The stars and director of “Black Swan” talk about training, choreography, and, yes, the lesbian sex scene

Natalie Portman danced as a kid – starting at age 12 – and always wanted her love for dancing to intersect with her other passion: acting. Her dream is realized Dec. 3 when Black Swan, director Darren Aronofsky’s deeply dark and psychologically thrilling take on Swan Lake, arrives in theaters.

During a recent press stop to promote the independent film that’s already generating best picture – and best actress – Oscar buzz, Portman and Aronofsky were joined by cast members including Mila Kunis, Barbara Hershey, Vincent Cassel, screenwriter Mark Heyman and choreographer Benjamin Millepied at L.A.’s famed Pantages Theatre and touched on everything from the rigorous training the actresses went through to prepare for the film and, yes, the lesbian sex scene.

For Portman, playing Nina, the White Swan who turns to Kunis’ Lily for help perfecting the evil Black Swan, was a dream role. “I always wanted to do a film relating to dance,” she said. “So when Darren had this incredible idea, it was not just relating to the dance world but also this really, really complicated character: it was two characters, really.”

“The story very much became about the journey for someone who’s a White Swan and how they become a Black Swan,” Heyman noted. “Mila’s character is almost like a spirit guide in terms of taking someone down that path.”

Aronofsky, who helmed last year’s critical favorite The Wrestler, noted that Black Swan at its core is “just the retelling of Swan Lake.”

“It definitely shows the challenges and the darkness and the reality of how hard it is to be a ballet dancer,” he said, noting that he interviewed ballet dancers before diving into the project. “But I think it also represents the beauty of the art and the transcendence that’s possible within the art that’s all in the retelling of Swan Lake. The dancers that we met and talked with are like, ‘Finally we have a real movie about ballet.’ ”

“So many dancers are incredibly relieved that there’s finally a ballet movie that takes ballet as a serious art and not a place to have a love affair,” he continued. “If you actually look at ballet, the ballets themselves are incredibly dark and daunting.”

For Portman, her preparations to play the Swan Queen were daunting. The actress trained two hours a day for six months – just to ensure she wouldn’t get hurt before the ballet training actually started. As the shoot neared, she upped training to five hours a day, including swimming a mile a day, toning and then three hours of ballet class per day.

“Two months before (filming began) we had the choreography (for the movie) for eight hours a day,” she said. “The physical discipline of it really helped for the emotional side of the character because you get a sense of the dancer’s lifestyle of only working out.

“You know it’s a ballet dancer’s life when you don’t drink, you don’t go out with your friends and you don’t have much food. You are constantly putting your body through extreme pain,” said Portman, who added that wearing point shoes was a new experience that felt “very medieval.”

Millepied, meanwhile, noted that he choreographed the film’s ballet around Portman and co-star Kunis.

“The dances were inspired by (Portman and Kunis’) qualities and molded on their bodies, looks and what they could do: The basics were there, I just built on them,” he noted.

Kunis noted that her training was “far from effortless” despite the ease with which she moves onscreen.

“It was months of training beforehand,” Kunis said. “You can only take so much physicality. You have to immerse yourself in this world. It was three months of training seven days a week for four or five months before production started.

“Ballet is one of the most physically excruciating sports that I’ve ever been a part of,” she added. “They train constantly, every single day. Your body changes, your shoulders square, your chest opens up.”

 

Kunis, whose credits include Forgetting Sarah Marshall and That ’70s Show, also noted that she trusted director Aronofsky when it came to casting – and filming her same-sex love scene with Portman.

“Doing something like this with Darren was very safe and as comfortable as something like this could be,” said Kunis, who noted that Black Swan marked her first big-screen same-sex love scene. “I did a film called After Sex with Zoe Saldana in which she played my girlfriend. We never had a sex scene; we had the ‘What happens after we have sex’ scene, which doesn’t really count.”

Kunis noted that filming a love scene is uncomfortable, regardless if it’s opposite a man or woman, and that she didn’t feel she was exploited in the film at all.

“Whether you have a same-sex scene or an opposite-sex scene, it’s always going to be a little uncomfortable,” she said. “As far as being exploited, I go back to Darren and I trust him.

“The great thing about this (movie) is Natalie and I were actually really friends first, which made (filming the love scene) easier,” she continued. “We didn’t really discuss it much, we just kind of did it. (The scene) made sense for the character. It wasn’t put into the film for shock value; it wasn’t something we need to justify as to why we were doing it.”

With all the ballet training, Kunis noted that Black Swan is the closest thing she’s come to being perfect – the quest for which drives Portman’s Nina over the edge.

“This role is probably the hardest of everything I’ve dome when it comes to characters, whether it’s comedy, drama or romance: You want to make sure it’s believable. This was the closest I’ve ever come to being perfect,” she said.

But is Kunis anything like the Black Swan she’s made out to be in the film? “I think everyone has a little Black Swan in them. I’m a healthy balance of them, I hope. I’m not as particularly adventurous as a Black Swan,” she noted.

Kunis, who shed 20 pounds for the part, noted that she was relieved – and extremely excited to eat again – when the film wrapped.

“It took me five months to lose 20 pounds and it took me hours to gain it back,” she said, noting that she headed directly to Panda Express, and later, after landing home in L.A. the same day, to In-N-Out for a double double, animal fries and rootbeer float. “It was fantastic,” she recalled.

Portman, meanwhile, celebrated the film’s completion with one meal: “Pasta for breakfast, lunch and dinner.”

Black Swan opens in select theaters Dec. 3.