Brad Pitt was in China yesterday to promote Allied. Which is interesting, because a few weeks ago, we were wondering if he was going to do any promotion at all. I sort of half-admire the way the studio has worked it out just to appease Brad: the trip to China didn’t involve any interviews. It was a “fan event” and Brad took selfies with happy fans and posed for photos and no one got him to say one word. So, all of the heavy lifting for actual WORDS has gone to Marion Cotillard, who was rumored to be Brad’s lover at one point (although she’s sort of denied it). Marion told Entertainment Tonight that Brad “is such a good man… Of course he’s an amazing actor. He’s such a good person that it’s really not difficult to get along with him.” She also said she didn’t expect to get along with him and she was pleasantly surprised that they had chemistry together. And check out what she said about their sex scenes:

At one point in the movie, the onscreen lovebirds get busy in the back of a car in the middle of a sandstorm. It may look steamy, but Cotillard said it took a lot of practice to make the scene look natural.

“We rehearse and had a very determined choreography, and then it allows you freedom. When you know exactly what your body will do, then you can act and you can be free to give the emotions and give the feelings because you won’t think, ‘What am I going to do next? Am I going to go on top of him?’ It’s an awkward situation,” she told reporters during an L.A. press conference Sunday, November 13. “We laughed because you need to get it out because this is so weird. And so you get this time of looking at each other and saying, ‘OK, this is so weird.’ And then we go into this and then I’m going on top of you and then we are going to kiss.”

The French actress, 41, helped her costar, 52, learn her native tongue since he speaks a bit of French in the film. “He had this commitment to do the best he could, which was really, really impressive, so I helped him by being very tough,” she said. “I was very honest with him. But at the same time, I really wanted to support him in this process that I went through, and I know how hard it is.”

[From Us Weekly]

As an old-school Brangeloonie (and now merely an Angeloonie), this made me uncomfortable. It feels like an awkward dance for Marion – who is probably five or six months pregnant – to describe her robotic sex scenes with a then-married Brad Pitt, all the while trying to convince people that they have an enormous amount of chemistry, but not too much chemistry because the baby is totally Guillaume Canet’s, right? I don’t know. Ugh.

Meanwhile, several days ago, The Sun dropped a story about how Brad totally has “dynamite tapes” of Angelina Jolie being a bad mother or something. I was surprised by how many outlets picked up this story, mostly because it sounds like the fever dreams of some crazy Angelina-hater.

Photos courtesy of WENN, Fame/Flynet.