‘Step Brothers’ Star Recalls Improvising Raunchy Sex Scene on the Fly

On the latest episode of Jesse Tyler Ferguson’s podcast Dinner’s On Me, Agatha All Along star Kathryn Hahn recalled improvising a raunchy sex scene at the spur of the moment with John C. Reilly for the 2008 movie Step Brothers.

The scene comes about midway into Adam McKay’s iconic comedy, when Alice (Hahn) corners Dale (Reilly) in the men’s restroom after he punches out her smarmy husband, Derek (Adam Scott), an act which unleashes Alice’s feral side. McKay “wrote something genius and hilarious” for the scene in the script he co-authored with Will Ferrell and Reilly, but according to Hahn they were encouraged to “just roll” with whatever happened on set. That, in turn, birthed one of the movie’s most memorable sequences.

"That whole scene when I tell him I'm gonna shove him in my vagina [was improvised],” Hahn revealed. “Kids, I hope you're listening. That was all not really in the script," she continued. “I mean, that came from the deep recesses of a recovering Catholic. I always take it on.”

Hahn also revealed that another scene in the movie, in which she and Dale plot Derek’s assassination. "Like, we went down the darkest rabbit [hole]," Hahn recalled. “I mean, that was such a specific time in comedy," she said of the high-raunch, improv-centric brand of Judd Apatow-inspired movies that proliferated in the late aughts.

Though Hahn had appeared in Anchorman and several other high-profile movies before Step Brothers, the 2008 comedy proved to be her breakthrough into Hollywood. In addition to her role in the Marvel universe, she’s appeared in Bad Moms (2016), Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018), and Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery.

Step Brothers is available to rent on Amazon Prime Video and all other major rental platforms. You can download new episodes of Dinner’s On Me podcast here.