Jennifer Lopez and the team behind “The Mother” are already thinking about a sequel.
“I think it would be ‘The Daughter,’” Lopez told me Wednesday night at the premiere of the new Netflix action thriller.
In the film, Lopez plays a former assassin who is pulled back into her deadly work when her 12-year-old daughter’s (Lucy Paez) life is put in danger.
Paez agreed. “The sequel will definitely be ‘The Daughter,’” the young actor said.
Not only does Lopez’s character kill at least a couple dozen men in the movie, but the actor’s impressive stunt work also includes motorcycle chases and gunfights while riding a snowmobile. “I was achy, but not hurt,” Lopez said. “I don’t think I’ve ever done an action movie like this. I do a lot of my own stunts because I’m athletic. But I have kids so I’m not going to risk anything.”
In fact, Lopez said she was looking out for everyone’s safety while filming. “I’m more skittish than anyone on the set,” she explained. “Even with the baby cub wolves, I was like, ‘Let’s be careful. I don’t want anyone getting bit. I don’t want anyone getting hurt.’ That’s something I just don’t mess around with. Safety comes first.”
That said, there wasn’t much Lopez wouldn’t do, according to director Niki Caro. “It’s amazing to watch her because the first time she does something, it goes into her muscle memory,” Caro said. “And then she can just do it over and over and over again.”
The director then recalled one of her first meetings with Lopez. “I said to her, ‘Can you run?’” Caro said, laughing. “She looked at me and was like, ‘What do you mean can I run?’ I didn’t know.”
I joke with Lopez that the film seems like an audition for her to play James Bond. “Are they considering a woman for James Bond?” she replied. “That would be hilarious. We could do anything.”
Lopez’s Nuyorican Productions partner Elaine Goldsmith-Thomas recalled living together when they were on location in remote Canada woods. “I was really scared because she caught me eating carbs,” Goldsmith-Thomas said. “She didn’t eat any carbs. I was like, ‘Me, too! Solidarity!’ But then I snuck some Cheetos. She was a beast. I don’t know if she was in better shape for this or ‘Hustlers,’ but she was a beast.”
Fitness trainer Tracy Anderson, creator of the Tracy Anderson Method, has worked with Lopez for many years. “She’s somebody that I absolutely refuse to take credit for. There are many people where I’m like, ‘Look, I really worked hard on this person, and I deserve the credit,’” Anderson said. “But she’s really not one of them because she is genetically extraordinary. If someone could graduate with the highest honors in physical literacy, she would be like summa cum laude. She knows her body so well.”
