17 Movie Moments From The Last 10 Years That Were Actually Improvised By The Actors On Set
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There are obviously some MAJOR spoilers ahead!
1.First, in Barbie (2023), when Barbie arrives at Ken's Mojo Dojo Casa House to ask him if she can still be his "long-term distance, low-commitment, casual girlfriend" and Ken yells, "Sublime," the line was improvised by Ryan Gosling while filming. Margot Robbie said she "wasn't prepared" for it on the day and started laughing.
Looking back on filming the moment, Margot added, "I wasn't prepared for that. That wasn't in the script, and to this day, that makes me laugh."
2.In Little Women (2019), when Laurie and Jo have their conversation on the hill, where Laurie continually interrupts her with, "I love you, Jo," all of those weren't in Greta Gerwig's original script but were added by Timothée Chalamet while filming.
When you read Greta's script, you can see that Jo was simply meant to just say everything uninterrupted to Laurie after he confesses his love, but in the finished product, Laurie is consistently saying, "I love you, Jo."
3.In Dune: Part Two (2024), when the Baron hands over control of Arrakis to Feyd-Rautha, the kiss shared between the two was improvised by Austin Butler during filming. He said that Stellan Skarsgård was "game for anything" and added, "It’s always about how you’re trying to affect somebody else."
Also in Dune: Part Two, Austin learned how to speak like Stellan, with the actor mimicking Stellan's real-life accent while crafting his own accent for Feyd-Rautha.
4.In A Quiet Place (2018), right before Lee dies, he signs to Regan how he's always loved her. The script originally just had Lee saying, "I love you," but while filming, Millicent Simmonds suggested to John Krasinski that he change the line to what you see in the final film. Millicent said that John cried upon hearing her suggestion.
Speaking about working closely with John on the sign language in the film, Millicent spoke about this moment, saying, "I changed some signs, too. At the end, when he signs, 'I love you,' I said I think he needs to say, 'I’ve always loved you,' because that covers the difficult period."
5.In Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021), when all three Peter Parkers are preparing to fight the villains and work together, Peter #3 tells the other two that he loves them. Andrew Garfield revealed that he improvised that line in the movie.
He said, "There’s a line I improvised in the movie, looking at [Maguire and Holland], and I tell them I love them. That was just me loving them."
6.Also in Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021), when Peter #3 comes through the portal for the first time and MJ wants to confirm that he's actually a Spider-Man, the hilarious moment when Zendaya throws bread at Andrew Garfield was unscripted.
On the Happy Sad Confused podcast, Andrew said, "At first, Zendaya picks up a candlestick or something to, like, threaten me with in that first scene where I come in, but then there was this basket of bread. That was her just going, 'Can I just throw bread at him?' and [director] Jon [Watts] was like, 'Yeah, throw bread at him.'"
7.In Saltburn (2023), the now-infamous grave scene, which features Oliver crying over Felix's grave and then proceeding to strip down, wasn't in the script but was improvised by Barry Keoghan.
Speaking about the moment, Barry said, "I wanted to see what Oliver would do next. I wanted to see what the next level of obsession was. And by that [I mean], I just wanted the camera to roll. Not to kind of preempt it or rehearse it, and what happened, happened. It was one take, and I think it was right. It moved the story forward."
8.In Killers of the Flower Moon (2023), there's a moment when Mollie calls Ernest a "coyote" in Osage, and he has a quick response saying she must've called him a "handsome devil." That exchange between Lily Gladstone and Leonardo DiCaprio was unscripted. Director and writer Martin Scorsese even kept in Lily's laugh after Leo's line.
Also, the moment when Mollie screams after learning her sister was killed in an explosion wasn't planned, according to cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto. He added that a lot of the last-minute changes in the movie are a result of Scorsese's trust in his actors and the way he made them a part of the process.
9.In Game Night (2018), when Annie watches as the bodyguard is sucked into the engine of an airplane and dies, Rachel McAdams's now-iconic, "Oh no, he died," was reportedly unscripted. Rachel's delivery of the line consistently goes viral and is often considered one of the funniest parts of the movie.
Rachel actually had no idea how popular this scene in Game Night is. When IndieWire told her about it, she said, "Tell my agent. I’m just kidding. That’s so funny, but wait, just that line or the whole scene?" She later added, "We were on a tarmac in the middle of Georgia, and it was probably about 4 in the morning, so that may have added to the feeling."
10.In Bad Moms (2016), the hilarious scene where Amy, Kiki, and Carla go into a grocery store and cause chaos was mainly unscripted, with the directors simply letting Mila Kunis, Kristen Bell, and Kathryn Hahn do whatever they wanted.
"Half the crazy stuff we got was just, Kathryn pulled something off the shelf or Mila would just do something crazy, and while I'd love to take a lot of credit for the scene, it's those three women just having a great time and being fearless," director and writer Scott Moore said.
One of the scripted moments was Carla's kiss with an employee, but director and writer Jon Lucas added, "I think a lot of the best stuff, you give a great comedic actor like Kathryn a direction and she's like, 'Okay, what can I add to this?'"
11.In The Hunger Games: Mockingjay — Part 2 (2015), the moment when Effie and Haymitch kiss toward the end of the film was unscripted. Elizabeth Banks revealed that she and Woody Harrelson planned the moment behind the scenes and then did it while shooting.
She said, "We decided to do it, and the director was like, 'I love it. Let’s try it again.' We also did it without a kiss, and we let him decide in the editing room, and we love that he kept it."
12.In The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes (2023), director Francis Lawrence and Rachel Zegler came up with Lucy Gray's deep bow during her reaping while on set filming as a nod to a similar moment in The Hunger Games with Katniss.
Francis told BuzzFeed he loved the idea that this meant Lucy's story had been passed on for generations, and Katniss could've heard about it. He said, "I came up with the idea with Rachel for her to do it on the day. I just thought that's a kind of cool idea to think that Katniss had heard through generations that there was a girl in the 10th Hunger Games that could've done this thing, and she's doing something she's heard about."
13.In Knives Out (2019), when Ransom tells his entire family one by one to "Eat shit," the original line in the script was actually "Fuck you." Director and writer Rian Johnson explained that in order for the movie to maintain a PG-13 rating, they had to trim down the use of the word "fuck." While trying to figure out what to change the line to, Chris Evans suggested, "I think a good 'Eat shit' always works," and Rian trusted him.
Rian explained that he really wanted to keep the movie at a PG-13 rating, saying, "When I was, you know, 10 to 13 years old, like in that range, I remember how much fun [the Agatha Christie movies] were, the whole family sitting down watching them together, and I realized before shooting, You know, I want this movie to be PG-13." In the end, they only get two "fucks" in the script.
14.In Thor: Ragnarok (2017), when Thor suggests that he and Loki do "get help," the moment wasn't scripted but something director and writer Taika Waititi came up with that day. Then Chris Hemsworth and Tom Hiddleston improvised the scene while filming.
Tom explained, ""It all came from Taika Waititi’s brilliant and inventive imagination. Taika came in in the morning and said, 'It would be really fun if you came into the room and pretended it was a game you used to play as kids.' As we worked it out, it was something completely improvised. It gives you such an insight into the way Taika works."
According to Taika, "about 80%" of Thor: Ragnarok was improvised. Of course, the other very popular improv moment in the movie is when Thor says he knows Hulk from work.
15.In Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022), Jamie Lee Curtis explained that in the universe where Evelyn and Deirdre have hot dogs for hands, there was no dialogue on the page, and instead it became an improvisation between herself and Michelle Yeoh. She said that the only thing written was that they were breaking up in this universe.
Speaking about filming the scene with Michelle, Jamie said, "When you break up with someone and you are sharing the things that you bought together ... so it became about a loofah, and for some reason it had to be benign. It had to be an object that would never have emotional resonance. It had to be a loofah. And the whole scene became about a loofah, that Deirdre was saying to Evelyn, although she bought the loofah in the relationship, she was leaving it because Evelyn had used it more. It was just a beautiful dance with her."
16.In Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015), there's a moment when Han Solo drops his jacket at the Starkiller base, and then Chewbacca hands it back to him, which confuses Han. This small but hilarious gesture was improvised by Joonas Suotamo, who plays Chewie.
He recalled being "proud" that it made it into the final cut, saying, "I’m pretty sure I improvised that. I gave the jacket to Han, and then [director] J.J. [Abrams] thought about it before realizing, ‘Oh, yeah, he has to have the jacket, since we’re going outside.’ So it was left in, and I was really happy about that. I might have come up with it during rehearsal first, but it was one of my only ideas that got to stay in the film." He added, "It’s so comedic that Chewbacca is worrying about Han’s jacket."
17.And finally, in The Menu (2022), because of how director Mark Mylod filmed the movie, the actors were always on set and constantly in the background while other scenes were unfolding. This meant that the actors, like Nicholas Hoult and Anya Taylor-Joy, were constantly told to improvise while they were in the background. This also gave The Menu the feeling of a one-room play.
Anya explained, "Something that Mark does was, he wanted us all onstage essentially the whole time and improvising because you never knew when you were going to be caught on camera, which was such a fascinating way of working." She added, "We were constantly on set improvising or watching everybody else around us, and it was such a supportive environment."
