Then, in 2016, Amy Adams said that David made her cry “most” days on the American Hustle set, where she starred alongside Jennifer. Amy added to GQ at the time: “He was hard on me, that’s for sure. It was a lot. I was really just devastated on set.”
So, when Jen downplayed David’s reputation for being “very difficult” during an appearance on the New York Times’s The Interview podcast, she was widely criticized for seemingly being dismissive of her own co-star’s experience.
For reference, Jen said: “I really felt like with David that was his way of communicating in a non-bullshit way. I never felt like he was degrading or yelling at me. If he didn’t like something, he was just like: ‘That was terrible! Looked like shit! Do it better.’ And that was a very helpful conversation.”
“I’m not sensitive. I don’t know how you can be in this industry,” she pointedly added. When the interviewer noted that Amy said she cried on the American Hustle set, Jen replied: “Maybe he was harder on her than he was on me. I don’t know. I mean, yes, of course I’m sensitive. I’m really sensitive. I don’t know.” She then clarified that she was “not sensitive about acting.”
For what it’s worth, American Hustle was actually Jennifer’s second time working with David, with the two first collaborating on the 2012 movie Silver Linings Playbook, for which she won an Oscar, and then again in 2015 for the film Joy.
“I wanted to ask about David O. Russell,” Leo said to Jen. “What do you feel like he brought in you in a lot of these roles? I think you’ve talked about it, this sort of push and pull with him and how it helped you as an actor in a lot of ways.”
Jennifer appeared to be hesitant to discuss David when his name was first mentioned, and she then diplomatically said to Leo: “He taught me how to act, really… I want to be sensitive to the other actors who’ve worked with him, because I know he’s tough. He can be really, really hard on people.”
“For me, I don’t know if it was because I grew up doing sports, and so I just felt like he was just a stern coach,” she carefully went on. “It’s like: ‘Do it louder, do it more quiet, that was bullshit, do it again, that was bad, do it better!’ It was just very straightforward to me.”
“And I think I was young enough that I didn’t have anything to [compare it to], it was normal to me,” Jen added. “I was 21 when I did Silver Linings Playbook, it just felt really alive. I never felt like he was yelling at me.”
“When I say he taught me how to act, I feel like because I never did lessons or anything like that, I think I would’ve really easily fallen into… I don’t know, something,” she explained. “I’m, like, never prepared, and I would always feel bad, but he taught me that was staying loose, and that’s OK.”
“I wasn’t aware that sometimes there’s the need to prepare, then sometimes there is the need to not, and to stay loose, and I’m happy he taught me that,” Jen concluded.
Leo then asked Jen if she liked the “process of somebody calling out direction like that,” and she said that she did. When she asked if he felt the same way, Leo admitted: “I think it does help sometimes, actually.”
“The idea of somebody… I’m trying to think if I ever had that,” Leo then said. “Because most of the time, it’s the director coming up to you in an intimate conversation.”
“Yeah, and I don’t like being tiptoed around like I’m an emotional landmine,” Jennifer rebuked. “I hate that.”
Well, there we have it. What do you think of Jennifer’s latest comments? Let me know down below!
