- Hi I'm Jennifer Lopez
and this everything I did in a day
on the set of Hustlers.
[upbeat music]
I'm here to talk about my new movie Hustlers
and my character, Ramona.
Becoming Ramona, every day,
I think when I got to the set every day,
it was about putting on the hair, the tattoos, the piercing,
putting on her clothes, her kind of vibe,
getting into that mindset.
It was a lot that went into Ramona,
putting on the tattoo of her daughter's name,
which you actually never see in the movie, right here,
was also a big part of it because,
Ramona is a lover, she's a maternal character,
she's a nurturing character.
To sisters!
- [Women] To sisters.
- Only thing she loves, maybe, more is the money,
which is what made her such an interesting character,
is that she was a very loving, nurturing person
but at the same time she was a savage
and she'd take you down in a minute,
so that was a lot of fun too, to play.
I do the same thing every day,
work out, take a bath, head to the set,
they give me like two hours for hair and makeup,
I make the hair and makeup people do it in an hour,
I know exactly what everything's gonna take,
I've just been doing this a long time. [laughs]
I just go out there and once I start working,
I'm pretty much non-stop,
I don't even go back to the trailer,
I just say on the set all day long
watching everything that's happening, staying in it,
and then if we have a long break, at lunch,
I'll go to lunch and chill in the trailer.
[whistling]
- [Woman] Just switch, and wrap.
- I knew the whole entire shoot was kind of leading up
to me doing the pole dance, which was at the end of filming.
We shot this movie, I think, in 29 days,
which was a miracle,
and for six weeks before the movie even started
I was training for this pole dance,
which is Ramona's big entrance in the film,
the first time that you see her.
That day, I was ready, I was prepared,
I knew my chorography,
I knew everything,
I wanted my body to be warmed up and loose,
I needed that, so I went to the gymn,
it takes a lot of core strength
and a lot more than you would think
to walk in these women's shoes and do what they do
every day and every night.
So I got there probably early morning,
warmed up some more, camera blocked it,
me and Lorene we had talked about shooting it, like a stunt,
so having a lot of cameras going,
because I told her, I'll be able to do this,
but I wont' be able to do it a hundred times,
just my physical body, it was just too hard,
flipping your body over and spinning around,
and falling down, I was like,
we're going to have a limited,
I'll keep doing it, until I can't any more,
but, I can't [laughs]
do it forever.
So we set it up like a stunt.
We shot it with all the cameras facing this way,
and the side and then we shot it from behind,
and the side so we kind of covered it 360,
high and low, overhead,
so we did it many, many times but,
again at one point I was like,
okay I can't do that part any more,
do we have to do that part,
she goes, no, no we got that part, we got that part.
Then at the end I went and took a look at it,
to make sure that she had certain things covered,
or if there was something that I wanted to do better,
then I went into the trailer
and put ice on my shoulder.
For me, even when I'm on the set
I try to concentrate on the character,
my family, Alex and the kids know,
they can call me any time,
if I'm literally in front of the camera
is the only time I wont' take the call,
and then it's the minute they yell cut,
somebody tells me, the kids called, Alex called,
and I called them right back, that never goes away,
you're a mom no matter what.
I talk to them, a thousand times a day,
in the morning, at night, if I'm on the set,
if they're in school, just depending on where we are,
if they're in town with me,
obviously I go into their rooms when I get home,
they always tell me, make sure you come into my room,
come kiss me, come check on me,
and I take pictures so they know I came in there,
and I send it to them in the morning, and they see it,
in case they're gone before I get up
or I'm gone before they get up
and we just stay very connected that way.
In between scenes I just really try to mellow,
stay in the moment, because I take time
to set up the shots,
sometimes you're sitting there waiting for an hour,
of all the props that the prop master bought me
there was a blinged out lighter, that I would hold,
every day, sometimes I'd smoke, one of the cigarettes
or something and just kind of stay in the mindset of Ramona
and it was funny, the prop master knew right away,
that that got me into Ramona
so even in scenes where I wasn't smoking or doing anything,
she just hand me the lighter,
all of sudden it was different person.
Every single day I carry around my bling-y cup,
that was given to me for my birthday a couple of years ago,
now I make one for every single shoot I'm on,
so have my Hustlers bling-y cup, [laughs]
it's just water in there.
I drink a cup of coffee in the morning
and then water all day long,
everybody's like, what do you have in that cup,
you drink it all day long. [laughs]
I don't know if they thought I had like alcohol in there,
just a little bit throughout the day to keep me going,
no, no, no, it's just water.
That day we shot only the first few hours was the dance.
It was actually the day that we had all the girls,
doing all of the locker room scenes,
so we had Lizzo on the set, Cardi on the set,
Constance on the set, Lili, Keke, Trace,
the whole cast and it was so much fun,
so luckily I was exhausted after doing the dance
but then I was kind of energized because,
it was like being in school, like in high school,
and all the girls were in locker room
and we were just having a ball
and it was Cardi and Lizzo's first day on the set
and so it was exciting.
We started in the morning and we finished around,
I would say three in the morning,
it was a long shoot day. [laughs]
Depending on where we were shooting at the end of the day,
it would take me 10 minutes to get home
or an hour to get home,
depending on how far outside the city we were shooting.
Once I get home, honestly, I just wash off.
When you're doing a movie,
it pretty much consumes your life.
That little world, for that little amount of time.
If you're lucky enough to be on the set everyday,
and that's the job that you have,
which I did in this movie,
you just are in it, you're in it,
you've got just a few hours to yourself
to kind of rejuvenate and sleep
and try to be your best again the next day.
For me, probably sleep is the most important thing.
That's the one thing I don't let get interrupted.
If I have an early call, I'll be in bed early.
They give you about a 12 hour turn around
but usually it's more like 10. [laughs]
Or eight, and so you just have to be disciplined,
I have to be disciplined about it,
I come home and I just got to sleep.
I don't got to take no melatonin, [laughs]
I do nothing, I don't have to read a book,
I don't need a mediation app,
I hit that pillow and I'm out,
it's over, she's done for the day. [laughs]