Andrew Barth Feldman spent a whole summer being (badly) seduced by Jennifer Lawrence

The 21-year-old musical theatre actor – who led Broadway’s ‘Dear Evan Hansen’ at the age of just 16 – steals the show in the year’s funniest comedy, ‘No Hard Feelings’. He talks to Adam White about nude scenes, age-gap backlash and emerging from personal tragedy

‘If the whole world had to swoon over me, I’d be like, you definitely should have found somebody else’ (Photo by Stephanie Diani, grooming by Erin Anderson, styling by Brian Meller)

For Andrew Barth Feldman, a 21-year-old musical theatre actor making his major-movie debut, saying yes to the ribald Jennifer Lawrence comedy No Hard Feelings was a no-brainer… once he got used to knowing absolutely everyone would see him in his birthday suit.

“When you first become an actor, in your head you can’t help but wonder, like, ‘Would I ever get naked for a movie?’,” he whispers, as if letting me in on an industry secret. “Like if I ever get asked to… would I be comfortable doing that?” To cut a long story short, he was. That is indeed him clinging to the top of a speeding vehicle as naked as the day he was born. Still, he had the last-minute jitters. “We had intimacy coordinators, it was a closed set, and it was truly as safe as it could be but just as a bodily thing, it was so, so weird. It’s like your whole body exists for the movie.” He was just relieved his nudity was meant to be ridiculous. “Oh god, if the whole world had to swoon over me, I’d be like, you definitely should have found somebody else.”

In No Hard Feelings, Lawrence’s character Maddie is paid by a pair of affluent Long Islanders to seduce their awkward 19-year-old son Percy before he goes off to college. Pull him out of his shell, be his girlfriend for a few weeks, then send him on his way. Deflowering sweet, romantic Percy, however, is more of a challenge than she first envisages.

Today, Feldman is sharply dressed in a studded jacket in a central London hotel; his hair swoops up. Giggling throughout our conversation, he has a toothy smile, energetic eyebrows and the uncanny ability to make everyone in the room feel ancient. When I tell Feldman that Hollywood doesn’t make many big, glossy comedies for cinemas anymore, he admits that he can’t remember a time when they weren’t a rarity otherwise confined to streaming – he only remembers seeing Anchorman 2 in cinemas when he was 11. As I turn to dust in front of him, Feldman elaborates: “On set there was always this sense of ‘everyone needs to laugh more’. And you saw that when the first trailer came out. There was this wave of people saying, ‘Oh god, I can’t wait to feel this again in a movie theatre’.”

There was another wave of people, though, who became armchair critics. By nature of its premise, No Hard Feelings has also been trailed by a degree of hand-wringing. “Isn’t this creepy?” has become a common refrain. Along with: “This is a horror movie,” or “This wouldn’t have been made if the genders were reversed,” or “Is Jennifer Lawrence grooming that poor boy?” Which… sure. But it’s also incredibly funny seeing her repeatedly fail at it.

“I think we all had a sense that this is a controversial premise,” Feldman admits. “But the film never condones the things that Jennifer’s character does or that my character’s parents do. This is a movie about flawed people and it’s a cringe comedy. You’re meant to cringe! You’re meant to sit with those uncomfortable feelings.” He’s thought a lot about the simmering backlash. “I do fear that we’re getting – or have gotten – to a place where societally we don’t like to sit with those feelings [through] movies, and especially in comedy. Obviously, on social media, we’re rewarded in numbers by having the most inflammatory take on something before we even know what it’s actually like. But I think if there was ever a real sense of panic about [the premise], we wouldn’t have made the movie.”

As much as we’ve evolved socially, there’s still this inherent pressure for young men to be sexual

Plus, he adds, No Hard Feelings does have an important message to it – specifically that too many young men are asked to emulate outmoded ideas about masculinity. “As much as we’ve evolved socially, there’s still this inherent pressure for young men to be sexual,” he says. “Or at the very least to meet a certain expectation of having sex by a certain age, or to be sexual by a certain age – if they even want to be sexual at all. I think we have much more vocabulary now to talk about our emotions than we did in years past, but that pressure still exists. If this movie normalises anything, I hope it’s wanting to find love and connection, because that’s really what we all want. And I think men, especially, get asked to shut that down and not prioritise it.”

Feldman and Lawrence bonded instantly during their first chemistry read. It’s replicated on screen, the two sourcing a lightly chaotic comic rhythm of seduction met by discomfort. “We quickly realised that we’re both most comfortable once we’ve overshared,” he laughs. “So day one of shooting, we were telling each other our deepest, darkest secrets.” He adores her. “It’s amazing that she’s become this very special person in my life, who I think is gonna be in my life now for a very long time.” He adds that it’s only on the film’s press tour that he’s realised that there are two distinct versions of his co-star: his buddy Jen, and screaming-fans-outside-the-hotel-we’re-currently-in JENNIFER LAWRENCE. “She’s still one of my closest friends, but when we’re on camera together doing interviews, I’m very aware that people are gonna be watching us and saying, that’s Jennifer Lawrence and this…” He stammers for the right word. “Muppet!”

Odd couple: Andrew Barth Feldman and Jennifer Lawrence in ‘No Hard Feelings’ (Macall Polay/Columbia Pictures)

Before No Hard Feelings, Feldman’s biggest claim to fame was being – aged just 16 – the youngest actor to assume the starring role in the acclaimed musical Dear Evan Hansen on Broadway. Originated by Ben Platt – who reprised the role in an ill-fated 2021 film adaptation – Evan is a high-school outcast who fakes a correspondence with a recently deceased classmate. Feldman caught the eye of the show’s casting directors after winning a Jimmy Award – basically the Tonys for school musicals across the USA – for his Long Island high school’s production of Catch Me If You Can, and says he only stood out in the room because he basically was Evan Hansen.

“It wasn’t a show I was putting on,” he recalls. “I was sweating. I was nervous. I was this kid who didn’t know yet what was going on with him, playing this kid who didn’t know yet what was going on with him. I think part of the phenomenon of seeing me in the show was that I wasn’t ready for it. You weren’t seeing an actor try to recall what it was like when they were a teenager, you were seeing an actor in real time trying to figure himself out.”

Transformative: Feldman during a performance of Broadway’s ‘Dear Evan Hansen’ in 2019 (Broadway World/Shutterstock)

Between leaving the show in 2020 and filming No Hard Feelings, he’s had other roles – notably a recurring gig as a French foreign exchange student on Disney’s High School Musical: The Musical: The Series, and as anxious chef Alfredo Linguini in the instantly viral, very unauthorised Disney/Pixar spoof Ratatouille the Musical. But it was Evan Hansen that left the biggest mark. Not only was it professionally transformative, but it was also an experience marked by tragedy: seven months into Feldman’s year-long run, his mother died following a sudden illness.

“It’s not something I don’t like talking about,” he says. “It’s actually wonderful to talk about, because she was so amazing. She was not a stage mom, or somebody really pushing me into the light or anything. She was actually very fearful of it, that I wouldn’t be stable and all of these things.” She ended up coming to every Dear Evan Hansen show for the whole first month of his run. Later, after his mother died, Feldman received an email from Justin Paul, one of the Evan Hansen composers, which read: “Your biggest dream happened when you were 16 years old, and she got to see it. That’s not an accident.”

To this day, and whenever he feels anxious on a set or unsure about whether or not he can play a character or film wacky nude scenes, Feldman remembers a pivotal moment with his mother on the drive back home the first night he was in Evan Hansen. He’d signed his contract, was committed to the part for a year, but knew that his mum had been terrified. “I was so scared of what she was going to say after she saw the show, but as we get in the car, she’s like: ‘Yeah, you can do that – you’re gonna be fine.’” He gathers himself. “It was like her little stamp of approval. And that stuck with me.”

‘No Hard Feelings’ is in cinemas from 21 June