EXCLUSIVE: Mark Wahlberg and Michelle Monaghan first came together on screen as husband and wife Dan and Jessica Morgan in 2023’s The Family Plan.
It quickly became the most-streamed movie on the AppleTV+, so the idea of a sequel came about quite quickly and was “kind of an easy decision”.
In the new movie, The Family Plan 2, Jessica struggles to tell Dan what she really wants, which is to move from Buffalo to Ohio for a new job opportunity.
In a case of life imitating art, Monaghan joked she’s had awkward conversations about jobs with not just her real-life husband of 20 years, graphic artist Peter White, but her “work husband” too.
Between making the original and the sequel of the action comedy, Monaghan was a part of The White Lotus season 3 line-up, with the show’s racy reputation making the Ted star a little nervous.
“I got a real surprise when I saw it,” Wahlberg admits over Zoom in London.
“I was worried because we were actually making this movie. And I was like, ‘Tell me, you’re not doing some of that crazy, crazy stuff?!'”
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Monaghan said her husband “loves to be surprised” with her roles but for Wahlberg, she had to “assure him it was all safe to watch”.
Wahlberg tells nine.com.au he previously had a similar experience to Jessica’s when he was asked to take part in Peter Jackson’s 2009 The Lovely Bones.
”I’d just finished a movie in Philadelphia on a Friday and I got a call when I went home,” he recalls.
“They were like, ‘Hey, you’ve gotta read this script’ and I said, ‘I’ll read it over the weekend’ and they said, ‘No, you can’t read it over the weekend, it starts tomorrow’.
“Then I went and I told my wife, ‘Hey, you ever heard of the book The Lovely Bones?’ and she was like, ‘Oh my God, I love that book … if you ever have an opportunity to play the father, you have to do it’.
“I go, ‘By the way, I do have an opportunity to play the part but it starts tomorrow’ and she was like, ‘What!?’”
In the end it worked out for Wahlberg, who went on to star in the acclaimed film.
‘Big family reunion’
Just like the parents-of-three they portray on screen, the Hollywood stars were also on-hand to help their younger co-stars.
Zoe Colletti, 24, and Van Crosby, 23, return as daughter Nina and son Kyle, respectively, and tell nine.com.au the experience genuinely felt “like a big family reunion”.
“Mark and Michelle, they are just truly the sweetest and we definitely stayed connected throughout the time in between films,” Colletti says.
“Especially Michelle, [she] is constantly the first person to comment on my Instagram saying something so sweet, it truly feels like having another mum.
“They really do feel like extra parents. They’re the most supportive, sweetest people on the planet, they’re always watching what I’m up to and are just cheering me on.”
Crosby agreed, saying they’ve “really become like an actual family” over the years.
“I have come out of my shell a lot, because the first movie I was 19, and … I wasn’t new to the industry but I was new to big projects, so I didn’t really know how to navigate it,” he said.
“I was trying to figure out who I was and where I was, because I was 19, and now I’m 23 and so it was Mark and Michelle both that sort of helped me. Watching them work and stuff, I was like, ‘Oh, OK, so that’s how this works’.
“Then Zoe definitely helped me a lot, because Zoe gets me out of the house a lot, and we’ve stayed close between filming.”
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‘Slightly darker side’
In this film, a newcomer joins the Morgan family, with Game of Thrones star Kit Harrington playing Dan’s long-lost half brother Aidan.
The director of both the original and the sequel, Simon Cellan Jones, praised Harrington as a welcome addition to the group.
“He’s a class act, I think he’s very handsome, he’s charismatic,” Cellan Jones tells nine.com.au.
“Obviously, we know him as a sort of somewhat heroic figure and over many years, I think he was really interested to play a slightly darker side of things, and he had a great dynamic.”
Cellan Jones says he was a good sparring partner on-screen for Wahlberg.
“Because Mark loves a good actor, he likes to be pushed and met equally,” he says.
“So I think the two of them were really fun to work with, and they really sparked each other off.”
While all the cast have kept mum on a third movie at this stage, they were all enthusiastic about the family-action-adventure-comedy being turned into a franchise.
The Family Plan 2 is streaming on AppleTV+ from November 21.
Nine Entertainment Co (the publisher of this website) owns and operates the streaming service Stan.
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