In Mother of the Bride (which you can watch on Netflix now!), Brooke Shields' Lana is surprised to learn her daughter Emma (Miranda Cosgrove) is getting married in Thailand — but she's even more surprised when she finds out Emma's future father-in-law (Benjamin Bratt) is the man who broke her heart in college. Naturally, I had to ask the cast for their best advice on running into an ex!
"I think being a decent and kind person is the first thing that you should try to do," Sean Teale, who plays Emma's fiancé RJ, says. "Keep it light if it's a stressful situation because that's the best way through anything is just being kind and decent, and then you can go away feeling okay about it."
"Yeah, I would say remain calm, try not to ramble because I've run into an ex before at the movies and yeah, I rambled," Miranda adds.
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Miranda Cosgrove & Sean Teale Hung Out With Elephants During “Mother of the Bride”Not only does Lana have to navigate her relationship drama, but she also has to deal with the fact Emma's wedding is totally taken over by social media, a concept that was really appealing to Brooke Shields from the beginning.
"It has to unfold, not necessarily in the way that it would have organically unfolded with a mother and her only daughter going to pick out the dress and going to plan the napkins and all those things that you sort of dream about doing for your daughter," Brooke says. "So that was a really interesting thing, for that to be usurped and sort of [replaced with] somebody else's ideas."
"The script I read, [Emma's] vocation was creating this amazing website that all the sponsors were excited about," Benjamin Bratt says. "But over the course of shooting it, I think the filmmakers recognized that it's not about websites anymore, it's actually about TikTok and social media."
Ironically, the cast didn't find themselves online too much during filming! "I used my phone a lot less than I would have," Sean Teale says. "Especially during the shoot, we spent our whole time messing around if we weren't working."
"Especially with the time change too," Miranda Cosgrove adds. "It took a while to get used to that. So it kind of just makes you feel like you're off the grid. Being in Thailand was like a little getaway."
The fact that Emma is basically a social media star means I HAD to ask Miranda about iCarly, and whether Emma and Carly would get along. "I definitely think that they would be super close," she agrees. "But I think that Emma would probably wanna, like, manage Carly or something. Like she'd wanna manage her social media and come up with ideas and stuff for her channel."
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Brooke Shields Spills On Working With Chad Michael Murray For Mother of the BrideMiranda Cosgrove (and Brooke Shields for that matter) isn't the only member of the cast who's experienced the limelight from a young age. The cast also includes Chad Michael Murray, and as a One Tree Hill and A Cinderella Story STAN, I had to ask what it was like working with the Gilmore Girls actor. "You know what, I'm like 'Those abs have got to be painted on,'" Brooke jokes. "No, you know what was amazing was seeing him with his family and his stunning wife...It's picture perfect."
"[The story is about] that bond between parents and children, and many of us, including Chad, are kind of on board with it from our own personal experiences," Benjamin Bratt says. "A rom-com doesn't really succeed unless it has that very delicate, hard-to-achieve balance of outrageous humor that's gonna make you laugh out loud and real humanity."
"Brooke is...one of the most generous kind, empathetic, inclusive, enthusiastic actors I've ever worked with," he continues. "She loves what she's doing, she's always checking in with everyone, not just with other actors, but with the craft service person, 'Are you okay?' She's so maternal in that way. And it's really not an exaggeration, but it creates an environment where you really feel supported."
"For me, it's like, ok, it's pretty great to have Chad and Benjamin vying for your attention," Brooke adds. "To be this age of an actress and sort of be like, 'Oh my God, not one but two of them get to fight for me?' Like, that's sweet and funny."
"I have worked with men in the past and they're threatened by a female lead or there's a delicate nature to it," she continues more seriously. "It's tricky. And you see these two beautiful men who take their job really seriously bring brilliant nuance to the dramatic scenes, the funny scenes, all of that, who are okay also being a bit more of an object of desire as well. I mean, the slow motion of [Chad] putting spray on his body and [Benjamin] coming out of the shower, it's something that you don't see a lot, you usually see it in the reverse."
"Feel free to objectify any time," Benjamin jokes. "If Brooke is gonna [do it] I have zero issue with that."
Watch Mother of the Bride on Netflix now, and check out the rest of this year's summer movies!
Lead image via Netflix
