Zac Efron says ‘A Family Affair’ is Hollywood’s version of ‘The Office’

Zac Efron and Joey King want you to laugh at some of the most extreme aspects of celebrity culture — because they’re in on the joke.

In their new Netflix comedy A Family Affair, Efron plays mega movie star Chris Cole, who has gotten so famous he can’t even go to a grocery store. As a result, he’s become pretty out of touch with reality, and he constantly takes it out on his frustrated personal assistant Zara (King), who is ready to level up her career and become a producer. When she’s finally had enough of her boss’ ridiculous demands — including constantly breaking up with his girlfriends for him — she quits, unwittingly setting her boss and her mother (Nicole Kidman) on a romantic collision course that will forever change their lives.

A lot of the scenes in the film revolve around the making of Chris’ big-budget action movie, the third in a trilogy that catapulted him to global superstardom, and both King and Efron loved getting to satirize Hollywood through that storyline. “The funniest, fun stuff to pull from was the inside baseball knowledge of just being on set, like what the real stuff is like,” King tells Entertainment Weekly. “So the scenes where we’re making the movie is really fun because you can infuse some real-life stuff into that.”

Efron agrees, adding, “It’s like our version of The Office or something, a little bit.”

The comparison to the beloved sitcom doesn’t end there, as Efron and King reveal they also had to do a lot of improv while making A Family Affair.

“We had an amazing writer, Carrie [Solomon], who wrote the most hilarious script, and Richard [Lagravenese], our director, was so collaborative,” King says. “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.”

Efron loved getting to try new things, especially since he knew he had the safety net of the writer and director, who helped give suggestions during takes. “They would always have new stuff for us to try if we ran out of ammo or ideas,” he adds. “It was just really safe and important to be in that collaborative kind of environment when you’re doing something like this.”

But it wasn’t difficult for them to come up with new ideas own their own since, thanks to their decades of experience in Hollywood, they both found their characters and the script highly relatable.

“I’ve had a couple of tough bosses, but I’m not as brave as Zara to stand up for myself,” King says. “I’m more like, ‘Okay. Sounds good!’ That’s my personality.”

“The characters echo some things that we’ve maybe partially been through but then also just witnessed, being in the industry,” Efron says. “I’ve witnessed a lot of things like this. And if you think about it, how would this feel for someone else that doesn’t handle it and kind of reprocess it, it turns into something funny. And it makes for a really fun, flawed, but honest relationship for our characters, which I think is really special. It’s awesome. It’s like they’re best friends, but they’re dealing with a lot.”

King adds with a laugh, “But they want to kill each other sometimes.”

While Efron also got his start in a wildly popular film trilogy with the High School Musical franchise, he feels it’s very different from what Chris goes through with his fictional Icarus Rush movies. “I’ve never done a big, huge action movie like Icarus Rush,” he says. But all the scenes of Chris dodging paparazzi, shooting magazine covers, and having to navigate life in the harsh public eye were definitely relatable. “I don’t want to say entirely relatable because that would be insane,” he adds with a laugh. “But yeah, there was a lot where we got to draw on some really fond memories and kind of blow them up.”

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Efron admits he does relate to “not being able to go to stores” like his character. But what about grocery stores, specifically? “Technically, I’m allowed to go,” he says, making King laugh.

“‘Technically,’ he’s ‘allowed!’ That’s funny,” she says, adding that she goes to the grocery store two to three times a week herself. “Because I run out of stuff to eat. Then I have to go back. Just normal, regular things to do.”

“I do like to go,” Efron explains. “Every time I go, there’s something new. It’s kind of like Chris — I’m blown away when there’s like tons of new snacks. Farmer’s markets are where it’s at.”

A Family Affair hits Netflix on June 28.