Inside Amy Schumer‘s “Last F—able Day” sketch generated several million YouTube hits, a series of think pieces about Hollywood’s double standards and, for co-star Julia Louis-Dreyfus, an utter panic attack.
Writer-director Nicole Holofcener helmed the spring 2015 viral video in which Amy Schumer stumbles upon Louis-Dreyfus, Tina Fey and Patricia Arquette in a field where they’ve gathered to toast Louis-Dreyfus’ “last f—able day.” As she explains to Schumer, “In every actress’ life, the media decides when you finally reach the point when you’re not believably f—able anymore.” Fey adds that while nobody overtly tells an actress when that day arrives, there are signs: “You know how Sally Field was Tom Hanks’ love interest in Punchline, and then, like, 20 minutes later she was his mom in Forrest Gump?”
Louis-Dreyfus had worked with Holofcener on the 2013 indie darling Enough Said and didn’t hesitate to reteam on what seemed a humorous take on the industry patriarchy. But halfway through the day of filming, the actress admits in this week’s Hollywood Reporter cover story that she found herself in a complete panic. “I started to feel unbelievably paranoid that I was making fun of myself,” she says, “and wondering, was this really happening to me? Like, how meta is this moment in my life?”
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She continues, “I started to have a kind of soul-searching crisis in the middle of the day. And I didn’t know [the other women] well enough to bring it up, so I was just trying to be a good sport even though I was dying a little bit on the inside.”
Louis-Dreyfus has now had more than a year to process the reality that she and her fellow actresses had tackled that day, and she insists she’s doing all she can to change things for the women who come up after her. In fact, she’s quietly been seeking out projects with strong women at the center, and already has put Soldier Girls, about a trio of women who served in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, into development at HBO. If the timing works out, she’s keen on starring as one of those women, too.
And then, of course, there’s the part she’s playing on HBO’s Veep, the intrepid if at times reprehensible politician Selina Meyer. “I mean, I’m playing a powerful woman who’s middle-aged,” says Louis-Dreyfus, a smile washing over her face. “And who, at least I think, is still pretty f—able.”