Joaquin Phoenix has said that he once “just started screaming” on the set of Beau Is Afraid to prepare for a specific scene.Directed by Ari Aster (Hereditary, Midsommar), the black comedy horror film follows mild-mannered but paranoid-ridden Beau Wasserman (Phoenix) who embarks on a surreal odyssey to return home to his mother.Speaking during an A24 podcast interview (via Variety), Phoenix said he was left “spinning in a panic” because Aster wanted to shoot an intense scene where Beau takes a bath in a single take.
In order to feel “free” while filming the scene, the actor resorted to screaming to “fully humiliate” himself beforehand.“I’m a little reluctant to say this, because it sounds so fucking stupid and just like actor shit, but I remember… what I did before was I did the scene, but I wasn’t really volatile,” Phoenix recalled.“I was still nervous.
I was still… In some way, I was controlling a little bit. I was controlling what people thought about me. I didn’t want to let people down.
And it was like new crew were early on set. And I remember just realising I had to do something that was fucking stupid, and I just didn’t want to do it, but I just knew.”He added: “I just started screaming, just the most intense guttural pain scream that I could before we were shooting, sitting there, because I had to just fully humiliate myself.
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