'Long Shot' star Charlize Theron says her ‘shockingly single’ plea paid off (exclusive)

Charlize Theron made headlines recently when she revealed she was ‘shockingly available’ and men needed to ‘step up’ to ask her out.

Considering the fact she made the plea during the press tour for Long Shot, a film where a schlubby journalist played by Seth Rogen gets to pursue her romantically, did she regret making the appeal?

Read more: Charlize Theron calls out French TV host

“I regret 98% of everything I say, but I did say it, and it’s fine – some good stuff has come from it. It’s incredibly overwhelming.”

“She’s married now because of it,” Seth Rogen jokes.

“I very well could be, soon,” Theron says. “It’s a lot of pressure. A lot of people putting me on the spot, showing me photos of their friends, and I don’t want to be rude.”

“She’s dated all of them,” Rogen jokes.

Of course, rom-coms where a guy dates a woman who’s out of his league is a genre. What is it about the story that appeals to audiences?

“I think it’s a different version of it,” Seth Rogen says.

“We went through great lengths to have the characters connect on an intellectual level, and because of that it never feels like they’re complete incompatible, or that they’re in these two different worlds.”

“When they first get together it feels like they could be a couple. Which is important, to make the audience route for them to get together.”

Read more: Long Shot UK trailer

Director Jonathan Levine agrees. “What was interesting to me about it was we were working within the tropes of the genre, but once we took that tried and true premise, we flipped it on its head a little bit, we invert it, we subvert it.”

“We had the ability to work within the tropes, and tropes are great, because they’re a shorthand for the audience, ” Levine continues. “but it’s also great to subvert them, because a lot of romantic comedies feel a little regressive and cliched. So we were able to use the cliches and poke fun at the cliches at the same time.”

“It’s actually not about [an unattractive guy pursuing a powerful and successful woman], it’s about two people with different moral compasses and different ideals who are challenging each other. Two people who, after five minutes, you forget any difference in whatever they look like or whatever their backgrounds are, and you see their chemistry and you see what people connect over romantically.”

“My wife and I challenge each other intellectually, we make each other laugh, I listen to her, she listens to me – those kinds of things are what we wanted to get into this movie, we wanted to take the cliches of the romantic comedy and subvert them, while adding an element of naturalism and realism to them. That was really fun for me.”

Long Shot is in UK cinemas on 3 May.