One of the reasons we still love Jennifer Lawrence is because she lacks a proper filter on her mouth. While out promoting a film (and she has appeared in several over the past few years), Lawrence is prone to saying whatever thought crosses her mind. But she usually does it in a way that’s moderately self-deprecating, playful, funny and charming. However, that’s not always the way things come out.
Jennifer Lawrence is making the rounds, at the moment, in support of X-Men: Apocalypse, where she once again plays Mystique. On The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, the painfully candid actress recalls a time when she made a joke in front of journalists – just Jen being Jen! Only, it went way too far, and she eventually paid the price. While promoting the 2008 film The Burning Plain, in which she co-starred with Kim Basinger, Lawrence attended a press conference in which her co-star couldn’t attend. Things went downhill, quickly:
Kim Basinger wasn’t there. … I just leaned into the microphone [in response to a question asking where Basinger was] and was like, ‘You didn’t hear? Kim died.’ … I got ripped off the stage, thrown into media training, which was hilarious, because I was like Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady.
What, that’s not funny to some people? Maybe Kim Basinger got a good chuckle out of it. I’m sure the journalists in the room understood that Jennifer Lawrence was kidding. Or maybe they hadn’t yet figured out that this blonde beauty has a dark-black sense of humor that still, to this day, gets her in hot water. As she later joked to Jimmy Fallon, about her recent foibles on the X-Men press junket:
My publicist told me a week ago, ‘Stop telling people they don’t have to see X-Men.' I’m always like, ‘I don’t know. If it feels right. No pressure.’
This approach to the press could eventually blow up in Jennifer Lawrence’s face. She has enjoyed being a Media Darling, but the press corps is a rabid, savage and unpredictable bunch, and they’ll quickly turn on someone they pretended to adore at the drop of a sound bite. Trust me, I know. I’m one of those two-faced animals. At the same time, Lawrence continues to SOUND charming in these late-night interviews, even when she’s talking about a co-star possibly being dead:
Kim Basinger isn’t dead. In fact, she has a decent role in The Nice Guys, in theaters now. And Jennifer Lawrence will be in X-Men: Apocalypse, in theaters on May 27.
