Source: Cineplex
Date: April 1, 2010

The Back-up Plan casts Jennifer Lopez as a woman who gets pregnant, then meets the man of her dreams. Complicated. But for new mom J.Lo, starring in a baby-centric story made her return to the big screen a little easier

There’s organized chaos on the L.A. set of Jennifer Lopez’ new movie, The Back-up Plan. The crew is running around, setting up for a shoot that’ll go into the wee hours of the morning.

“What we’re shooting tonight is Stan and Zoe’s first real date,” says director Alan Poul. The rom-com about a single woman who gets pregnant…then meets the man of her dreams marks Poul’s big-screen directing debut after a successful career in the TV world, where he executive produced HBO’s groundbreaking drama Six Feet Under, and helmed episodes of such diverse small-screen fare as Swingtown, Rome and Big Love.

“What we wanted is for Stan, Alex O’Loughlin’s character, to surprise Zoe, Jennifer Lopez’ character, by showing his charm and his resources and doing something completely unexpected,” continues Poul. “So where she thinks he might be taking her out to a restaurant, which would be what is logical on a Saturday night in New York City, instead he has built this beautiful table setting. It’s a magical world surrounded by candles and lights in a sort of semi-public community garden in the East Village. We’re shooting it here in Southern California but it looks very much like the actual community garden that exists on Avenue B and 6th Street in New York.”

Before The Back-up Plan took over the space, it was just an empty courtyard. Tonight it’s been transformed with plants and flowers, strings of white lights woven into the greenery, flickering candles and brightly coloured paper lanterns.

But, so far, no sign of J.Lo.

Then, moments before shooting starts, she appears, looking stunning in a light brown baby-doll dress with the tag still on (it’s all part of the scene), and takes her mark. As the cameras roll and the scene plays out, it becomes clear why Lopez chose this role for her return to the big screen after having twins Max and Emme in February 2008.

“It was just right up my alley,” Lopez says during a break. “And it’s funny because it was about having kids and thinking about that phase in your life, and I had just gone through that. So it was all very fresh in my mind.”

It’s what Lopez was looking for when she decided to return to work after a nearly three-year break. “You know, I’ve always enjoyed doing romantic comedies,” she says. “I love watching them, first of all, and I’ve always enjoyed making them…. The script was very honest and funny and edgy, you know, funny in kind of an edgy way, and I like that it was very grown up. So that’s what really made me respond to it…it kind of felt like me right now.”

Lopez’ character, Zoe, is tired of waiting for “the one” and is ready to have a baby, even if she has to do it alone. So she decides to be artificially inseminated. The same day she undergoes the procedure, she meets Stan, who, of course, may be Mr. Right. As the two start to date, Zoe keeps her pregnancy under wraps, and as the relationship heats up, she has to decide how and when to reveal her secret.

“It’s infused with the brave new comedy that we have a lot of now,” says O’Loughlin. “It’s a bit risqué, a bit kind of devilish, there’s those sort of naughty elements that I’ve always liked.”

Those “naughty elements” helped build that all-important chemistry between Lopez and her lesser-known Australian co-star O’Loughlin, who, prior to The Back-up Plan, had done some TV shows and had big-screen roles in Whiteout and August Rush. “I had put Alex and Jennifer together to be sure and they hit it off like gangbusters from the beginning and it’s been incredible,” says Poul. “They have such sexual chemistry.”

Ah, chemistry. It’s easy to say you have it, but what does it really mean? “I think chemistry comes from all sorts of things,” says O’Loughlin, “but if you, you know, if you dig someone and you get on with someone, you share a sense of humour, you have common understandings, it’s great, it really shows, you know? It’s good when we’re getting to the stage when you can sort of look at each other. A funny thing happens and we both get it and it’s good and the camera picks that up.”

It probably doesn’t hurt that, to some extent, Lopez can feel her character’s pain. Like Zoe, in real life it took a while for Lopez to find the elusive “one.” She briefly dated husband Marc Anthony (who stopped by the set on this day) a decade before they reunited and married in 2004. That rekindled romance followed her very public relationship with actor Ben Affleck. Before that, she’d been married twice. Her first marriage lasted just under a year, and her second, to backup dancer Chris Judd, fared about as well. She was also involved with Sean “Diddy” Combs, a romance that came to a halt after the infamous nightclub incident that resulted in Combs being charged with felony gun possession.

But now — it would seem, anyway — Lopez has what she wants. She’s a mother, a wife, a recording artist, an actor and a fashion designer. And, despite a slight case of nerves about heading back to work, she knows this late-night L.A. set, standing in for a New York garden, is where she belongs. “You don’t really realize how much you miss it, you know, because I was having such a wonderful time being pregnant and having the babies that when I got back to work I didn’t realize. I was like, ‘Wow, this is really a big part of who I am, you know, I miss this, I miss this a lot.’”

Melissa Sheasgreen is a producer for the Cineplex Pre-Show.

Mixed Nuts

Outside of her pregnancy and relationship with Stan, the one thing we know about Jennifer Lopez’ character is that she’s an animal lover. She owns a “socially conscious pet store” that puts needy pets up for adoption instead of getting its animals from puppy mills, and she cares for Nuts, a disabled Boston terrier who needs a wheelchair to get around. In reality, Nuts was played by three able-bodied, rescued Boston terriers — Nip, Tuck and Nubbins. Trainer April Macklin (Marley & Me) needed healthy dogs in order to train them for the demanding role.