“Red Sparrow.” 20th Century Fox

“Red Sparrow” director Francis Lawrence gave us insight on what he did to make his movie’s star, Jennifer Lawrence, feel completely comfortable on a set that included a lot a nudity and sex scenes.
He had a three-hour talk with Jennifer in her backyard after she agreed to do the movie.

Director Francis Lawrence was wrapping up editing on “The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2” when he was handed the book, “Red Sparrow.” For someone who had just spent the last five years making three movies in the globally successful YA franchise, the novel by Jason Matthews was a welcome sight. And he had a feeling the franchise’s star, Jennifer Lawrence, would be into it as well.

“I know for a fact she was starving to do different stuff,” Lawrence told Business insider of Jennifer’s need to take on roles that were very different from Katniss Everdeen at the time they wrapped the “Hunger Games” movies.

He instantly called Lawrence and pitched her the idea of playing the character in the book that grabbed him the most, Dominika. A young Russian ballerina who after an injury — and scared she will lose the financial support of the Kremlin to take care of her ailing mother — agrees to become a “Sparrow,” part of a Russian intelligence service in which agents use their sexuality to accomplish missions.

Jennifer was intrigued and Francis got 20th Century Fox involved, which fast-tracked a script. But as the script for “Red Sparrow” was being written, Lawrence admits he was convinced something was going to go wrong.

“She wasn’t going to want to do the movie once she read it because of the content,” he thought.

In 2014, Jennifer Lawrence’s phone was hacked and nude photos of the actress leaked online. She said afterward that it was an experience that “was so unbelievably violating that you can’t even put into words.” After going through something like that, would she be comfortable doing a movie where her character endures violent sexual encounters and in one scene is completely nude?

Not being shy about addressing nudity

Around March of 2016, the actress read the script and contacted Lawrence to tell him she wanted to do the movie. Without hesitation he drove to her house to talk. But it wasn’t because the director wanted to dive in on discussions about the character. He wanted to be very open with his star about the sexually graphic nature of the role.

“Red Sparrow” director Francis Lawrence. 20th Century Fox

Lawrence said he sat and talked to the actress for three hours in her backyard about what the role entailed and gave her a step-by-step game plan of how he would shoot these sensitive scenes.

“I said, ‘Let’s just start being frank right away about the content of the movie,’” Lawrence said. “Because it’s easy to get shy about it and next thing you know you’re on the day of a tough scene and she’s nervous and we haven’t really talked about it. I didn’t want it to happen. I didn’t want to walk on egg shells or her to be walking on egg shells, and I wanted a partner that was going to think about the scenes with me. She felt ownership of it and she collaborated and made sure that those kind of scenes always were truly married to the fabric of the narrative and character and tone.”

He also made her a promise: She would see the finished movie before the studio or producers and could take out any scenes that made her uncomfortable.

“The studio and producers wouldn’t ever get the dailies until we saw them, there was a system in place,” Lawrence said. “We showed Jen, she did not nix anything, and then I showed the producers and studio.”