NWWITA – Episode 23 – Celebrating the 1 Year Of The Pod w/ Fear (1996)

September 17th 2024 was when I officially launched the first episode of my podcast Now What Was I Talking About? and so with that in mind I (especially after haven’t done a podcast episode in a minute whoops) I decided to revisit a movie that I watched when I was younger Fear (1996)!

Its one of those movies that just has lived with me as Mark Walhberg’s performance in this is so so creepy and there’s the added bonus of him and Reese Witherspoon dating at the time of this movie being filmed oof.

But before I get too far gone here’s the synopsis taken from IMDb:

“When Nicole met handsome, charming, affectionate David, he was everything. It seemed perfect, but soon she sees that David has a darker side. And his adoration turns to obsession, their dream into a nightmare, and her love into fear.”

The film was directed by James Foley who sadly passed away this year with the two sequels to 50 Shades – 50 Shades Darker and 50 Shades Freed being his last films. He was also a major collaborator of Madonna in the 80s and directed her in the film Who’s That Girl (1987). This was written by Christopher Crowe who has done a lot of writing in television like NCIS (2 episodes) Seven Days (1998-2001, 66 episodes) and The Untouchables (1993-1994, 42 episodes.

I didn’t touch on this in the podcast but Reese Witherspoon very recently talked about how she wasn’t fully in charge of one of the more sexually charged scenes in this film which is pretty unfortunate *shaking my head*. But it is from a larger article that touches on her growth as a person and where she’s at currently but I will put the quote here with the added context of the what prompted her to speak about this from the interviewer:

I ask Witherspoon about a film she made earlier in her career, Fear, the 1996 psychosexual thriller in which she starred alongside Mark Wahlberg. Witherspoon was 19 at the time. It’s an otherwise forgettable entry in the Witherspoon canon, but if you were around high school age when Fear came out, you probably saw it. If you did, you probably remember the roller-coaster scene. It’s a fairly tame sex scene in which Witherspoon’s character, Nicole, is digitally stimulated by Wahlberg’s character, David, who is her love interest. But the ingredients—two young actors ascending to peak popularity (Wahlberg, fresh off his 1992 Calvin Klein campaign, was in the process of launching his acting career), a theme-park ride, and the fact that you see a woman orgasm (still a rarity on-screen)—made for a scene that would imprint on countless teenage brains.

“I didn’t have control over it,” Witherspoon tells me matter-of-factly, noting that she requested a stunt double for the below-the-waist scenes. “It wasn’t explicit in the script that that’s what was going to happen, so that was something that I think the director thought of on his own and then asked me on set if I would do it, and I said no. It wasn’t a particularly great experience.”

I tell Witherspoon that I’m sorry that she was put in that position at such a young age, but it’s clear that she isn’t looking for any sympathy and that this story is just one of many that have shaped her. “I’m certainly not traumatized or anything by it, but it was formative,” she says. “It made me understand where my place was in the pecking order of filmmaking. I think it’s another one of those stories that made me want to be an agent for change and someone who maybe can be in a better leadership position to tell stories from a female perspective instead of from the male gaze.”

The original article can be found here.

Moving on, our cast of characters include:

Reese Witherspoon playing Nicole: