Woody Harrelson Recalls Improvising ‘Larry Flynt’ Line Saying Courtney Love Was ‘Jealous’ of a Female Rocker

During his appearance on Hot Ones on Thursday, Nov. 6, Woody Harrelson revealed that he ad-libbed a line in order to get a reaction from Courtney Love while filming the 1996 biopic The People vs. Larry Flynt. Between bites of increasingly fiery wings, the actor — who admitted the experience gave him new appreciation for interviewees — described how he slipped an improvised zinger into a scene that remained in the finished film.

Harrelson said he told his co-star, “Alanis, I’ll be along in an hour and I’ll bring the ping‑pong balls,” a quip he explained was partly a reference to a real game he’d played with Alanis Morissette shortly before shooting. He added with a mischievous grin that the remark also played on tensions between Love and Morissette at the time.

“I felt like Courtney was a little envious of Alanis,” Harrelson told host Sean Evans. “Alanis had just released a massive record and was at the peak of her success, and that dynamic was something I could tease a bit.” He said the teasing was intended to ruffle Love playfully rather than to wound — “she likes a little fun,” he noted.

Morissette’s landmark LP, Jagged Little Pill, arrived the year before The People vs. Larry Flynt and became an unprecedented mainstream success for a female rock artist, spending roughly three months at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 and reshaping the musical landscape in the mid‑1990s.

In the film, Courtney Love portrays the wife of Harrelson’s Larry Flynt character — a role set amid the publisher’s controversial battles over free speech that culminated in a pivotal Supreme Court decision protecting parody under the First Amendment.

Watch Harrelson’s full Hot Ones interview in the embedded video above for the complete anecdote and the rest of his conversation with Sean Evans.

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