Prior to his death in 2004, legendary actor Marlon Brando had signed on to appear in “Scary Movie 2” — and while he dropped out of the film for health reasons, Natasha Lyonne shared her recollections of filming a scene with the Oscar winner before his exit.
Speaking with Entertainment Weekly, Lyonne opened up about the experience, which was also one of her first on-screen roles.
“I have a VHS copy of the dailies that I got because Marlon Brando’s final role — sadly for him, but luckily for me — is doing this ‘Exorcist’ opening teaser,” Lyonne said. “I don’t know what he was thinking, really.”
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According to EW, Brando played a priest attempting to exorcise a demon that possessed Lyonne’s character.
“He had an oxygen tank and he just kind of held my boob, because that was in the script,” Lyonne recalled.
“He was supposed to be like, ‘The power of Christ compels you.’ I just remember being like, ‘Ah, this is the surrealism that André Breton, Salvador Dali were talking about,’” she added, reflecting on the strangeness of the experience.
As Lyonne remembered, Brando was “very chatty” and had his lines fed to him via an earpiece.
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“So, I had Brando with the earpiece and the hand on the boob, and the makeup, and ‘The power of Christ compels you,’ and not to curse, but, ‘Your mother sucks ***** in hell,’ and so on,” Lyonne added. “This was all happening at once, and I remember like, ‘You know, showbiz is all right.’ In that moment, showbiz was A-OK.”
After Brando’s departure, he was replaced by James Woods, which Lyonne recalled being “a little weird” but generally a “fine experience.”
Lyonne can currently be seen in the second season of Netflix comedy “Russian Doll”, which dropped on Friday, April 22.
