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Rough Night Star Ryan Cooper on Playing a Sexy Slain Stripper

Rough Night Star Ryan Cooper on Playing a Sexy Slain Stripper

Tony Duran
Photography: Tony Duran

The Aussie delivers the hottest performance of the summer—as a dead guy. 

Rough Night may be a calculated cross between Weekend at Bernie's and Bridesmaids, but it may also be the first movie to center on a hunky male corpse. The summer comedy--starring Scarlett Johansson, Kate McKinnon and Ilana Glazer--follows a bachelorette party that goes awry when one girl accidentally kills a hired male stripper.

That unfortunate soul is Ryan Cooper, a 31-year-old Australian actor and ex-model who spends most of the film in skivvies, being propped up and occasionally molested. "There was definitely an introduction to bodily awkwardness," says Cooper.

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In one memorable scene, he and McKinnon make out on a beach. "Well, if me passively lying there while she goes nuts on my face is classified as making out, yes," says Cooper, adding that the trick to playing dead is meditation. Still, it wasn't easy. "I had crabs coming out of the sand biting my back and Kate on top of me whispering and tickling me. It was very, very hard to remain composed."

So did he have any problem being (literally) objectified? "You know what? I think sex has been exploited a lot on both sides of the fence, male and female," Cooper says. "This is the girls getting back at us."

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