Scarlett Johansson Says ‘Her’ Sex Recording Made Joaquin Phoenix so Uncomfortable He Left Set

Scarlett Johansson says her costar Joaquin Phoenix was so uncomfortable on the set of 2013’s sci-fi romance Her that he had to leave during a recording. The film, which stars Phoenix as a lonely, recently-divorced man and Johansson as the voice behind his phone’s A.I. system, follows their relationship as it progresses from platonic to romantic — and, unfortunately for Phoenix, sexual.

Johansson told Dax Shepard and Monica Padman’s Armchair Expert podcast that her fake orgasm recordings for the film drove Phoenix off set because he was “losing it” during a taping. Johansson’s character, Samantha, and Phoenix’s character, Theodore, have phone sex in the film, but by Johansson’s account, the work behind the steamy scene was anything but sexy.

“We tried to get through one take, and he was, like, losing it,” she told Shepard and Padman, per IndieWire. “He left the studio. He needed a break.”

She added, “You don’t want to hear your voice ever. You definitely don’t want to hear what you sound like having an orgasm. You definitely don’t want to hear what you sound like having a fake orgasm — ew. It’s so gross. It was so bizarre.”

Johansson expanded on being sexualized in Hollywood while speaking to Shepard and Padman, telling the podcast hosts she felt trapped by the image established for her early in her career.

“I kind of became objectified and pigeonholed in this way where I felt like I wasn’t getting offers for work for things that I wanted to do,” she said. “I remember thinking to myself, ‘I think people think I’m 40 years old.’ It somehow stopped being something that was desirable and something that I was fighting against.”

She continued, “I got kind of pigeonholed into this weird hyper-sexualized thing. I felt like [my career] was over. It was like: that’s the kind of career you have, these are the roles you’ve played. And I was like, ‘This is it?'”