Jennifer Lawrence says scene in Netflix film Don’t Look Up was ‘worst day of my life’

Jennifer Lawrence has described filming one scene in new Netflix film Don’t Look Up as ‘horrendous’, going as far as calling it ‘the worst day of her life’.

In Don’t Look Up, the new political satire that began streaming on Netflix this week, an astronomer discovers the asteroid that will destroy the planet while she is drinking tea, eating toast, and rapping along to the Wu-Tang Clan.

It’s an appropriate way for writer/director Adam McKay to open his film, which will flirt with the line between wildly dark and wildly absurd for the next two hours.

But in order to nail that opening scene, actor Jennifer Lawrence — who stars as Kate Dibiasky, an astronomy grad student who discovers a comet on a collision course with Earth — needed to memorise Wu Tang’s Ain’t Nuthing ta F’ Wit. She did, of course, because she’s a professional.

Don’t Look Up is now streaming on Netflix.

While speaking at the Don’t Look Up virtual press conference on December 5, Lawrence recalled the memorisation process took “a couple of weeks.”

But performing the song on the set, in front of McKay and the entire film crew, was another matter entirely. It’s not exactly a memory that Lawrence looks back on fondly.

“Because something happened with Covid, that ended up being my very first scene,” Lawrence said at the press conference.

“It was horrifying, because I’m in this huge hanger, and it’s so quiet. And I don’t know anybody, and I had to rap Wu-Tang Clan. It was just horrendous. And then what’s in the movie is like, five seconds. I really wish I had known that.”

That day on set was, Lawrence concluded, “the worst day of my life.”

Lawrence joked that the film scene was ‘the worst day of her life’.

At this point, McKay jumped in to assure Lawrence she did a good job.

“Hey, I knew my assignment,” Lawrence replied. “I did know every word, I still do.” (At this point, she started to rap the song, to prove it.)

That moment wasn’t the only fun McKay had with music inDon’t Look Up.

Musicians Ariana Grande and Kid Cudi — who play a fictional pop star and her on-again-off-again boyfriend, respectively — perform a new original satirical song, Just Look Up.

The lyrics include the pointed line, “Listen to the goddamn qualified scientists,” which feels particularly appropriate right about now.

You can hear the full song in all of its ridiculous glory on YouTube, and you can catch the entirety of Don’t Look Up now streaming on Netflix.

This story originally appeared on Decider and is republished here with permission.

Originally published as Jennifer Lawrence says scene in Netflix film Don’t Look Up was ‘worst day of my life’