Zac Efron Shot a Full Fake 'Hot Ones' Interview for 'A Family Affair ...
If there’s one place you can count on the biggest stars in the world showing up at this point, it’s “Hot Ones,” attempting to answer questions while eating insanely spicy hot wings. So naturally, it popped up in “A Family Affair” as part of Zac Efron’s (partly) fictional highlight reel. And, according to the film’s director, Efron really did a whole interview in character — it just didn’t make the final cut.
The new movie, now streaming on Netflix, tells the story of Zara Ford (Joey King), a young assistant to movie star Chris Cole (Efron), hoping to work her way up to being a producer and, eventually, running his company. Chris is a horrible boss though, and doesn’t treat Zara well. So when he starts up a relationship with her mom — who’s 16 years older than him — Zara is, well, less than pleased.
Still, Chris is a bonafide movie star, and to illustrate that, the film kicks off with a montage of his success, using footage from some of Efron’s real-life highlights. It includes footage of him on red carpets, getting his star on the Hollywood walk of fame, and more.
“That sequence was a long time in the making,” director Richard LaGravenese recalled to TheWrap with a laugh. “I mean, getting it just right and getting the different pieces. And we wanted it to be most of the most current form of Zac. So some things we staged, like his date, but a lot of the ones, really, was just sort of a rhythm thing that went with the music, and we just needed to show that he was a global star.”
Among those many press highlights is a “Hot Ones” interview — featuring a cameo from real host Sean Evans — which Efron has done in real life. But this one was a fake interview that Efron did entirely in character. We only see a brief snippet of it, but according to LaGravenese, Efron did fully commit to the bit.
“We had originally shot a full episode of the ‘Hot Ones,’ which I’m sorry we don’t get to show, which was a full interview that Sean and and Zac did together that was filled with a lot of funny improvs and things like that,” LaGravenese revealed. “But it was too time consuming and we couldn’t put the whole thing in there. But that was part of what the opening was going to be.”
He added, “It was really fun. We had four cameras, and the two of them just went at it, like over and over. It was really fun to film, Sean was delightful. He was really great to work with.”
The director also revealed that Nicole Kidman, who stars as Efron’s on-screen love interest Brooke Harwood in “A Family Affair,” also shot her own fictional interview, but with NPR’s Terry Gross. (Brooke is a respected writer, after all. “Hot Ones” would make a little less sense for her).
LaGravenese wouldn’t say if Efron’s full fake “Hot Ones” would ever be released, but just know, it exists. Somewhere in the world, the footage is there.
