‘Oh, Hi!’ Star Logan Lerman on Wearing a Ball Gag in Kinky Rom-Com: ‘It’s Really Hard on the Jaw’

In the new romantic comedy, “Oh, Hi!,” Logan Lerman finds himself speechless – in one of the kinkiest ways possible.

Lerman and Molly Gordon star as a couple, Isaac and Iris, who embark on their first weekend together. However, things take a wild turn when Isaac, still chained to a bed after a kinky sex romp, tells Iris he’s not interested in a serious monogamous relationship.

Iris decides to keep a barely dressed Isaac shackled to see if she could convince him to be her boyfriend.

At one point, he tries to yell for help but can’t because he’s muzzled by a ball gag.

“There’s nothing better than having a ball gag in your mouth when you’re trying to say words and string sentences together,” Lerman told me at the recent special screening of the movie at AMC at the Grove in Los Angeles. “I would say they’d leave it in there for hours. I’d go all day with a ball gag in my mouth.”

Joking aside – or maybe not – Lerman said the sex toy proved to be painful. “It’s really hard on the jaw because it was a big ball and I have a small jaw,” he said. “We need a ball gag for this right now so I can show you how small my mouth is.”

Director and co-writer Sophie Brooks explained, “We tested a few ball gags in prep and Logan picked that one.”

Gordon recalled seeing a gagged Lerman for the first time. “I was like, ‘How did I get this serious actor to do this movie for no money and be shirtless and put in a ball gag?’” she said. “I was like, ‘Wow, God is good.’”

The idea for the film was inspired by conversations Gordon and Brooks had had about dating men who were too scared to have honest conversations about their relationships. “Sophie and I dated some wonderful men that didn’t want to have closure conversations with us when they broke up with us, and, in the pandemic, we were complaining and she came to me with this seed of an idea and we developed it into this story,” said Gordon, who also served as a writer and producer on the film. “So thank you to those men.”

Brooks said they also were inspired by Oscar-winning “Misery,” which starred Kathy Bates as a woman who kidnaps and tortures her favorite writer (James Caan): “It’s a very different tone, but certainly the idea of a woman holding a man captive was something we talked about.”