Julia Roberts plays a Yale philosophy professor under duress in "After the Hunt."

When class is in session, be sure to stay on Julia Roberts’ good side.

The Oscar-winning actress has played university professors before in her long career, from an open-minded 1950s art history teacher in “Mona Lisa Smile” to a dispirited community college speech instructor in “Larry Crowne.” However, she’s never been as thorny to students as she is playing a Yale philosophy professor in the psychological thriller “After the Hunt” (in select theaters Oct. 10, nationwide Oct. 17).

With plenty of merits and a good reputation, Alma Imhoff (Roberts) is aiming to get tenure at the prestigious school when her young protege Maggie (Ayo Edebiri) accuses Hank (Andrew Garfield), Alma’s close friend and fellow professor, of sexual assault. She's torn between loyalties, plus there's the fact a secret she’s been keeping for years could see the light of day.

Alma butts heads with Maggie and stresses pile on for her, leading to one key scene where Alma unloads on a young philosophy student named Katie (Thaddea Graham) during class. Alma puts her on the spot and seemingly enjoys it – the kind of uncomfortable situation that haunts people’s higher-educational nightmares.

While she’s “never had that experience” with a teacher, Roberts did pull from a past incident where “a person in a position of power over me sort of publicly humiliated me,” she says. “It is so horrible. That was a very hard scene to accomplish on a lot of levels, but not the least of which is, thank goodness, it is not my nature at all to feel comfortable belittling people in front of others.”

Graham is “the sweetest, nicest girl,” Roberts adds, “and we'd all just sort of forged these relationships. Then this scene gets put on the schedule. I thought, ‘Ugh, she'll never say good morning to me again.’ But we accomplished our goals.”

So what would a Professor Julia Roberts be like teaching a college drama class? On a scale of “pushover” to “hardcase,” she reports, “I think I am sweet spot in the middle with a little bit of hardcase thrown in to keep you honest.”

When looking back on her own New York University years, Edebiri didn’t have any fire-breathers like Alma. “I had some really incredible professors who were really generous with their time, and also a lot of them were working writers still,” she says. “I felt like I got a real sense of what the world would look like when I graduated, so I was prepared to keep working my restaurant job.”

On her new movie, Edebiri was just glad to have Roberts around as an unofficial mentor.

“We would both be in tears because it was just too much,” Edebiri says with a laugh. “I’m so grateful for her generosity of spirit as a human being and as a performer. This was kind of the dream.”

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Julia Roberts drew upon a 'horrible' humiliation for this 'After the Hunt' moment

Reporting by Brian Truitt, USA TODAY / USA TODAY

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