Jennifer Lopez’s ‘Shotgun Wedding’ Co-Star Thought It’d Be Scary Working With Her
Jennifer Lopez has worked with various co-stars in her career, some of whom she got along with better than others. One of Lopez’s most recent co-stars briefly prepared for the worst when collaborating with her for the first time.
What Josh Duhamel thought about working with Jennifer Lopez
Duhamel teamed up with Lopez for the first time in Amazon Prime’s Shotgun Wedding, where the two played a married couple whose wedding gets hijacked. In addition to Duhamel, Lopez worked with many stars including Jennifer Coolidge and Lenny Kravitz. Although Duhamel is a star himself, he initially found Lopez intimidating thanks to her star power.
“It could have been scary,” Duhamel told Entertainment Weekly about doing a film with her.
But fortunately, Lopez quickly put him at ease.
“Thankfully, I knew her. I didn’t know what it was going to be like working with her on a set, but I knew her well enough to know that it would be easy to connect with her on the levels that we needed to in order for this movie to work,” he said.
If Duhamel had any concerns about Shotgun Wedding, it was that the movie’s premise might’ve been too outlandish for audiences to buy into.
“Like, is this gonna work? It just felt so big and broad. But that’s kind of the intention behind it all,” he said.
Duhamel also brought some of his concerns about the film to Lopez, while Lopez couldn’t have been more delighted to do the film with him.
“I couldn’t have gotten luckier to have the most amazing leading man who could do the comedy, do the action, and really nail the emotional stuff,” she told ET. “We always said, it was Josh’s line to me on our first call that we did, it was like, if people don’t believe us together, none of this works.”
Josh Duhamel apologized to Armie Hammer for taking his role in ‘Shotgun Wedding’
For Lopez, it seems everything worked out for the best when it came to Shotgun Wedding’s cast. She couldn’t have sounded more pleased with the team they assembled for the film.
“It was one of those things where everything came together,” she said. “And then we had this really big expensive supporting cast, amazing stars and comedians and that were supporting us.”
Before this, however, Shotgun Wedding’s cast looked a bit different. Before Duhamel, Armie Hammer was initially tapped to star alongside Lopez in the rom-com. But Hammer, who’d been tied to the film since 2020, left the role after controversial messages between him and his ex-girlfriends came to light. Duhamel confided that he felt bad about the way he landed the role, and offered Hammer his sincerest apology.
“I know Armie a little bit, and when I knew I was gonna get the part, I emailed him and said, ‘Listen, I know you are going through it right now, I don’t like to get roles like this and I just wanted to let you know that I am thinking about you and good luck, get through it,’” Duhamel said in an interview with Man About Town (via Grazia). “He emailed me right back and said thank you so who knows, hopefully he gets through it.”
How Jennifer Lopez called out Josh Duhamel during their kissing scenes in ‘Shotgun Wedding’
Being a couple on screen meant that Duhamel and Lopez had to engage in a few intimate love scenes. Lopez was used to kissing major stars in movies. Duhamel, however, was anxious to make out with his iconic partner. In an interview on The Dan Patrick Show, Duhamel shared that he chewed gum while kissing Lopez to make sure his breath was fresh for the take. But all Duhamel did was take Lopez out of the movie.
“I actually put some gum in and tried to hide it. Like, halfway through the scene she’s like, ‘Are you chewing gum?’ I’m like, ‘Yeah.’ So they made me spit that out,” Duhamel said.
