Want an easy way to get Zac Efron and Nicole Kidman to read your script? Give it an eye-catching title. Starring as lovers in the recently released Netflix rom-com “A Family Affair” from director Richard LaGravenese, the co-stars shared in a recent interview with People that the film originally had a not-so-family-friendly title that drew them to the project immediately.
“It was called ‘Motherf—–,’” Efron said, while Kidman added, “Beeped out. Somehow that didn’t make it onto the Netflix title.”
Though this title didn’t reach the screen ultimately, it’s what made both actors pick up the screenplay in the first place. And once each found out the other was interested in taking the material on, they both felt it was a no-brainer. Efron said, “I jumped. I think we both kind of did. We jumped at it. It was like, this is perfect. What better way to reconnect? And we get to have fun.”
The film follows a Hollywood mega-star who falls for his assistant’s mother (played by Joey King), a woman who’s 20 years his senior. While many movies have broached age-gap romances, particularly recently with “The Idea of You” and “May December,” Kidman appreciated the positivity of this narrative and the space it filled within the genre in terms of a younger man falling for an older woman.
“There’s a dearth,” she said. “We’ve had it from way back with older men and younger women, that’s just always been the norm — it’s OK, it’s completely acceptable. The problem is we’ve not had the equivalent from all different viewpoints, with women telling the stories. And we need game men. [Zac] came in and makes the film because he was like, ‘I’m here to have fun, to play, and to very much be a part of this and be there for you’ — for both Joey and I.”
Efron claims this was easy as his natural attraction to Kidman, built when they first shared the screen in “The Paperboy,” bled into his character.
“I’m still so enamored with Nicole,” Efron said. “There’s a part of me that pinches myself when I realize who I’m working with a lot. I think that was more pronounced during ‘The Paperboy’ because I was a lot younger. I was very nervous back then.”
