Jenna Fischer just wasn't feeling it when shooting a sexy scene with Will Ferrell in the 2007 ice-skating comedy Blades of Glory — or rather, she couldn't feel much of anything at all.
On the latest episode of the Fly on the Wall podcast, the longtime star of The Office looked back on filming her seduction scene with Ferrell and recalled being covered in so many layers of costuming and makeup that her tactile senses felt impaired.
"Will was so polite when we shot that scene, because he has to grab my boobs several times," Fischer told podcasts hosts Dana Carvey and David Spade. "But what was crazy about it was I probably had more clothes on in that scene, where I look like I'm just in a nightie, than I normally wear. Because they put you in Spanx and then a corset and then a thing, and they painted my body with makeup. I mean, I felt so covered."
The layers were a lot to contend with.
"It's like I was wearing body armor," said Fischer, who noted that the movie was filmed before intimacy coordinators were commonplace on Hollywood productions. "So I was kinda like, 'Maybe wink when you grab 'em, because I can feel nothing.'"
Directed by Will Speck and Josh Gordon, Blades of Glory stars Ferrell and Jon Heder as rival figure skaters Chazz Michael Michaels and Jimmy MacElroy, who are banned from the sport and forced to team up to exploit a loophole and get back on the ice. Fischer portrays Katie Van Waldenberg, Jimmy's love interest, who is coerced by her siblings — played by Amy Poehler and Will Arnett — into trying to seduce Chazz in an effort to break the duo up.
For Fischer, working alongside Ferrell and Poehler — who, like Carvey and Spade, are distinguished Saturday Night Live alums — was "terrifying."
By then she had been acting professionally for about a decade on TV shows such as Undeclared and Six Feet Under and in movies including Employee of the Month and The 40-Year-Old Virgin — the latter of which starred the actor who played her Dunder Mifflin boss on The Office, Steve Carell.
Listen to Fischer's full Fly on the Wall episode above.
