'Hit Man' Star Adria Arjona Talks Sex Scenes With Glen Powell

Adria Arjona and Glen Powell may have some very steamy scenes in “Hit Man,” but filming them was anything but sexy.

It all went wrong when they were shooting in a bathtub and someone added Dawn dish washing soap to the water. “That strips you of all your oils of your skin,” Arjona says on this week’s episode of the “Just for Variety” podcast. “That’s used for baby ducks when there’s an oil spill for God’s sake. We soaked in this bathtub for an hour and I get out of the tub and all of a sudden I dry myself and I can’t bend my knees because I have no oils.”

She was not only in pain, but she and Powell ended up covered in nasty rashes. But the show had to go on. “That was the day that we filmed all of our sex scenes – all of them with a crazy rash,” Arjona recalls, adding, “We were both in so much pain. We would just die laughing, ‘How much makeup do you have on your ass right now?’ I was like, ‘So much, it’s not even funny.’”

“Hit Man,” directed by Richard Linklater, follows an professor, Gary (Powell), working undercover with the New Orleans police department. Gary falls for a suspect, Madison (Arjona), when she tries to hire him to kill her abusive husband.

“We keep saying we had so much fun. People were taking it in a different direction,” Arjona says of the bedroom romps. “We had fun because it was so funny. We were both in pain with makeup all over this rash and it was funny.”

The dark comedy romantic thriller, in select theaters May 24 and available on Netflix June 7, was written by Linklater and Powell.

Arjona first grabbed Hollywood’s attention playing Dorothy Gale in the 2017 NBC series “Emerald City.” In 2022, she appeared in “Morbius” and starred in the “Father of the Bride” remake opposite Andy Garcia and Gloria Estefan. “Star Wars” fans know her as Bix in “Andor” with Diego Luna.

Tell me about the first time you met Glen.

Well, the first time I met Richard was over Zoom and he’s one of my favorite directors of all time. He kind of knew through that Zoom that he wanted to hire me and sort of told Glen like, “Oh, I really like her. I really want you guys to meet.” So our first meet was kind of a chemistry thing. We’re in a restaurant and we’re both doing dry January and 30 minutes into our meeting, Glen was like, “Can I please do this with you? Can we do this together? Can you be Madison? I want to do this movie with you.” And I was like, “Yes, I would love to. This is amazing.” He’s like, “Well, I think we should have some tequila.” So we said bye-bye to dry January.

Are we going to see a sequel?

That’s up to the audience. If it were up to me, throw me back in there. I love working with Rick and with Glen. Glen is the best co-star anyone could ask for. He’s so gracious and such a gentleman and is curious. And he doesn’t like winning on his own. He likes winning in a team. When you’re an actor and you’re in a scene with another actor and you’re doing romantic movies and romantic scenes, you need someone that wants to win with you and Glen is the definition of that. There’s no coincidence of why all of this is happening to him.

We’ve known since the start of “Andor” that it would only be two seasons. But how about a big spin-off for you?

I feel like a big spinoff could be later in my career. I’m trying to give job security to myself in the future. I’m trying to elongate it. I got a tattoo for Bix. My makeup artist from the show did it in my trailer.

What is it like hearing from young people who say, “Thank you. I see myself in the ‘Star Wars’ universe.”

It’s really emotional. When the first season premiered, the trailer had come out, maybe a couple days or a teaser had come out and I get to the premiere and there’s this wonderful, beautiful Latin woman in my costume. She had maybe 24 hours to create this costume. She started crying. She’s like, “I’m the biggest ‘Star Wars’ fan, but I had never seen a woman like myself in ‘Star Wars.’” I started crying. That’s had always been a dream of mine to be in ‘Star Wars,’ to be in that universe and to represent and not in a gimmicky way. I am not a Latin woman in ‘Star Wars.’ I’m just a woman in ‘Star Wars.’

Your dad [singer-songwriter Ricardo Arjona] has a history with the spotlight, with fame. When you told your dad you wanted to be an actor, what did he say?

I think my dad was really scared for me and he knows me so well and knew that this wasn’t a little thing. When I do something or say I’m going to do something, I really go for it. And I don’t like plan Bs. So I finished school, which is the promise that I made for him, but he’s always been a little scared and protective. I think he just went through it so much and went through so much rejection and he knows what that feels like, he really wanted it to all work out for me. And I think he was scared that it, not that he thought that it wouldn’t, but he was definitely a little more reserved than my mom. My mom when I told her was like, “I don’t know what color dress to wear to the Oscars.”

You’re also in “Blink Twice,” Zoë Kravitz’s directorial debut. What kind of director is she?

This script is a hard script for anybody to direct and she just nailed it. I watched the movie recently and I really loved it. I’m not going to talk too much about it, but I think seeing her as a director, I have a great deal of respect for her. She has such a specific eye and sees things so meticulously, when it comes aesthetically, comes to character development, when it comes to directing another actor, I would see her shift her directorial strategies depending on the actor that she was talking to. I think that’s because she’s an actress and is sympathetic with actors.

This interview has been edited and condensed. Listen to the full conversation on “Just for Variety” above or wherever you download podcasts.