Amy Schumer gets sassy in Snatched
Bawdy actress mistaken for overzealous fan when she approached Goldie Hawn
Edgy, raunchy and feminist comedienne Amy Schumer has created a love letter to her mother with her new comedy, Snatched.
"Just to say, I know I can be an ***hole and, like every other daughter, have taken you for granted, but I really want to say thank you and I am sorry.
"And also, I know you did your best," she said, jokingly.
The 36-year-old New Yorker is also a lifelong fan of her "hero" Goldie Hawn, the 71-year-old US actress who plays her mum in the film, which opens here tomorrow.
Schumer had handpicked Hawn, convincing the latter to come out of a 15-year retirement from the silver screen.
At our interview at the Fairmont Miramar Hotel in Santa Monica, Schumer said of her co-star: "I just imagined doing it with Goldie the whole time. And then I ran into her, and I just told her about it."
The meeting was at an airport two years ago. Schumer walked up to Hawn and apparently said, "This is happening."
Hawn, not having a clue about who Schumer was and thinking she was an overzealous fan, replied, "Okay, honey, thank you so much," and made her escape.
It was only at a party after Schumer's 2015 breakout film Trainwreck was released that the subject came up again and Hawn agreed.
In Snatched, Schumer's character Emily gets dumped by her boyfriend, leaving her with two non-refundable tickets to a tropical paradise. Rather than waste them, she takes her fearful mum along.
When they are tricked and kidnapped by local thugs, the two escape amid much hilarity and high jinks.
We talk about the wardrobe malfunction in which Schumer bares a breast on a drunken motorcycle trip, which gave Snatched its NC16 rating for nudity.
"I added that to the script. So many actors say no to nudity. And that was the most unnecessary nudity, especially by one of the leads in a movie, ever. So I just thought it would be funny," Schumer said.
"They read it and went, 'You are not going to really do it, right?' And I was like, 'I am doing it, yeah. While they are still up there, let us get them (referring to her breasts).' That was how I felt about it."
SWIMSUIT COVER
When asked about her wearing a white one-piece swimsuit on the cover of the May issue of InStyle magazine and being subsequently fat-shamed by an online troll, Schumer said: "I felt great in it. I was just in that sweet spot of the month where I was not super bloated.
"But what I am really learning more is that it is not me who needs to deal with my body image, it is other people. There was this one woman who wrote this thing, then it got picked up. But it is also very sweet that people wanted to defend me."
If you have not realised by now, Schumer's style of comedy holds no bars. She curses, talks about bodily functions and never censors herself.
Referring to a certain gross-out scene in Snatched, she said: "Let me just be honest and tell everyone that I am the only woman who farts, so no one worry that women do that - that is just me."
Turning serious, she added: "I think it is a powerful thing to see a woman play a human being in that sense, because we do not get to see it that much.
"The reason to fart in that moment was not just for the joke - because I think farts are funny - but it was also like, if you have been drinking all night, you are probably going to have to fart bad.
"And it is your mum and you would feel comfortable, and you would not try to hide it. It is something I am interested in connecting over and making people feel less apologetic in their own skin about being a human being."
DARK PLACE
Schumer seems very sunny in temperament and is almost embarrassed about saying that not much gets her down.
She said: "I do not mean that nothing gets me in a dark place. I can get myself in a dark place for no reason, when you are going, 'I am healthy, things are good and nobody is mad at me, why do I feel this way?'
"What I do is go for a walk, and I spend a lot of time with my girlfriends laughing, and that just always makes me feel like everything will be okay."
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