Yahoo Lifestyle 13 Devastating Scenes That Are So Good, But You Might Not Know They Were Improvised By The Actors
There are obviously MASSIVE spoilers ahead for several TV shows and movies!
1.First, 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."
2.In The Last of Us Season 1, Episode 6 (2023), when Joel gives his emotional monologue to Tommy about his fear of failing Ellie, Pedro Pascal added in one of the most heartbreaking lines. "'All I know is that when I wake up, I know I've lost something,' that was something from Pedro directly," showrunner Neil Druckmann revealed.
Showrunner Craig Mazin added, "That notion that when you wake up, you just have a feeling that you've lost something. It's so beautiful, and it's so confessional. And this is not at all like something we saw from Joel in the game. This is different. This is sadder, I think. It's a little more broken down, and it's a little more upsetting."
Director Jasmila Žbanić, who directed this episode, also told Variety, "[Pedro and Gabriel] would be reading it, act, repeat, and trying different stuff. They also suggested some changes, so it was very deep for both of them in each scene. It was so beautiful because it's a very long scene in the shoe shop."
3.And, in The Last of Us Season 1, Episode 9 (2023), when Anna holds Ellie after giving birth, her saying, "Oh, you're so tough," wasn't scripted. Showrunner Craig Mazin revealed it was Ashley Johnson's "natural maternal response," and it ended up being his favorite line in the scene. Ashley also voiced and did the motion capture for Ellie in The Last of Us video games.
Speaking about getting to play Ellie's mom, making it a very full-circle moment from bringing Ellie to life in the video games, Ashley said she "instantly burst into tears" upon Neil asking her to play Anna. She added, "I was nervous, but I feel so happy that I'm able to bring this character to life and be the first character and person in Ellie's life that fights for her to live."
Neil Druckmann said it was important to have Ashley play Anna because she is Ellie, saying, "Ellie is [Ashley] in so many ways. We wrote that game kind of live, organically. [Ashley] was cast, and [she] helped shape that character significantly."
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 Succession Season 4, Episode 3 (2023), when Shiv, Roman, and Kendall hug following Shiv's press conference announcing Logan's death. The hug was not in the original script, but something Sarah Snook, Kieran Culkin, and Jeremy Strong instinctually did while filming.
Director Mark Mylod explained that several moments from this monumental episode were unscripted, including the three-way hug, the awkward hug between Roman and Connor, and Kendall trying to find Shiv at the wedding to tell her about Logan.
Mark added, "When Jeremy went downstairs to find Sarah, he didn’t know where Sarah was, so he had to look for her. It seems quite petty, but when you get into the edit, you get the sense of those characters discovering the moment as [they] go."
6.In The Walking Dead Season 7, Episode 1 (2016), when Rick, Glenn, Abraham, Maggie, Daryl, and the rest of the group meet Negan for the first time, Michael Cudlitz improvised Abraham's now iconic line while Negan is bashing his head.
In an interview, Jeffrey Dean Morgan recalled the moment, saying, "It's rare we kind of get to play with words a lot, but when Mike kind of got on his knees, and he said 'suck my nuts,' and I got to kind of respond to that in a Negan way… It's just is a moment that I’ll never, ever forget in my whole life."
He added, "I still to this day get baseball bats to sign...that say 'suck my nuts,' and it makes me fall on the fucking floor every time."
7.In The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes (2023), when the tributes enter the arena for the Hunger Games, Sofia Sanchez instinctually grabbed Rachel Zegler's hand, and the moment between Wovey and Lucy Gray made the final cut.
In an interview, Sofia said, "When we were walking, they pushed Wovey, and I was like, 'I want to keep holding Lucy Gray!' It was improvised, but they kept it. They let me be on the spot. That was an amazing scene."
8.In House of the Dragon Season 1, Episode 10 (2022), Matt Smith was the person who had the idea on set that Daemon should be the person to tell Rhaenyra that Luke had been killed.
"When we got on set to rehearse, it has to be known, it was Matt Smith, in a turn of fucking genius, who offered the idea that Daemon should give Rhaenyra the news while we're both walking away from camera, towards the fireplace," Emma D'Arcy revealed.
Emma added, "It was a sublime choice, and I could see it instantly. We've sort of touched on it, but I think losing a child, losing her son, it reframes grief immediately."
9.In Euphoria Season 2, Episode 5 (2022), when Rue and her mom fight after her mom finds the drugs hidden in her room, the fight was improvised by Zendaya and Nika King. "[The script] said one line [of stage direction]: 'Rue and her mom have a fight,'" Zendaya recalled.
"So I'm thinking, okay, I'll slam the door, or whatever, but this isn't what Sam [Levinson] had in mind," Zendaya recalled. "He wanted us to improv the scene. He said, 'I want you guys to go at one another's necks. Just go as hard as you want to go. If she goes hard, you go harder.'"
Zendaya said that because she's a "very calm person who doesn't argue," she found the scene challenging because she would "never say" those kinds of things to a parent or anyone. She added, "So, having to put myself in that kind of situation and say and do those things, that was one day when I felt sick. I was like, I was going to vomit; I was lightheaded."
10.In Past Lives (2023), when Hae Sung and Nora are standing outside waiting for his Uber, director and writer Celine Song revealed that Greta Lee and Teo Yoo didn't know exactly when the car would show up. So, some of the subtle, and heartbreaking, moments where they just stand in each other's company one last time were unscripted.
Speaking about the important final scene, director and writer Celine Song, whose real life inspired the movie, said, "I knew that when [Nora] was walking home, she has to cry, but she's not crying for the whole of the film. So this is the moment that she's alone for the first time almost in the film. And she is able to allow herself to grieve like that. That walk is about the grief for the little girl that she never got to grieve."
11.In Dead to Me Season 1, Episode 9 (2019), Linda Cardellini came up with the line Judy utters after finding out that Abe died and she didn't get to say goodbye. Creator Liz Feldman said, "That just came out of Linda. I don't know where it came from, but it certainly felt like it came from a very deep, real place."
Liz added, "If I remember correctly, we shot that scene on the last night of production. Whenever we were shooting, I asked the director not to yell, 'Cut!' until I felt like scenes were over – even if the dialogue is over, that doesn't mean the scene's over."
From the beginning, Liz knew Abe was going to die, saying, "It's a show about grief and loss. So I purposely put in a character who's 89 years old, who Judy has this really special relationship with. We have friends, whether they're 36 or 89, and the one fact of life, as we all know, is everybody dies."
12.In Avengers: Infinity War (2018), Elizabeth Olsen and Paul Bettany improvised Wanda and Vision's final goodbye before Wanda destroys the Mind Stone. Before filming the scene, Elizabeth and Paul talked a lot about what their characters mean to each other.
Paul said what was helpful in filming this important Wanda and Vision scene was having "a fantastic partnership that is just filled with trust and respect."
13.And finally, in Avengers: Infinity War (2018), Tom Holland came up with Peter saying, "I don't wanna go" before he turned to dust in front of Tony Stark. When Tom wants to make himself cry on command, he repeats a phrase over and over again, and that's what inspired this.
Tom explained that they did a long improvisation during the first take, and it "sparked a great idea." Eventually, they reworked the scene, and this iconic moment was born.
