In Hollywood, land of the nip and tuck, photoshopping, and body doubles, you’d be hard-pressed to find a pair of actors as gleefully uninhibited as Jason Segel and Cameron Diaz. Segel, of course, famously—and hilariously—bared all (soul, schlong, etc.) in Forgetting Sarah Marshall, while Diaz has never been one to shy away from showing some skin onscreen, and even penned a tome, The Body Book, about her insane fitness routine.
“We just don’t have any shame and it’s really hard for us to embarrass ourselves,” Diaz says of the duo. “We both have a very high tolerance when it comes to exposing ourselves for the sake of comedy.”
And they do plenty of that in Sex Tape. Reuniting with Jake Kasdan, who helmed their 2011 comedy hit Bad Teacher, the pair play Annie and Jay—a married couple with young kids who, in an attempt to inject some spice in their nonexistent sex life, decide to film a wild-and-wacky three-hour sex tape. Unfortunately for them, the private video leaks when Jay accidentally uploads it to the mysterious cloud, setting off a bizarre series of events in order to wipe it from the web.
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The Daily Beast spoke to Diaz and Segel about sex and…other stuff.
Did you guys notice how good your chemistry was on Bad Teacher and want to hook up again?
Diaz: Yeah!! [Laughs]
Segel: I was really excited about the idea. When we got the script and then Jake came on to direct, it was a no-brainer for us to hope that Cameron would want to do it. It ended up being just really fun. Cameron and I didn’t know each other too well on Bad Teacher, but it was very fun to have this deeper experience with her.
Diaz: When you work with someone, that’s what you’re hoping—that they’ll set the bar high for you to reach, and that’s what Jason did every day on this film, and we all had to bring our A-game and be ready for anything. Jason is fearless, so you never know what it’s going to be.
Not to be too kiss-assy, but you two do look even better in this movie than you did in Bad Teacher, which was what…three years ago? Are you drinking the blood of the innocent? What’s going on over there?
Diaz: Just pay attention to the body and the machine that you’ve been given to…move through life in.
Segel: Cameron has a book called The Body Book, which really detailed her strategy, which is to stay healthy every day as a way of life. But once I hit 30, I realized that I was going to be with this body for a long, long time, hopefully—if I took care of myself—so I made some life choices to be in better shape. There’s no real mystery to any of it, but it was just eating healthy and exercising. It’s the late-night meals. I used to eat the midnight pizza all the time. No more.
The film really deals with the combination of how one’s sexual appetite diminishes as one gets older, as well as real-life responsibilities getting in the way of one’s sex life. How do you two manage to maintain a healthy sex life while being as busy as you are professionally?
Diaz: Are you really asking us that question? Are you asking us personally how we do that?
[She seems genuinely offended by the question.]
I’m just curious how each of you manages to maintain a healthy sex life while being so busy professionally, always traveling off to different parts of the world for months at a time and being on sets.
Diaz: How do you do it? How do you do it? [Laughs]
Segel: I think the message of the movie is that it’s important for a couple to remind each other every day that they made a choice to be together, and it’s not some deal you made 10 years ago; it’s a decision you make daily.
Diaz: And to communicate your needs to one another!
There’s a fun montage of really crazy sex scenes that you two do in the film that incorporates I think every position imaginable—and a few a lot of people will see for the first time. What was the craziest or most difficult one to pull off?
Segel: We started by using The Joy of Sex as our guidebook, and then we realized that we had to fill three hours of a sex tape and make it seem as uncomfortable and funny as possible.
Diaz: We added some salami!
There’s even a Viking helmet with a beard attached in one of ’em. Whose idea was that?
Diaz: The Viking helmet! There was a pile of props and we just found the ones that delighted us the most.
Segel: We devoted about a week to all of the sex scenes combined, because we thought it’d be a good idea to bunch those all together, get them out of the way, and get in the right mentality, and then focus on the rest of the film.
Cameron, there’s one part of the sex montage where your character literally does a backflip onto Jason’s penis. I’m assuming that was a body-double?
Segel: That was actually the easiest day for you!
Diaz: That was Cirque du Soleil. [Laughs] The hardest day for me was when I did the body doubling for Jason’s headstand. That was a really tough day for me. A lot of prosthetics.
What was the most awkward scene for you two to shoot? Like you said, you’d only shared a few scenes together on Bad Teacher and here, had to get very intimate with one another.
Segel: It wasn’t particularly awkward for either of us. We both went into it with the mentality of being as funny as possible, so we really felt like teammates. As Cameron says, it was a locker room vibe.
Diaz: A lot of high-fiving.
There’s a scene in the movie where Jason’s character high-fives you in bed. Would you be mortified if someone did that to you in real life?
Diaz: Hell no, muthafucka. Shit! Give me a high-five!
Segel: Can you print that? Can you print, “Hell no, muthafucka. Shit!?”
We can definitely print that. Have either of you ever made a sex tape?
Diaz: I’m so happy you asked that question, because now I get to reveal! [Laughs]
What do you think drives people to even feel the need to make a sex tape?
Diaz: I can’t speak for people, but I think this movie is a cautionary tale to not do it—that today’s technology is very new still, and if you can think of all the things that our technology fails us in on a daily basis, I don’t think it’s such a good idea to put something so private out there due to the fear that it might get out, as it has for the characters in this movie.
Segel: Their mistake isn’t making the sex tape; their mistake is letting it get out there. Behind closed doors, our message is that a loving couple should be able to do whatever they want to make themselves feel sexy, but the Cloud is our mysterious antagonist. I don’t know. It’s just too much of a mystery to trust.
Are there particular apps that you find grating? Whether it’s Snapchat, Vine, or the swipe-dating site Tinder? There are so many apps these days it’s absurd.
Diaz: There’s an app for every part of your life—even parts that don’t exist—so I think it’s one of those things where if they work, great. I love checking my period on Period Tracker. It makes my life so much easier.
Segel: [Laughs]
That’s an actual app?
Diaz: Yeah! Every girl uses Period Tracker. Other than that, I’m not sure.
Was the casting of Rob Lowe in the film paying homage to his being one of the first big-time celebs to be embroiled in a celebrity sex tape scandal?
Diaz: I had forgotten that he had done a sex tape. You know, I really had forgot.
Segel: Our goal when casting the movie was to hire the funniest people we could get, and we felt really lucky to get Rob Lowe. Number one, he’s like the best-looking guy on Earth, and number two, he’s capable of being as funny as anyone I’ve ever seen.
Jason, you’re in an upcoming film that looks really exciting—playing the late author David Foster Wallace in The End of the Tour. What was it like playing him, and what’s going on with the Wallace estate disowning the movie?
Segel: Well, I can only speak to the first part of the question. It was a real challenge, and my biggest goal was to be as respectful, truthful, and honest as possible about a man whose work meant a lot to so many people, including myself. It was scary in that I know the way that people feel about him and his work, and I know the way that I feel about it, so it was important for me to communicate it as well as I could with as much respect as I could.
And Cameron, your Miss Hannigan looks pretty wild in Annie. Did you conceive of that look yourself, and how did you arrive at that look?
Diaz: Yeah, and it was really fun. That was due to the efforts of all the talented hair, makeup, and wardrobe people that I get to work with. It was a collaboration, and we just had a really fun time bringing the concept of her to life. I loved playing her and I love the movie. The movie is really sweet.
The only time many people have seen you sing on film is when your character had to be intentionally bad at karaoke in that great scene in My Best Friend’s Wedding. How was the singing for you on Annie?
Diaz: I tried to intentionally be good on this one, but I don’t know how it’ll turn out! [Laughs]
