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Justin Theroux Explains His Instagram Lovefest With RBG

Photo: Steven Ferdman/Getty Images

At a screening of the Ruth Bader Ginsburg biopic On the Basis of Sex in New York last night, Armie Hammer and Justin Theroux were clearly still feeling the shine from their dueling Instagram photo ops with the justice the day before. (As you may recall, Theroux’s was boldly captioned “new couple alert.”)

The two spent much of the post-screening Q&A gushing over their meeting with the real-life Supreme Court justice (played by Felicity Jones in the film). “She’s incredibly sharp. You try to have a conversation with her and the second you try to have a conversation with her you go … you’ve lost me,” said Hammer, who plays Ginsberg’s late husband Marty Ginsberg. “She has total recall, she can recall any date, any case, any specific example — it’s really mind-boggling.”

Added Theroux: “Me and Felicity were talking to her last night, and we were talking about the case, and after about three sentences we were totally lost because she was deep in case study and law, and I’m just like [pretending], yeah, I know. We’re just actors!

And according to the cast, RBG isn’t just an intimidating legal genius and the last remaining liberal bulwark against a conservative majority; she’s also got impeccable swagger. “She’s a bit like Mick Jagger,” offered Felicity Jones. “She had like snakeskin boots on.”

“She was wearing a black mink coat,” added Theroux, prompting Hammer to quip, “Who’s going to throw paint on her?”

At the reception afterward, I caught up with Theroux, who was Juuling indoors and wearing a black sweater with side zips, deeply engrossed in a conversation about constitutional law with some audience members. I took a moment to ask him about his day in D.C. yesterday, which was documented heavily on Instagram (my favorite moment was when he and Hammer took a selfie in front of Trump Tower and captioned it: “Then we went to Mohammed Bin Salman’s house.”)

“There was no social-media strategy, trust me,” he laughed, pocketing his white Juul. “We had like a free hour and a half and we said, Let’s just hit a bunch of sites, and then we happened to pass Trump Tower so we jumped out there. I’m not going to take credit for the joke, but we did it totally on the fly, we came up with it on the car on the way back.” The last stop on their whirlwind D.C. tour was the Supreme Court. “I bought a tie-clip with the scales of justice,” he said excitedly. “It was very inspiring. I’ve never been to the Supreme Court before.”

Photo: Anna Silman

As for who RBG seemed to prefer in their photo shoots, Theroux is on the fence. “I don’t know who went over better,” he said. “She obviously has a sweet spot for Armie because he got to play her husband, but I think I’m the dark horse in this race. I think I’m the closer.”

Justin Theroux Explains His Instagram Lovefest With RBG