Original-Cin Q&A: The End of Sex's Emily Hampshire and Jonas Chernick on their decade-apart sex romps
It’s been a decade since Jonas Chernick and Schitt’s Creek’s Emily Hampshire made an, ahem, “sex film” together.
In 2013 we saw them in the romp, My Awkward Sexual Adventure. And now they’ve reunited for The End of Sex, which made its debut at the 2022 Toronto International Film Festival.
The film tells the story of a married couple (Hampshire and Chernick) who are feeling the pressures of parenting and adulthood. After they send their young kids to camp for the first time, they embark on a series of comic sexual adventures to reinvigorate their relationship.
Our Bonnie Laufer spoke with Jonas Chernick and Emily Hampshire about their glorious friendship and reunion.
The End of Sex opens in theatres Friday, April 28.
Melanie Scrofano, Emily Hampshire and Jonas Chernick in The End of Sex.
ORIGINAL-CIN: Jonas, this film is extremely relatable to some of us of a certain age. The film reunites you and Emily after 10 years when you made My Awkward Sexual Adventure together. When you started to write this one, what inspired it and what did your wife have to say?
JONAS CHERNICK: Well, first of all, I want to make it very clear that my wife and I have an incredible sex life and always have. This is about friends and is based on other people's experiences struggling with keeping the flame alive.
It started off as something else, to be honest. After we did My Awkward Sexual Adventure 10 years ago, I felt pressure. I wanted to write another sex comedy and have something ready to go. But the director Sean Garrity and I quickly realized that we felt like we needed to move on and do something else. It didn't feel right to do.
Anyway, I kind of developed an idea, but it didn't feel true yet. So I shelved it. And then we pulled it out, about a year and a half ago and dusted it off. I suddenly realized, Sean and I both read it and we went, “Wait a minute, our lives have changed.”
We're not in our thirties anymore, we have both been married (not to each other) for a long time. We both have kids. So we felt like we had a new lens to look at human sexuality and sexual insecurity through.
I was able to harness that and channeled it into the script.
O:C Emily, I guess it was just like riding a bike getting back with Jonas. Being such good friends must have made it easier to have your relationship in this film feel so real.
EMILY HAMPSHIRE: Oh, yeah. If I could, I would do everything with Jonas and Sean. It's just so easy because there's no acting required.
Also, I just loved this script so much, I think Jonas is an amazing writer. I think what he does that not a lot of people do is make a real kind of a big movie with so much depth and heart. This one felt like some of those classic rom-coms like, Knocked Up and This is 40. The kind of movie where you go to the theater to see something that's relatable, that's not dark but funny, and honest.
When we did My Awkward Sexual Adventure, we were both in that similar generation, and at a place in our lives that we could relate to that script. Now 10 years later, we both can understand this too.
CHERNICK: So in 10 years, we'll be geriatric, I need to come up with something else! It will be like our Before Sunrise.
O.C: Jonas, have you ever sent the kids off to camp and then you and your wife are standing there going, what now?
CHERNICK: You know, it's so funny that you ask this. When I wrote the film, and when we shot it - which was a year ago - I hadn't yet had that experience. And then last summer was the first summer that we shipped the kids off to camp.
We had a great time. There were no sexual hijinks. We didn’t get up to any trouble but I always looked at that experience of like, what is that?
What is that like to suddenly be an empty-nester or to suddenly have that piece of your life removed? It kind of returns you to a state where you imagine that it would return you to your pre-kids days, but that's not the case.
That's what Sean Garrity (the director) was really interested in, this idea that we are who we are in our twenties, we are who we are in our thirties and then we pretend that we haven't changed as we're getting older or having kids or becoming parents.
We want to just be those people all our lives and connect with those people. Ultimately I think the end result of looking at that and analyzing and observing it is that we aren't the same people.
O-C: Emily, are you ever nervous when you get one of these scripts about being put in a compromising position that you’re not comfortable with ?
HAMPSHIRE: If it wasn't with Jonas and Sean, I’d probably have to say yes. But what I experienced on My Awkward Sexual Adventure when I didn't know either of them, was that there was no such thing as an intimacy coordinator then.
I had never been on a set where I felt more respected and listened to. And it made me want to act again at a time when I didn't think I wanted to. So yeah, there's no position I wouldn’t try for Jonas. (Laughs).
CHERNICK: Look, the movie is very sexual, and it's quite explicit. But ultimately, if you really break it down, I remember saying to Sean as we were gearing up for production, “Here we go again. I better get in shape.”
Sean just replied, “This is not 10 years ago when we wanted to see you guys naked. Now that you are in your forties.. Not so much.”
So while there's a lot of sex in the movie, Emily certainly is not shy with that stuff, and she was fully committed to it. It did feel like the right sort of tone. It didn't feel gratuitous,and that was important to me.
It's funny, and it's awkward, and it's not raunchy in a way that is exploitive. We are really happy how this one turned out. Let’s see where we’re at in 10 years for our next sexual reunion!