lot of laughter” while filming Red Sparrow, Lawrence said he took steps in making sure his actors always felt safe.
“You create a sense of privacy. You only have the people that need to be there and that footage only goes to me and the editor — it doesn’t go to the studio, it doesn’t go to the producers. So they feel protected in that way,” he said at the press conference.
Red Sparrow hits theaters March 2.