Laura Benanti pulled back the curtain on costar Jennifer Lawrence and revealed she’s “more” fun than fans probably think.
“You forget within two minutes of meeting her that she’s a movie star,” Benanti, 43, exclusively told Us Weekly on Friday, June 23, while promoting their film No Hard Feelings. “She’s just a woman. She’s just a regular person who’s kind and smart and funny and thoughtful and hardworking and engaged.”
The New York native plays Allison Becker in the movie, who along with her husband, Laird (Matthew Broderick), enlist Maddie (Lawrence) to bring their shy teenage son, Percy (Andrew Barth Feldman), out of his shell before heading to college.
While Benanti portrays the mother of a teenager in the film, in reality, both she and Lawrence, 32, have much younger kids. The Tony winner shares daughters Ella, 6, and Louisa, 11 months, with husband Patrick Brown, while the Hunger Games star welcomed her first child, son Cy, with husband Cooke Maroney in February 2022.
“I’m not in the habit of giving people advice, but we definitely swapped stories,” Benanti told Us when asked about her and Lawrence’s on-set parenting discussions. “You know, [the] good and bad. Like, ‘Today I had a hard time.’ Or, ‘I miss my kid.’ Solidarity in motherhood I think is really important.”
The Broadway star noted that she didn’t want to “air [their] private conversations” and preferred to “respect” Lawrence “in that way.” Benanti, however, revealed that the costars did bond over the “joys of motherhood, the challenges of motherhood, what we are trying to do, what we wanna do differently.”
The Supergirl alum gushed: “She’s a normal person, [who deals with] all the things that any other mom feels.”
Benanti joked that the Oscar winner’s personality became even more obvious on set after she and Broderick, 61, allegedly encountered ghosts.
Following a late-night shoot, Benanti and Broderick stayed at “a beautiful old sort of castle of a hotel” so they could be ready for their early call time. Benanti described the space to Us as “absolutely terrifying” and “full of ghosts” amid the renovations.
While Broderick didn’t believe in the supernatural beings, Benanti was convinced something spooky was happening at the hotel. The scary night, which also included a maintenance man working on the floors at 1 a.m., “sparked a conversation that day on set about haunted homes,” which enticed Lawrence.
“Jen and I were super into the conversation, to the point where they were like, ‘Action.’ We were like, ‘Hold on!’ [and kept talking],’” Benanti recalled. “So that was a fun turn of events.”
No Hard Feelings is now in theaters.
With reporting by Christina Garibaldi
