He’s best known as an action star, but making this thriller forced Keanu Reeves into one of the most awkward sex scenes ever filmed.
Knock, knock. Who’s there? Just one of the most awkward sex scenes ever filmed.
When it came time to film Knock Knock, Keanu Reeves had 54 movies under his belt and had logged decades in front of the cameras. Defusing a bomb at 60 miles-per-hour? Bending the space time continuum dressed head-to-toe in black leather? Going on a revenge rampage whacking hundreds of baddies? Action star Reeves had it in the bag.
But when he turned up on day one of the Knock Knock shoot, Reeves had only ever shot a rare number of sex scenes and certainly never a raunchy threesome, in a shower, with two nubile actresses in their 20s, one of whom was the director Eli Roth’s fiancee.
Want more celebrity news? Download our new app to read plenty more
If you think you know Reeves, you have never seen him as he is in this 2015 horror thriller, with a dash of dark comedy. Far from playing his usual gunslinging hero, in Knock Knock (available to stream now on Tubi) Reeves is a devoted family man and all-round Good Guy who finds himself home alone, in his modernist glass masterpiece at the end of a remote cul-de-sac, on a dark and rainy night, when the doorbell rings. On his front step are two sodden young women and what is a Good Guy to do but invite them in and offer to dry their clothes?
(Knock Knock is available to stream on Tubi)
You can guess what happens next in this twisted morality tale.
Starring opposite Reeves are No Time to Die and Knives Out’s Ana de Armas and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood’s Lorenza Izzo, who was engaged to Roth at the time.
Reeves, appearing on the Jimmy Kimmel Show, opened up about the strange experience.
Was this scene, Kimmel asked, “more uncomfortable” than sex scenes usually are?
Reeves immediately shot back, teasingly, “not for me, Jimmy”. Roth, he said, had created a set with lots of trust and the trio of actors had rehearsed, but “eventually you have to like get naked and simulate and do”.
“I mean I wasn’t that guy who was like ‘hey Eli, your wife’s hot,’” Reeves said, mock-sleazily, joking he did not start the day saying, ‘I can’t wait for the scene, Eli! Look how amazing Lorenza looks today!’”
(Roth and Izzo married after the Knock Knock shoot in 2014 and split in 2018.)
Roth offered a far franker take on this unusual shoot, saying during the press tour, “admittedly it was weird”. When it came time for the cameras to roll, he and Izzo realised, “Okay, this is weirder than we thought it was going to be.”
The filmmaker has said that, despite his relationship with Izzo, “nobody gets special attention,” he told Fangoria. “Whatever our relationship is off set, as soon as we get to set, it’s all business.”
What helped was “it wasn’t a passionate love scene, it was more animalistic”, he has said.
When Reeves’ Good Guy succumbs, Roth wanted the tryst to be “almost over the top” and reminiscent of Basic Instinct.
“I didn’t want it to be fun, I wanted it to be very stylised and very surreal,” he told Fangoria.
The filmmakers faced another challenge with Reeves – his natural charm and suave was too much for his suburban Good Guy character. The movie’s co-writer Nicolás López has said they had to help Reeves learn how to play “a normal guy”.
“We even had to dial down his cool and tell him, ‘Keanu, this is how a normal guy interacts with two hot girls!’” López told rogerebert.com.
Thankfully, that was one lesson that did not stick.
(Knock Knock is available to stream on Tubi)
