When acting in a sexy movie, you have to be down with some pretty sexy scenes. This was the case for Adria Arjona and Glen Powell when they signed on for Hit Man, a movie about a fake hit man who falls in love with a target while trying to talk her out of hiring someone to kill her husband. It’s a fun action comedy with a surprising amount of intimate scenes and montages involving Powell and Arjona. That apparently ended up being a whole situation they had to work out logistically, and this meant a lot of Listerine strips.
Arjona recently sat down with John Feitelberg for his show, Scene Stealers (which is on YouTube), where she broke down some of the biggest hits of her career including Andor, Blink Twice and Splitsville. She also got real about what went into working on the huge Netflix success, Hit Man, and the sizable amount of sex scenes between herself and Powell. To make the sheer amount of kissing in the film better for their scene partner, they used minty breath strips. However, I don’t think either of them realized just how many minty breath strips would be needed to keep up with the demand. She said:
The amount of Listerine strips me and Glen ingested while making Hit Man is diabolical. I don't know how our stomachs could handle [it]. Like it was probably just like Listerine strips. And, at one point, we ran out of the minty ones, so then we were on the cinnamon. We’re like – I don’t know why. We’re like, ‘Here you go. Here I go.’ But there's so many intimate scenes and every scene is a kissing scene. Every single one.
That truly can’t be great for the stomach, but who has the time to brush your teeth every time, especially considering almost every scene they shot involved some kind of kissing. Powell knows a thing or two about keeping things sexy, but it sounds like even this production got a bit overly hot and heavy (on camera) for him to handle. I can imagine whatever PA responsible for purchasing the breath strips trying their best to keep up.
Arjona also admitted, her and Powell only really had themselves to blame for the sheer volume of intimate scenes. Powell co-wrote the film with Richard Linklater, and they also gave Arjona a lot of agency in the writing of her own scenes as well. So, even with this creative liberty, they wrote themselves all of these scenes. Arjona spoke to the irony of her and Powell landing themselves in the position:
To be fair, me and him — because we were in the writing process with Rick. We wrote all of this and explored it, and we were very much a part of the creation of those scenes. Rick was kind of like, ‘It's you guys. You figure it out.’ Then me and Glen, we finished it, and then it was time to do it. We're like, ‘Oh fuck, now we got to do it.’
It sounds like their biggest problem wasn’t the Listerine strips themselves, but the scenes they didn’t quite think through logistically. At the end of the day, I think this ultimately made the script better, because they weren’t thinking about what they wanted to do but what was best for the film.
Powell (who plays Gary Johnson) and Arjona (who plays Madison Figueroa Masters) have insane chemistry in the film, and the scenes aren't salacious for the sake of being salacious. Instead, they help inform their characters and relationship. Hit Man got great reviews from critics and was called one of the sexiest movies in years, so the Listerine strips definitely weren’t in vain.
You can revisit Adria Arjona and Glen Powell in Hit Man, which is currently available to stream with a Netflix subscription. Fans of the actress can also see her in her new film Onslaught, which is currently playing in theaters nationwide. For more information on other exciting titles heading to the big screen this year, make sure to consult the 2026 movie schedule.
