Rebecca Hall Admits It Can Be 'Hard Not to Laugh' While Filming “Godzilla x Kong” Movies (Exclusive)

"It was tough, but I take a kind of perverse pleasure in saying very serious lines to a tennis ball on a stick," jokes the actress

Rebecca Hall had a challenging time keeping a straight face while filming Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire.

The actress, 41, reprises her role as Dr. Ilene Andrews in the sci-fi sequel, a followup to 2021's Godzilla vs. Kong, also directed by Adam Wingard. In New Empire, Hall again shares the screen with giant CGI monsters, which can make for silly moments on set.

"When it comes to imagining Godzilla and Kong, that's tough," Hall tells PEOPLE. "That's tough, because more often than not it's a tennis ball on a stick."

"Actually," she continues, "at one pivotal moment when [Kaylee Hottle's character] Jia reaches across and touches Kong's hand, they literally had a foam hand with a pointy finger that they were just putting up towards her. That was hard not to laugh at."

Hall says her accomplished scientist, single mom character is a "pretty cool transition from damsel-in-distress archetypes to more 'lady in control in a leadership position' " for the King Kong canon.

Related: Rebecca Hall Jokes That Making Out with a Ghost in 'The' 'Night House' Reminded Her of High School

"I'm a very serious character and I take everything very seriously," she points out matter-of-factly about her "brave" Dr. Andrews character. "If I'm not taking things seriously, then I'm responding to people with deadpan humor — I'm the last person that can giggle ever in any situation, which is really hard."

"Especially" hard, she says, with funny costars like Dan Stevens and Brian Tyree Henry, who are "good friends of mine and literally make me laugh all the time until I'm crying."

"It was tough, but I take a kind of perverse pleasure in saying very serious lines to a tennis ball on a stick. I don't know, it's an interesting challenge," says Hall, adding, "I just save up the laughter and then laugh a lot when someone calls cut — and try not to take myself too seriously, even though the character is taking themselves very seriously."

Fans will also notice Andrews has an updated hairdo in The New Empire, something that was added to the script to accommodate Hall's style revamp at the time.

"I'm very restless with my style. I like to mix it up a lot and I'm always changing my hair regardless of what job is going on," she explains, recalling, "When I didn't know that this was going to happen and I got the call saying we're making another one, I was like, 'Yeah, okay, but my hair's a pixie cut and it's blonde.' "

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Hall remembers telling director Wingard, "I really don't want to wear a wig," and the filmmaker said they'd work the look into the story.

"Adam was like, 'No, it's really cool. It's like action and we should actually lean into it,' and [we] cropped it even more on the back and we just made a decision that it comes with Dr. Andrew's job promotion. She's got some boss energy, new haircut!"

And Hall "loved" another aspect of having short hair this time around. "It made hair-and-makeup super easy very early in the morning; it's just like you do this and then you're done. It was great!"

Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire is now in theaters.

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