Jennifer Lopez ’s latest role hit close to home for the actress. The Hollywood star plays musical superstar Kat Valdez in the upcoming romantic comedy Marry Me. “This movie was very meta for me,” the singer admitted on Thursday to TODAY’s Savannah Guthrie and Hoda Kotb. “This was the first time that I got to really take my own life, cause I’ve played a lot of different types of characters in all these different movies over the years, but this is the first time that it was as close to me.”
The Wedding Planner actress, 52, shared that she was “able to kind of really bring special little nuances” to the film. “I know what it feels like to go home and have them like making jokes about you on TV,” she said. “It’s hard... You go home sometimes and you cry when it was a big heartbreak, or something happened and it was bad, and it’s hard to deal with.”
Jennifer continued, “People, you know, I don’t think they get to see that as much. You have to put your best foot forward. You have to come out here. You have to do the smile. You have to do the thing. That’s part of your job, but there’s a person there, and it was nice to kind of let that side out because I never get to do that really.”
In addition to Jennifer, Marry Me also stars Maluma as new music supernova Bastian and Owen Wilson as a divorced high school math teacher named Charlie Gilbert.
Jennifer and Owen’s characters are “total strangers who agree to marry and then get to know each other,” according to Universal Pictures. “An unlikely romance about two different people searching for something real in a world where value is based on likes and followers, Marry Me is a modern love story about celebrity, marriage and social media.”
Marry Me will debut in theaters and on Peacock Feb. 11.
