Zac Efron and Nicole Kidman have revealed that their new Netflix rom-com, A Family Affair, originally had a more risqué — and much more hilarious — title when its script arrived on their desks.
“It was called Motherf—–,” Efron told PEOPLE in an interview this week.
“Beeped out,” Kidman clarified. “Somehow that didn’t make it onto the Netflix title.”
Still, the eye-catching name worked its magic on them. “That made the script stay at the top of the pile,” the Iron Claw actor explained. “It’s like, what on Earth could this be about?”
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Directed by Richard La Gravenese (P.S. I Love You), the romantic comedy stars Efron as Chris Cole, a famous actor who ends up falling in love with his former assistant Zara’s (Joey King) mother, Brooke (Kidman). Efron previously told Entertainment Weekly that playing a famous actor in the film made him feel like he and the cast were shooting “our version of The Office.”
And, much like that hit show, he and King were given full clearance to experiment during shooting.
“We had an amazing writer, Carrie [Solomon], who wrote the most hilarious script, and Richard, our director, was so collaborative,” King said. “In terms of infusing ourselves [into our characters], they were just so wonderful about letting us improv and really bringing our own flavor to some scenes. We would follow her script for like several takes, and then we would also do some fun improv stuff with suggestions that she’d given us on the side, so that was really fun. It constantly felt like we were playing.”
Netflix
Efron added, “They would always have new stuff for us to try if we ran out of ammo or ideas. It was just really safe and important to be in that collaborative kind of environment when you’re doing something like this.”
A Family Affair reunites Kidman and Efron more than a decade after they first played lovers in the 2012 drama The Paperboy. The movie is streaming now on Netflix.
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