Jennifer Lawrence and Darren Aronofsky Each Processed Mixed ‘mother!’ Reviews Differently
Zack Sharf
Variety’s annual Actors on Actors interview series has brought Jennifer Lawrence and Adam Sandler together, and the two find common ground when talking about their dislike of reading their own reviews. Sandler says the negative critical reaction to “Billy Madison” in 1995 “screwed [his] thinking up a little bit,” and he has mostly avoided reading reviews of his movies since. Lawrence, meanwhile, only wants to read them if they’re good.
The Oscar-winning actress was front and center in perhaps the year’s most polarizing movie, Darren Aronofsky‘s “mother!,” but avoiding all the insanely divided reactions proved challenging since Lawrence was dating the director at the time of the film’s festival rollout and press tour. After a long day of talking about “mother!” and hearing everyone’s opinions, the last thing Lawrence wanted to do was to keep talking about the film. This wasn’t the case for Aronofsky, apparently.
“We’d be on the tour together, I’d come back to the hotel and the last thing I want to talk about or think about is the movie, and he comes back and that’s all he wants to talk about,” Lawrence said. “I was doing double duty of trying to be a supportive partner while also being like, ‘Can I please, for the love of God, not think about ‘mother!’ for one second?’”
Lawrence and Aronofsky didn’t always see eye-to-eye during the promotional tour for “mother!” While the filmmaker was a staunch believer in having audiences go in cold and watching the movie without any knowledge of what it’s about, Lawrence felt strongly that viewers needed a slight push to lead them in the right direction.
“Some think: don’t tell anyone anything, let them figure it out on their own. I feel like it’s better to know and understand the metaphor and allegories because then you know what you are looking at,” she told Entertainment Weekly. “I’ve been spilling the themes and metaphors all over town!”
Lawrence explained to Sandler that she mostly avoids her reviews because she’s so defensive of the films she makes. She loved “mother!” and didn’t really care what anyone thought of it and was glad the movie sparked such strong emotions in people, both good and bad.
“It’s so bizarre because you’re so in the zone, you put your whole soul and body, you move to shoot a movie, and you then love it, obviously because you wouldn’t be there if you didn’t love it, and then people just destroy it,” Lawrence said.
The actress can next be seen on the big screen in Francis Lawrence’s espionage thriller “Red Sparrow.” Watch Lawrence and Sandler’s sit-down interview in the video below.
