Actor Anna Faris says the late director Ivan Reitman slapped her hard on the butt as she stood on a ladder during the filming of 2006′s “My Super Ex-Girlfriend.”
She identified Reitman on her podcast “Unqualified,” released Wednesday, after recounting the incident in 2017 without the name of the filmmaker.
“Can I speak ill of the dead?” Faris asked guest Lena Dunham in introducing the topic. She recalled Reitman yelling at her after she was late to the set on her first day because of a wig-glue accident in makeup.
“Later, he slapped my ass, too, and that was a weird moment,” she said.
“I don’t think you’re the first person who’s reported that,” Dunham replied. “And I’m so sorry you had that experience. And did no one step in and say, ‘No?’”
“No. It was, like, 2006,” Faris answered.
“I had 30 people around me expecting me to do something, but I didn’t,” she added.
As the Me Too movement raged, Faris recalled feeling “small” as Reitman spanked her.
“I was doing a scene where I was on a ladder and I was supposed to be taking books off a shelf and he slapped my ass in front of the crew so hard,” Faris said. “And all I could do was giggle.”
“I remember looking around and I remember seeing the crew members being like, ‘Wait, what are you going to do about that? That seemed weird.’ And that’s how I dismissed it,” she continued. “I was like, ‘Well, this isn’t a thing. Like, it’s not that big of a deal. Buck up, Faris. Like, just giggle.’ But it made me feel small. He wouldn’t have done that to the lead male.”
“One of my hardest film experiences was with Ivan Reitman,” Faris said earlier in the podcast. “I mean, the idea of attempting to make a comedy under this, like, reign of terror, he was a yeller. He would bring down somebody every day and my first day, it was me.”
Reitman, who directed “Ghostbusters,” died in February of this year. His son, director Jason Reitman, didn’t immediately answer a request for comment.
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