THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER 57 SEPTEMBER 4, 2019
Hear Johansson talk about the Hulk and Black Widow’s love story and more at THR.COM/VIDEObelieve if people actually did vote,
our government would look the
way it’s supposed to, but people
just don’t vote. It baffles me.”
If movie fans have ever fanta-
sized about seeing Marvel’s Black
Widow and Star Wars’ Kylo Ren go
at it in a fight scene, they get the
opportunity in Marriage Story. But
it comes after Johansson delivers
the most incendiary phrase in
the history of romantic relation-
ships: “So ... I thought we should
talk.” What follows is a virtuosic,
10-minute argument between
Johansson’s Nicole and Driver’s
Charlie, a playwright whose knack
for observing human behavior
seems to have a giant blind spot
when it comes to the needs of
his wife, an unfulfilled actress.
Baumbach spent two days shoot-
ing the scene in a nondescript
Hollywood apartment building, a
process that required Johansson
and Driver to run through the
yelling match dozens of times,
hitting Baumbach’s physical
marks while reaching emotional
peaks and valleys.
Although Driver is 6-foot-2 and
Johansson 5-foot-3, they parry like
boxers in the same weight class.
“You want to feel like two people
are meeting their match, and size
has nothing to do with that,” says
Driver. “Scarlett has a strength
to her that’s very unique. She just
possesses a height, I mean a kind
of scale, to her. She walks into a
He seemed very confident at the
time. I don’t know if he felt that
way, but in that environment, if
you’re not confident as a writer,
your stuff just never gets pro-
duced.” Jost, now 37, would go on
to become a “Weekend Update”
co-anchor in 2014 and one of
the show’s head writers in 2017,
when Johansson hosted againroom and you notice.” By the end
of the movie, Nicole and Charlie
arrive at a kind of detente, one
that Johansson was circling in her
own divorce at the time. “There’s a
sort of whimsy about the ending,”
Johansson says. “If they could have
been different people somehow, it
could have worked, but that’s not
how life is.”the beach in the Hamptons with
the caption, “Cheeky!”
Though she has been billboard-
and-bus-side-ad famous for
15 years, Johansson’s fall films
seem likely to deliver her into the
ravenous maw of awards season
for the first time since 2006’s
Match Point, when she was nomi-
nated for a Golden Globe. The
actress’ performance in Marriage
Story, THR’s critic says, “makes
you feel the clashing impulses
and instincts — anger and long-
ing, defiance and guilt, boldness
and trepidation.”
“I haven’t really been involved
in the mix of awards season for
a long time, so I’m not sure how
I feel exactly. Maybe a little out
of my element?” Johansson says.
“I am excited to celebrate both of
these films with Noah and Taika.
I feel like both movies are the
movies that either filmmaker and
I set out to make, and that’s an
incredibly rare thing. When youJohansson with fiance and Saturday Night Live star Colin Jost in November.“ I haven’t really been involved in the mix of
awards season for a long time, so I’m not sure how
I feel exactly. Maybe a little out of my element?”
5Despite marriage’s imper-
fections, Johansson hasn’t
lost faith in the institution. In
November 2010, on the third
of five times she has hosted
Saturday Night Live, she appeared
in a sketch sending up MTV’s
Teen Mom and 16 and Pregnant.
Wearing a tiara and a red baby-
doll dress over a fake bump, her
legs splayed on a hospital bed,
Johansson declared, “I’m rich. I’m
beautiful. And I’m fully dilated.
And this is gonna be the greatest
party ever!” The man who pitched
her that sketch was then-writer
Jost, who left a positive impres-
sion on Johansson with his
self-assurance amid SNL’s i nt i mi-
dating backstage atmosphere. “It
was some dumb parody that he
had written, and he was in there
partly directing this segment
we had to do,” Johansson says.
“That’s my first memory of him.and the two sparked a romance.
They have taken turns serving
as the “plus one” in each other’s
public lives — she attended
the Emmys as his date, he hit
the Avengers: Endgame premiere
as hers.
Johansson says that, despite
her fame, she and Jost are able
to maintain their privacy, to
take her daughter to the park
and ride the subway in New York
City undisturbed. “I insist upon
it,” she says. “You have to carve
out that life for yourself. I don’t
engage in social media. I’m a very
private person. If you ever see
a paparazzi photograph of me,
know that I was definitely being
harassed and having a horrible
day, and my daughter was being
harassed.” A week after this
interview, the Daily Mail ran 14
paparazzi shots of Johansson
and Jost in their bathing suits onwork hard on something
with someone for such a long
time, it feels good to have that
work acknowledged.”
For the moment, however,
Johansson is concerned with
other dilemmas that come
with fame and motherhood.
“My daughter just told me she
wanted a Black Widow costume
for Halloween,” Johansson says.
“I was like, ‘This is interesting.’
That or a peacock, she said. It’ll
be strange, but if she wants it,
I guess I’ll get it.” How much
Rose understands about what
her mother does for a living is
unclear, Johansson says. “She
knows that I’m a superhero, or
that I play a superhero, or that
that’s one of my jobs,” she says.
“I don’t know if she thinks it’s
real or not, I’m not sure. She gets
excited when she sees me on the
Cheerios box.”