Shortly before a bomb threat forced The Ugly Truth press junket to evacuate the Four Seasons this weekend, Movieline attended a press conference where Katherine Heigl and Gerard Butler discussed the appeal of R-rated romantic comedies, the sensational vibrating panties scene and its effects on their child co-star.
In The Ugly Truth, Gerard Butler plays a straight-shooting television correspondent who dispenses chauvinistic advice to viewers and his uptight, unlucky-in-love morning show producer (Katherine Heigl). Before Heigl's character can transform into a man-slayer, whose wiles even Butler's hardened instructor cannot escape, she must first wrestle with hair extensions, the art of fake laughter and her fair share of profanity-laced tirades.
Heigl shared with attendees why she prefers R-rated movies. "I'm a 30-year-old woman and, as much as I love that younger audience and I love those kind of movies, and I loved 27 Dresses and had a great time making it, I still feel like I want to tell a real story to people my age and to my generation," Heigl said. "We throw 'fuck' around a lot, so when you have to censor so much for that PG-13 rating, it starts to get a little cute and it starts to feel a little fantasy. [...] It's not that I always want to do R-rated movies, or that I feel like they're the most honest movies out there. There was just something about this and the ability to be crass, and drop the F-bomb on occasion, and the ability to say 'cock,' that felt real to me. It felt like the world I actually live in, with my friends and my family. Maybe that sounds bad."
Heigl capitalized on the R-rating with her very own orgasm scene which rivals the "I'll have what she's having" When Harry Met Sally classic. Heigl discussed the surprising strenuousness of the sequence.
"Oh, my God, it was a nightmare," Heigl said about her climax de force. "And, let me tell you, ladies, these were fake orgasms, but it was really just physically exhausting. It's so much physical movement, with the legs dancing under the table and all the tensing up of the body and, by the end of the day, I felt like I had done a marathon. I thought I had run 20 miles. Then, I went, 'Okay, now I get why it's called physical comedy,' because it's so physical and exhausting. No one wants to orgasm 35 times."
"No matter how well this movie does," Butler added, "that scene is going to go down in the annals of history in comedies because it's a classic scene. [...] It's one of the most brilliant performances I've ever seen. Katherine was so, dare I say, bang on. It was incredible."
In a turn of undeniable originality/creepiness, Heigl's mid-sales-pitch, ceviche-citing spasms are manipulated by a little boy at a nearby table who unknowingly toys with the remote control. Heigl and Butler joked about whether the young actor understood his role in the scene.
"That kid with the remote probably thought, 'This lady is crazy,'" Heigl deadpanned.
"He didn't know there was a connection," Butler said. "He thought, 'She's crazy over there! What is she doing? I'm just going to keep playing with this thing.'"
Heigl continued, "He probably thought, 'She screwed up my take!'"