Joaquin Phoenix Fainted While Filming Beau Is Afraid, Ari Aster Reveals
Joaquin Phoenix is a talented performer who really commits to his roles, but apparently he went just a little too hard on the set of his most recent film: Ari Aster's surrealist black comedy "Beau is Afraid." At a surprise April Fool's screening of the film in New York, which was supposed to only be a 10-minute preview and a showing of the director's cut of "Midsommar," Aster shared some behind-the-scenes stories about filming such an intense story. During the Q&A, moderated by Emma Stone and attended by /Film's Lex Briscuso, Aster told a story about one day on set where Phoenix was so engaged in the moment that he actually fainted!
Fans of Aster's know he's a fairly demanding director whose storytelling style requires his actors to go to real emotional extremes. During a pivotal scene in "Midsommar" where the protagonist has an emotional breakdown and the other women gather around to turn her grief into a chorus, star Florence Pugh found herself unable to stop sobbing and wailing after Aster called "cut." The scene was incredibly intense and she was really feeling it, which can't be easy even if it's pretend. While only the lucky few at the advance screening can guess exactly which scene made Phoenix faint, we did get a few more details from Aster on what happened.
A dedicated scene partner
In Aster's third feature, Phoenix plays a man who must go on "an epic odyssey to get home to his mother," and the trailer doesn't really give much more insight into the plot beyond that. The film is described as a "tragicomedy" — which I could argue applies to both of his previous films, "Midsommar" and "Hereditary," as well — but at least one scene was intense enough to cause Phoenix to faint. Funnily enough, the camera wasn't even focused on Phoenix, but on his costar, Patti LuPone, who plays Beau's mother:
"There was a scene that was very intense for Patti and it was a shot that was on Patti, it was not on him and all of a sudden he fell out of frame. I was really pissed 'cause it was a really good take. It felt confusing so I went around the corner and he was collapsed. I knew it was bad because he was letting people touch him and people were tending to him and he was allowing it. The point is that he fainted in somebody else's take, he wasn't on camera and he was helping them, he was in it for them to the point where he collapsed. It's very poetic that he collapsed in somebody else's shot."
It sounds like Phoenix is a lot like me when I have a clumsy moment and I refuse to let people help me up because I'm embarrassed to have the coordination of a baby moose, but if he was just lying there and letting people tend to him, that's one gnarly fall. But what could have happened? Could an acting performance — an off-camera one, no less — really be that intense?
It's all about circulation
The most common cause of fainting is a rapid drop in blood pressure and blood rushing from the brain, and there are tons of reasons it can happen. Standing with your knees locked can do it, extreme physical situations can do it, and intense emotional experiences can do it. Hopefully Phoenix checked in with a doc because fainting is never good under any circumstances, but it is a pretty common occurrence that can happen to just about anyone. While it's entirely possible that he locked his knees, I'm choosing to believe that he fainted from the sheer brilliance of LuPone's performance.
Based on early reactions to the movie, it sounds like "Beau Is Afraid" will be an intense experience for audiences as well. When Emma Stone commented that the film "feels like you're spending your entire lifetime with this man," Aster affirmed: "Yeah, I want you to, like, go through his guts and come out of his butt."
Phoenix is a dedicated actor who really gives his performances 110%, whether he's playing a killer clown in "Joker" or a guy who falls in love with a computer program in "Her," but I'm definitely curious to see what he brings to an Ari Aster film when "Beau is Afraid" hits theaters on April 14, 2023.