Schitt's Creek star Emily Hampshire talks about her new sex comedy
Schitt's Creek was far from Emily Hampshire's first acting role, but she knows that it could prove to be her most significant.
"The thing I always thought of success to me was having choice, and I definitely have much more choice. I get sent scripts to do that I wouldn't have before, so I've gotten so many opportunities to do things I've always wanted to do. It's been amazing," she tells Digital Spy.
One of those opportunities is new rom-com The End of Sex which reunited her with director Sean Garrity and writer Jonas Chernick, who she worked with on 2012 comedy My Awkward Sexual Adventure.
The movie sees Hampshire and Chernick play married couple Emma and Josh who, when their children go away to camp, decide to embark of a series of sexual adventures to recapture the magic of their too-comfortable relationship and quite-rusty sex life.
To mark The End of Sex's digital release in the UK on July 3, Digital Spy sat down with Emily Hampshire to talk about the movie's reunion, what marks the movie out from other sex comedies and the importance of intimacy coordinators.
But first, bagels.
Your character starts the movie in a St-Viateur Bagel t-shirt with that bakery being an institution in Montreal, so was this a statement to say this will be the most Canadian movie ever made?
Oh my god, I love that you know St-Viateur Bagels because I'm obsessed with them. I wear a St-Viateur Bagels shirt at the beginning of The End of Sex when we're having sex, and that was something I wanted so bad. I asked them to send me a shirt and if they would let me wear it. I'm their bagels' biggest fan.
Once you have one of their bagels, it ruins bagels as over in the UK, there's nothing like it.
The other things aren't bagels. They're just bread in the shape of round. You learn what a real bagel is when you go to Montreal.
You'd worked with Jonas and Sean before on My Awkward Sexual Adventure, so was it a case that you three were looking for something else to work on over the years or was it just an extra bonus of this movie?
Well, we have done two other movies together that I had a smaller part in. But I think we always want to work together and find something, but I didn't know about this one. I knew that right after My Awkward Sexual Adventure, we said we wanted to do something again and Jonas started thinking about something then and that was 10 years ago.
I never heard anything about it after and then they called me up with this script. At first, I was like, "I'll do anything you guys", I love working with them so much, but I was like, "I do need to read the script" and then I read the script and I was like, "I would do this script without you guys".
I thought it was so good, so funny. I think Jonas is such a great writer. He writes those kind of old-school comedies that I love, like Knocked Up or This is 40, those Judd Apatow comedies that I feel like haven't been seen in a while.
Even though they're not the same characters, did it feel like kind of a spiritual sequel because it deals with similar themes?
We do call it a spiritual successor. It's not the same characters, but Jonas and I do magically always land in the same place. When we did My Awkward Sexual Adventure, we were in a similar place in our lives. And when we did this movie, he's married, I've been married.
We definitely want to do another one in like 10 years and end this trilogy maybe in a senior citizens home. I heard that they actually have a lot of STDs in a senior citizens home because they do it a lot.
You usually expect these kind of sex comedies to be with teens or like university students. So what do you feel it is that being about adults and marriage that marks The End of Sex out to all of those other kind of sex comedies?
That is what I love about it. Jonas and I are both that age. I love that there's a tagline for it that I found so funny that called it a "coming of middle age story", which it really is. I haven't seen anything like this before where a sex comedy is about the end of sex.
Everybody who you watch, watch it in a theatre, you can see people being like, "Oh my god, that's me", then they're embarrassed a bit and then they see somebody else laughing and then they're like, "Oh my god, you too". What I love about Jonas's writing is that his comedy is in the real moments and you're laughing because it's true.
It doesn't go for the easy shock laugh such as in the sex club scene where you could make that over-the-top, but this just feels grounded and authentic. Was that important for you that this tone was struck in this film?
Tone was something that I knew I didn't need to talk to Jonas and Sean about that because I trusted them, but I did bring it up and I prefaced it with, "I don't need to say, but I just want to make sure because it's been a while since we've done something together."
I wanted to make sure that the tone of this, especially the sex, will be in the tone of comedy where sex doesn't take me out of the movie. It's not raunchy. It's like awkward and funny, and they were on the same page as me.
I think it really rides that line perfectly where it's funny and awkward, but real and heartfelt. You can see it in the people that I've seen watch it, it's so relatable.
It feels that way as well with the relationship side of it too. When you have the big argument towards the end, no one can hurt you like someone you've actually know for so long and that moment feels like looking in on a private relationship. So the fact that you had this in-built past with Jonas, did that help with the authenticity?
Jonas and I are so much like brother and sister, which actually makes it really fun to do a sex scene because we're like, "Ew!". It's just so easy with him and it felt that way when I didn't even know him the first time we worked together.
There's something where we were made to be together in these kinds of roles because I never feel more myself than when I'm acting with Jonas, which is a weird thing. It does instantly put me in the role of having to be just super honest because you can't bullshit each other.
There's been a lot of conversation recently in the industry about intimacy coordinators and the importance of them. When it came to these sex scenes, because you knew Jonas, could you kind of treat it like the weird situation it is to be naked with another actor?
What's so funny is that when Jonas and I did My Awkward Sexual Adventure, there was no such thing as an intimacy coordinator. I felt like I invented things. I remember we had to shoot this scene and I got this big knee bend in, I was making stuff that intimacy coordinators now come with.
So when the intimacy coordinator called me before we started shooting, I was like, "Oh I know these guys, I'm fine, I'm not worried so I don't need you, essentially". And boy was I ever wrong, not because there was anything that I was worried about, but what a great development it has been to have an intimacy coordinator.
Just even in terms of whenever you do a sex scene on-set, everybody's a bit weird. Things even about, like, what the shot is and what the scene is about gets thrown of the window a lot of the time, and you don't talk about these things because everybody wants to be either overly accommodating or are just awkward.
So to have somebody there to facilitate the conversation between the director and the actors one-on-one, so nobody ever feels like you have to be cool and say the thing that everybody else is saying. I was in awe of that development in the industry and I think it's so amazing.
I wish I could go back and have one in all the films I did when I was younger that are now gifs of me online.
Finally, as you say, people have related to this movie, so what is the thing you want them to take away from it?
I think for me, it's always that I hope an audience gets what I got out of it when I first saw it and when I first read the script. It just feels so relatable, like, I know these characters and I love that this is a movie where you watch it with your significant other, you are not going to not have a conversation after.
It's either going to be hilarious that your sex life is so great or you need to talk about it. You are going to have a conversation [either way] and it's going to be awkwardly hilarious.
The End of Sex is released on digital platforms in the UK on July 3.
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