Michael Cera Breaks Silence on Rihanna Really Slapping Him in This Is the End

This Is the End shined an entirely new light on the apocalyptic genre, largely in part due to its comedic tone and massive starring ensemble. Beyond the actors and comedians who appeared in the movie at length, even bigger names had cameo roles. One such cameo early on is that of Michael Cera, who’s playing a fictionalized version of himself who just so happens to be addicted to cocaine. One of the first times you see him, he slaps Rihanna on her rear. The Grammy winner then turns around and smacks Cera across the face, a slap that was entirely, 100-percent real.

At Cera’s insistence, he suggested Rihanna actually slap him so that the moment would be much funnier in the end cut.

“I thought it would look a lot better if she hit me. I don’t think it took much convincing to get her to do it,” Cera said in a recent interview with Rolling Stone. “I just thought it would look a lot better than a fake slap would because you can really feel it. It just looks a lot funnier!”

According to the Superbad alumnus, he’s lucky to have walked away with his hearing after multiple takes.

“I definitely did not regret it! I was into it. The take that is in the movie, she really did hit my ear, which was disorienting,” Cera added. “But I have no regrets. I didn’t lose any hearing over it, fortunately!”

Will there ever be a This Is the End sequel?

ComicBook.com’s Patrick Cavanagh spoke with This Is the End star Jay Baruchel in 2020 and asked whether or a sequel to the film could be in the works. At one point, Baruchel said he thought an idea for a potential follow-up could involve an apocalyptic comedy at a different point in time.

“The closest that I’ve heard, and this is a Seth and Evan question more than a me question, but the last time I heard was Evan saying something to the effect of, ‘What I would like to see is you five or six dudes in a bunch of different settings,’ so not sequels, but basically This Is the End in ancient Rome and then This Is the End in the American West and then all this whatever, but I don’t know where it could possibly go,” the actor told us at the time. “I know I’d be well up for it. But I guess we get kicked out of heaven or something. [No talks] beyond, ‘It would be interesting to see you and Jonah hate each other in a different time period.’”

This Is the End is now streaming on Netflix.