Matt Damon Recalls Why Kissing Scarlett Johansson ‘Was Hell’ In This Movie

The Oppenheimer star is totally fine with kissing and telling about his past work.
Scarlett Johansson and Matt Damon attend the We Bought a Zoo premiere on Dec. 12, 2011, in New York City.
Scarlett Johansson and Matt Damon attend the We Bought a Zoo premiere on Dec. 12, 2011, in New York City.
James Devaney via Getty Images

Matt Damon has no qualms about kissing and telling.

The movie star dished on one of his most hellish kissing scene experiences during a press appearance on LADbible with his Oppenheimer co-star Emily Blunt.

The two were discussing etiquette for intimate scenes, when Damon talked about a time he “had to kiss Scarlett Johansson” in the 2011 film We Bought a Zoo.

“Could you imagine how horrible that was for me?” Damon quipped, joking that the experience “was hell.”

“What happened was, we did a shot before lunch, and it was like this nice little two-shot that ended in the kiss. And it was really good,” the “Bourne Identity” star said. “And we went to lunch, and she and I both thought it was over.”

“And she ate, like, an onion sandwich for lunch,” Damon continued. “And she came in and Cameron Crowe had set the camera up and it was a tight shot of the kiss, and she goes, ‘Oh shit! I literally just had an onion sandwich!’”

Blunt asked if Damon was still “slightly aroused” by kissing Johansson with her onion breath.

“I was making fun of her the entire time about her onion breath, which I didn’t even smell,” he said before laughing and adding, “’Cause her breath smells like roses.”

Blunt made it clear that there’s a kind of process actors should adhere to while filming intimate scenes.

“You gotta brush your teeth, use some mouthwash, stick some gum on the roof of your mouth, and then we can kiss,” she said, as Damon agreed.

While Johansson hasn’t yet told her side of the onion kissing debacle, she has made it clear that there’s one co-star she would gladly kiss again.

“I would go round 2 with Penelope Cruz,” she told Vogue for a video in 2019, name-dropping her “Vicky Cristina Barcelona” co-star.

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