When, for example, Bosworth describes the scene in which Skarsgård’s Charlie, an aggressive farmhand and Amy’s high school sweetheart, rapes her, she says, “I told Alex not to worry about me, to just go for it. I said, I need you to lose yourself in this moment. And it was actually violent. He’s a huge guy. When he was ripping off my clothes in front of a room filled with men, even though I knew it was make-believe, it was still incredibly violating and terrifying. The panic you see flooding me in that rape scene is real.” Marsden remembers how tense things became leading up to that moment. “They’d definitely marked it on their calendars,” he says. “Earlier that week, they both kind of dropped off the map. They had vacant expressions on their faces—not in their scenes but socially. You could tell it was looming over them.” And afterward? Laughing, he says, “Afterward it was beers again.”
Even though they filmed the scene well before becoming a real-life couple—at that point she and Skarsgård, along with the rest of the cast, were still getting acquainted over drinks at the Stray Cat, a Shreveport dive they frequented—Bosworth felt comfortable enough in the arms of her on-screen assailant to endure the two days that were required to capture the simulated rape. “Alex is so kind and so dedicated and so incredibly professional,” she says. “He’s got this rare, wonderful control and stillness that you notice in a lot of old movie stars. He looks you in the eye. I feel incredibly lucky to have had that type of man on this movie.”