Why Alison Brie's Full-Frontal Nude Scene In Somebody I Used To Know Is So Personal
"Somebody I Used to Know" is an especially intimate rom-com, in part because it was co-written by husband-and-wife team Alison Brie and Dave Franco under Franco's direction. "The whole thing just has us feeling nostalgic for when we first met," Franco told Indiewire.
The film stars Brie as Ally, a reality TV producer who finds herself in a tailspin when she loses her job. While visiting her hometown in Washington, Ally runs into her ex, Sean (Jay Ellis), on the weekend of his wedding. What unfolds is more complicated than a typical rom-com arc. Sean's partner, Cassidy (Kiersey Clemons), is a lot like Ally was 10 years prior — free-spirited, ambitious, and at risk of being creatively stifled by her relationship.
Another intimate detail about the movie? It features a full-frontal nude scene of Brie and Clemons gleefully streaking on a golf course. For Brie, the scene had very personal roots. "That was an early addition to the storyline because I had a real penchant for streaking in my college years," the actress told The Hollywood Reporter. "I kind of took a step away from that, but, in more recent years, I've gotten back into it."
Somebody I Used to Know reveals some naked truths
Dave Franco confirmed that his wife's predilection towards streaking had indeed come back in full force. "She did it in the hotel right before we got here," Franco said in the same Hollywood Reporter interview. An Instagram post corroborates the tale, with a nude Alison Brie trying to alleviate her husband's pre-premiere jitters. "Get out of the hall," he urges in the video, with Brie retorting, "I've done three laps already!"
For Franco and Brie, nudity was more than a source of levity, or in Brie's case, a walk down memory lane. It's also crucial to Ally's self-discovery. At the end of "Somebody I Used to Know" (spoilers incoming!), Ally reconnects with her passion for documentary filmmaking on a project about a nudist colony. To put her interview subject at ease, Ally — as well as the rest of her crew — eschews her own clothes.
"[The nudity] became this perfect metaphor for Ally's journey as she goes through the movie, essentially trying to find her way back to her essence, the most bare form of who she is as a person," Brie continued.