Michael Cera Recalls Rihanna Slapping Him for ‘This Is the End’ Scene: ‘She Really Sent Me Flying’

Michael Cera’s This Is the End persona may have been fake but that memorable slap was not.

The Barbie actor, 35, played a fictionalized version of himself in the 2013 comedy, one who was a rude, cocaine-addicted version of the actor — and makes several enemies, including Rihanna.

At a star-studded house party at the beginning of the movie, Cera’s character slaps the singer, now 35, on the butt and she retaliates with a slap to the face.

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“Yeah, I mean she definitely hit me,” Cera recalled while breaking down the role for GQ. “But I really, I wanted that, you know?”

“I mean, I think it’s a lot funnier and a lot more convincing,” he said, adding that “a fake slap just doesn’t look good.”

Michael Cera in ‘This Is the End.’ He played a mean, fictionalized version of himself in the 2013 film.

Columbia/Kobal/Shutterstock 

The “Umbrella” singer did not hold back, hitting Cera “hard,” according to the actor. “She really sent me flying, and it was great,” he told GQ. “And now it’s on film forever, this pain that I experienced.”

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One of the film’s costars and co-directors, Seth Rogen also addressed the very real slap between Cera and Rihanna on Sway’s Universe just days after This Is the End hit theaters in 2013.

“In the script, Michael Cera slaps Rihanna’s ass and she doesn’t hit him back,” the actor, 41, told host Sway Calloway at the time.

“But he asked her, ‘Can I slap your ass for real?’ And she said, ‘You can slap my ass for real if I can slap you back in the face for real,’ ” Rogen said, adding that Cera agreed to her terms.

They did the slap “three or four times,” Rogen said, and on the fourth take, Rihanna “smacked the f—ing s—” out of Cera.

Michael Cera at a photo call for ‘Barbie.’.

Matt Winkelmeyer/WireImage)

“She cupped his ear and actually whacked out his equilibrium and he had to go lay down in his trailer for around half an hour,” he said.

“That’s the take we used in the movie. We didn’t add any sound to that or anything,” Rogen added, noting that Cera “was concussed, I think.”

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Cera said in a 2013 interview with Rolling Stone that he “encouraged” Rihanna to slap him back in the film.

“I mean, she hit me hard,” he told the outlet at the time. “But it was like what it feels like to get hit hard.”

He added: “I encouraged her to do it, though. I wanted her to hit me really hard.”

Cera recently opened up about not liking the attention that two of his earliest roles, Superbad and Juno, brought him in 2007. The Scott Pilgrim vs. the World actor told The Guardian that, following the films, he “didn’t know how to handle walking down the street.” 

“Fame makes you very uncomfortable in your own skin, and makes you paranoid and weird,” he told the outlet. “There were lots of great things about it, and I met a lot of amazing people, but there’s a lot of bad energies too, ones that I was not equipped to handle.”

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The actor also admitted he turned down certain jobs — ones “that would make me more famous,” like hosting Saturday Night Live — because of the “crisis” he was experiencing.

“I was really not enjoying the level of heat,” he said. “I really didn’t know if I was going to keep being an actor.”

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Source: HIS Education