EXCLUSIVE: Jason Moore & Callie Hernandez Talk Shotgun Wedding
Shotgun Wedding will be released globally to Prime Video this coming Friday, January 27 and we got the chance to hear from the director of the new rom com, Jason Moore and cast member, Callie Hernandez.
During the chat, they talked the movie’s ensemble, creating Hernandez’s character, and so much more. Continue below to see what they had to say.
How did you manage to pull together the ensemble you did for this movie?
Moore: “You find a way when you have people like them that want to do the role. The casting for this was a kind of puzzle because you needed people who could be grounded and real and also funny and also physical. And also were going to be cool to be hanging out with for eight weeks. And so I made a lot of phone calls about, “What’s this person on set?” And once I think we had cast Jennifer Coolidge and then we needed her husband. So finding ways that everyone related to each other was really fun. And another thing I really wanted for this movie is that like at a wedding, sometimes you look around and it’s like these people would never all be in a room together for any other reason. So I kind of wanted our cast look to look like that too. And obviously we got an amazing cast of just even better than I had dreamed.”
How much involvement did you have on how the actors portrayed their characters? Take Jennifer Coolidge for instance, did you give pointers or allow her to do her own thing?
Moore: “I love actors, and I love watching them discover things and do things. So I try to set up a situation where they can shine and they all do. And Jennifer Coolidge is, I mean a runaway train and that makes you … I had to move away from the camera because I would be laughing. I had the sound guy tell me once, “I can hear, you’re laughing. You need to stop.” And it’s definitely because of Jennifer.”
What about with Jennifer Lopez?
“I put a lot of that pressure on myself. I never got it from her, but we had such a fun collaboration that I also felt safe so that I could say to her things I don’t understand, let’s try it again. It was just a wonderful collaboration. But yeah, the bar was really high. So I did a lot of meditating.”
For you Callie, you play Jennifer Lopez’s sister/Maid of Honor in the movie, how did you craft that character?
Hernandez: “Jason and I talked a lot about exactly how she fit in, and that’s kind of what came out.”
While making the movie was there a moment where you just couldn’t keep a straight face?
Hernandez: “I would say, honestly, Steve [Coulter] had a couple of zingers in there, I thought was hard to keep a straight face and I could never make eye contact with D’Arcy Carden if we were shooting something because we would just both start giggling.”
*This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Photo credit: Ana Carballosa/Lionsgate