Jennifer Lopez: I’m Jennifer Lopez, and I play Atlas Shepherd in Atlas. This is First Scene/Last Scene.

[TITLE CARD] FIRST SCENE/LAST SCENE

[upbeat music plays] 

[CLIP] Abraham Popoola (as Casca): Atlas.

[CLIP] Jennifer Lopez (as Atlas Shepherd): Casca.

[CLIP] Abraham Popoola (as Casca): It’s been a while. 

Jennifer Lopez: With Atlas, this was a very big scene, where she kind of comes in and she faces Casca for the first time since she was a little girl. People don’t even know the whole backstory of what’s going on, but it was a very charged scene.

[CLIP] [electricity crackling] [whirring] [Casca grunts] 

Jennifer Lopez: Abraham was the perfect person to play the scene with. He’s about 6'7", he’s super imposing, but he had to be, like, beneath the set in a box just so I could see his head on the table. We had great chemistry right from the beginning. 

[CLIP]  Abraham Popoola (as Casca): You look old. 

[CLIP] Jennifer Lopez (as Atlas Shepherd): Yeah, and I’m not getting any younger, so forgive me if I skip the banter.

Jennifer Lopez: I remember the scene … [snapping fingers] … really kind of just popping right from the get, and kind of falling right into who Atlas was in a way that is hard with a lot of characters. For some reason, I just felt very comfortable in her shoes.

[whirring] 

Jennifer Lopez: The first day on a movie set is always so nerve-racking. You've been thinking about it, you’ve been kind of going through it in your mind, you know, doing all this work on it, and then you get there, and then you have to do that first shot. And once you do that, that’s it. It’s there forever. [laughs] Those first choices you make kind of wind up defining the rest of the shoot.

[upbeat music plays]

[CLIP] Computer voice: Welcome to the ARC Ten initiation module. What is your name?

[CLIP] Jennifer Lopez (as Atlas Shepherd): Atlas Maru Shepherd. 

Jennifer Lopez: This is the last scene of the movie. We shot it on the last day, which was nice. That doesn’t usually happen. Everything’s shot so out of order. It was a beautiful button because all of the action’s over. Even the intensity of the shoot is over. It was kind of a beautiful light scene of Smith and Atlas reuniting in a future day. 

[CLIP] Jennifer Lopez (as Atlas Shepherd): Aren’t you gonna ask me if I like pie or cake?

[CLIP] Computer voice: I already know the answer. You prefer coffee. Black. With three goddamn sugars. 

Jennifer Lopez: One of the things that Smith always said to her is, like, he believes that we are all one, and that nothing ever really dies, that we just keep coming back in different forms. And then she gets to experience that. She is very cynical at the beginning and very opposed to all of his kind of ethereal ideas. And by the end, he has really affected her and made her believe in something bigger.

[CLIP] Computer Voice: I’m trying to connect to you, but you are rigid.

[CLIP] Jennifer Lopez (as Atlas Shepherd): Wha —

[CLIP] Computer voice: Right, wrong. Dead, alive. You offer no wiggle room. 

Jennifer Lopez: Those are my favorite moments from the set, are those kind of, like, long scenes between me and Smith where I was just in the pod by myself. There were some scenes that were seven and eight and nine pages long that were like emotional roller coasters. Having the crew just kind of be super still while I was, like, suspended in this character for all of that time was kind of a unique experience. I had never done anything like that before.

[powering up]

[CLIP] Jennifer Lopez (as Atlas Shepherd): Thrusters.

[whirring]