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Matt starts praising Scarlett at 2:24
Scarlett Johansson was on The Today Show this morning to promote We Bought a Zoo, which is out in the US on December 23. Scarlett was wearing a royal blue sleeveless dress with black tights and black pumps. Her hair was styled in matronly shoulder length curls that looked dated to me. Anyway Matt Lauer pretty much kissed Scarlett’s ass the entire interview. You could tell that she was flattered by him, but it was a little cloying the way he kept heaping praises on her. It was all about how Scarlett handled her divorce and her nude photo scandal so well, and how she’s such a professional on set and not a diva. I wouldn’t call dating Sean Penn dealing well with a divorce, but it’s true that she hasn’t talked smack about her ex and has been gracious about Reynolds on the record. She knows what to say in interviews.
Matt: Many of the directors who’ve worked with you go out of their way to say how eager and willing you are to take direction. There are a lot of actresses at your payscale who aren’t as gracious.. why are you like that?
Scarlett: I think that making films is about collaborating. That’s why I love about it. It’s never about going in there and being rigid about what your ideas are… it’s open to interpretation and I always appreciate that kind of collaborative process.
Matt: This has been an interesting year for you… Obviously you got divorced, there was a photo hacking scandal. What have you learned about yourself in this year? And what have you learned about the business you’ve been in?
Scarlett: I’ve been really fortunate. I’ve found that I have had, even in times of crisis, a lot of love around. People have come out of all different dark corners to support [me]. I think I’ve been much more tolerant and much more patient.
Matt read this quote from Interview: “Johansson is coming off one of those years that young actresses seem to have frequently these days, but which she had, until now, miraculously managed to avoid. . But Johansson’s response to all of the added—and unwanted—attention she has received for her personal life has also been atypical. Instead of cloistering herself away or lashing out at the paparazzi, she pressed ahead with her business with a kind of unflappable grace.”
Scarlett: I just like the word unflappable. I find that there is a community on film sets and in this industry… it would seem kind of cutthroat, but to me I’ve been in the industry for 20 years and it has that kind of familial feel… When I’m at work I can’t pay attention to anything else but the job at hand.
I guess Today just doesn’t use sperm-brow Ann Curry to conduct fawning celebrity interviews in that dim style of hers. Somehow I feel cheated when it’s Matt Lauer kissing celebrity butt – he’s supposed to be the hard-assed one. Scarlett sounds smarter than most, though, I’ll give her that. Plus it’s probably true that she handled all those scandals very well, at least in her public responses to them. I wouldn’t go so far to praise her as Interview or Lauer did. We heard rumors that she was dating several questionable guys post divorce (and most recently Joseph Gordon Levitt although he’s awesome). Even if all those were casual or just rumors, she was definitely with Sean Penn for a while. But of course Matt Lauer barely mentioned her personal life, because Scarlett is so professional and hardworking. They should have just had Ann Curry interview her and act all faux concerned about how she was coping with the hacking scandal and being single.
