In the years since Jennifer Lopez’s breakout acting role in Selena, the multihyphenate megastar has made blockbuster rom-coms, worked with critically acclaimed filmmakers and costars, and earned the most serious acting praise of her career for 2019’s Hustlers, with a performance many fans still believe should’ve earned her an Oscar nomination. Throughout all of those projects, though—not to mention the many albums, tours, and side businesses along the way—Lopez was secretly hoping for another movie, like Selena, that would incorporate her love of music. With Marry Me, her forthcoming romantic comedy directed by Kat Coiro and costarring Owen Wilson, Lopez has made just that.
“It has always been a dream of mine to make a whole album with a movie,” Lopez told Vanity Fair the same day that Marry Me’s trailer (below) debuted. “It’s the first time I’ve done a movie with music since Selena, and for that film they used Selena’s voice. This is the first time that I’m getting to do every aspect of the music, and it was incredibly fun to do.”
Lopez stars as Kat Valdez, an international recording star engaged to Bastian, another famous musician (played by Colombian singer Maluma). The two stars, whose romance is lapped up as gossip fodder by the public, plan to marry onstage during a concert—only for Kat to realize minutes before the ceremony that Bastian has been unfaithful. In a spontaneous leap of faith, Lopez’s Kat plucks a random person from the audience (Owen Wilson) and asks him to marry her instead.
While the romantic storyline is clearly fictional, there were many elements of the character and her journey that resonated with Lopez.
“This movie was very personal for me,” says Lopez. “I really understood this life. Kat Valdez is a recording artist. She’s been famous and in the business for a long time. She’s had some ups and downs in her personal life. Kat’s strong and confident. She’s a businesswoman. She’s a boss. But she’s also just a regular person who gets lonely, and who needs love, and wants to feel like she has a home.”
In a separate conversation, Koira tells Vanity Fair she was surprised by “how much of herself Jennifer brought to the role. You can see there are parallels between Kat’s personal life and [Lopez’s] personal life. And I was always in awe of how honest she was willing to be with a lot of those things. . . When she talks about having her relationships being public and being scrutinized. . .Owen’s character cannot fathom this, but she’s a realist and says this is part of the deal. That was something we talked about a lot—just having her life under the microscope the way she has.”
“There are differences between her and the character. Obviously, Jennifer has children that are a big priority in her life,” points out Koira. “And Kat has been more alone, and hasn’t really had a relationship in the same way that Jennifer has. . .Another thing we talked about in regards to Kat Valdez was this huge amount of energy that goes into being an artist who gives themselves.”
Knowing that it would be impossible to recreate the energy of a real concert on a soundstage, Lopez, who also is a producer on the film, plotted a surprise performance with her co-star Maluma.
“There’s a scene in the film where my character, Kat Valdez, performs the film’s title track with Maluma’s character, Bastian,” says Lopez. “We really wanted to sing at a big venue for it, and Maluma just happened to be doing a concert in Madison Square Garden during that time. So we were like, ‘Why don’t we crash that concert and film it?’ And so we did. He was a great sport about it. In the middle of his regular concert, with all of his fans, I just came out and we did ‘Marry Me.’ It was so much fun.”
Adds Koira, “A huge part of the process was finding the songs—we must’ve listened to over 400 songs to find the ones that thread the narrative and enhance our story. The first time I met her, Jennifer was playing one of these songs and the Bluetooth speaker cut out. So she just sang it a cappella. It actually brought tears to my eyes. She’s an actress, she’s a model, she’s a business woman, she’s a singer, she’s a pop star. . .but in that moment I saw her as a very pure artist which, because of the largeness of her, we don’t see very often. It was really important for me to have the viewers get that same intimate experience with her.”
So the film juxtaposes the largeness of Kat’s persona, with quieter moments for romance and reflection. In one scene in her character’s apartment, Lopez plays the piano, alone in her thoughts and music. In other scenes, Lopez’s character dismisses her omnipresent entourage and social-media crew to get to know Wilson’s character, single dad and math teacher, and herself. In between filming those sequences, the director says that she and the cast and crew shared stories of how they met their significant others—and realized that the romantic premise of Marry Me was not so preposterous.
“It’s pretty far-fetched. But you start asking around about the way that people meet and all of the coincidences that have to happen to bring two people together, they are pretty substantial,” says Koira. “Crazier things have happened.”
Marry Me opens in theaters on February 11.
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