Actress Vanessa Bell Calloway is shedding new light on one of the most emotionally explosive scenes in What’s Love Got to Do With It, revealing that a planned stunt with co-star Laurence Fishburne went off-script, and the slap meant to be faked landed painfully real.
In a new interview shared by Cocoa Butter, Calloway walked through how the scene was supposed to unfold, explaining that producers initially planned to use a stunt double. She pushed back, wanting the moment to feel authentic.
“I told the director, ‘This is not gonna be right because I need to be in the moment,’” she recalled.
For the scene to work, she needed the adrenaline, the physicality, and the raw energy that would allow her to unleash the character’s fury after the slap.
The stunt choreographer coached her and Fishburne on how to simulate the hit — his hand would move one way, she would sharply turn her head the other, and the sound effect would be added later. Simple enough, until it wasn’t.
On one take, their timing was off. There was no perfect eye-line connection, no coordinated movement. Instead, Calloway says, Fishburne’s hand connected — hard.
“He slapped the living dog out of me,” she said. “My face was pounding. One side of my brain was like, ‘Oh,’ the other side was, ‘Oh, keep going Vanessa, this is gonna be good.’”
Calloway didn’t break the scene. She didn’t stop filming. Instead, she channeled the shock and pain straight into the performance. What followed — her character’s fiery reaction — is the moment audiences ultimately saw on screen.
“It sounds sick,” she joked, “but I kept going… and that’s the take they used. And I don’t blame them. If I was the director or producer, that’s the one I would’ve used.”
Once the director yelled cut, the set rushed to her with ice packs — confirmation that everyone knew the slap wasn’t part of the script.
Hollywood insiders often talk about “happy accidents” on set, unplanned moments that turn into cinematic lightning. Calloway’s recollection underscores how actors sometimes push through real pain in service of the story, especially in films rooted in trauma and survival.
More than 30 years later, her performance still resonates, and the behind-the-scenes story only deepens appreciation for the emotional and physical commitment that went into one of the most acclaimed biographical dramas of its era.
