Rodrigo Santoro, Ben Falcone, Matthew Morrison, Chace Crawford and What to Expect When You’re Expecting director Kirk Jones sat down with Movie Fanatic to take us through the more testosterone end of the female friendly film.
Each actor spoke to how much they appreciated the opportunity to work with their onscreen significant other. Santoro saw firsthand why the world loves Jennifer Lopez.
“It was awesome. Jennifer was really generous and incredibly professional. There's something about her. I think she has this natural talent for comedy, which helped me a lot, because this is actually my second comedy,” Santoro said. “I'm not really used to it, and it was very helpful. I think she is a terrific actress.”
Falcone, who is married in real life to a comedienne extraordinaire in Melissa McCarthy, found his onscreen partner Elizabeth Banks game for anything… something he clearly appreciates.
“Elizabeth is great. She's fun and smart and direct. I got along with her quickly. I think that helps immensely,” he said. “She was able and wanted to improvise a little bit, which helps me, because I'm a real mumble mouth. It’s hard for me to just say lines and stop, which makes me maybe not the best actor in the world.”
Morrison, a professional dancer as well as an actor and singer -- who utilizes all those skills on Glee -- marveled at the majesty that is Cameron Diaz. “She's everything you think Cameron Diaz would be: Sweet, effervescent, just an amazing personality, kind of tomboyish, likes to surf. We had so much fun together,” Morrison said.
Want proof of their impeccable chemistry? Check out Diaz and Morrison’s dancing movie magic:
Morrison was impressed with how fit Diaz was, ready to portray a fitness guru who was about to win a celebrity dance contest. “I wasn't expecting the body she had. She's pretty ripped in this movie. I don't know how believable it was to have a big belly and some guns like she has, but she's a fitness person, so it is believable on her! We had so much chemistry dancing. A sign of a good dancer is they'll let their partner lead, and she was incredibly trusting of me, and let me lead.”
Crawford had to calm down before starting filming with Anna Kendrick. He was a huge fan of her Oscar-nominated performance in a certain movie starring George Clooney. “Anna did not know how big of a fan I was of Up in the Air, so when I heard she was doing it I was really excited,” he said. His issue, once cameras started rolling, was his love scene with the actress. It was a little logistically challenging to say the least.
“I remember getting in there doing rehearsals with Kirk here and trying to choreograph how we were going to conceive the child on the hood of a car. We were trying to choreograph that whole sort of dance, and it was awkward and fun. She's witty, tons of banter. It was great to play off of her.”
The biggest challenge anyone had in bringing What to Expect When You’re Expecting to the big screen was how to take a self-help book that millions adore, and craft a compelling story about its themes and messages. Director Jones had his hands full.
“I must be the only person in the world who wasn’t aware of the book, even though I had three children. I think maybe because I'm from the UK. It's big there, but not as big as it is here. I looked at the challenges and thought, ‘This could be really tough trying to make a movie out of a pregnancy manual.’ But, what I quickly realized was all of the things that we all look for in movies are encountered on the journey of pregnancy. There's a very clear time span, which doesn't need explaining. Nine months after conception you're going to end up with a baby. Dramatically we know that everyone is moving towards that point at the end,” Jones said.
“My three pregnancies that I experienced with my wife were full of some of the funniest, scariest, most dramatic moments of my whole life. So I started to take the idea quite seriously. At first it just seemed quite odd. A pregnancy manual being turned into a movie, but when you look at it dramatically and structurally, pregnancy makes this question of relationships and our future, and if we're going to be good parents. It's dramatically a really exciting subject.”
One of the film’s stars actually grew up in a household where his father was a midwife. He knew the process of childbirth almost too well. “This project was so close to me, because I asked him a lot of questions. There was a lot of him in this movie for me,” Morrison said. “Funny story, when I was a senior in high school, it was take your kid to work day. I actually delivered two babies myself! The woman didn't really know what was going on. I was eighteen years old. I had a mask on and a shield and everything. You could only see my eyes. So I went in there, and my dad kind of told me what to do, and then I took the baby. Then, my dad kind of swooped up. True story!”