From Scientology to Second Act
BFFs Jennifer Lopez and Leah Remini have stuck together through it all
I don’t think this lighting is going to work,” Jennifer Lopez says. She has just turned up at a photo shoot, and she is dismayed.
“Newspapers don’t do retouching,” the actress points out, “and ugly don’t sell movies.”
She requests that the studio representatives retrieve a monitor so she can review the images up close. As Lopez’s entourage scrambles to find a screen, best friend Leah Remini stands by patiently. The two will be posing together in a photograph for a story about their new film, but Remini seems less concerned about the images.
“I don’t need to see them,” she shrugs.
Remini understands the work that Lopez puts into maintaining her brand. She doesn’t complain when she’s on time for an interview and her co-star is an hour late. She has no interest in “taking away her JLo.”
“I’m not that friend that is like, ‘I don’t see you as JLo,’ ” she says. “I see you as JLo, and I love that. Because you built that. I’m not trying to take you down and go, ‘Be normal.’ Her not being normal is what made this all possible.”
“This” is Lopez’s empire, which has grown to include acting, singing, dancing and producing since she was discovered as a fly girl on In Living Color in the ’90s. Last year alone, she’s starred in the third season of the NBC crime drama Shades of Blue, done a120-night Las Vegas residency at Planet Hollywood and has begun work as executive producer and judge of the third season of NBC’s World of Dance.
Then there’s Second Act, Lopez’s first film in three years. The romantic comedy follows big-box store assistant manager Maya (Lopez), who wishes for a promotion for her 43rd birthday. When she’s passed over for a college-educated applicant, she laments to best friend Joan (Remini) that her lack of higher education has held her back from her ambitions.
Joan’s tech-savvy son overhears the discussion and secretly creates an online resumé for Maya that bluffs about her credentials — and lands her a job at a fancy Madison Ave. firm.
The picture marks a return to romantic comedies for Lopez, 49, who established herself as one of the most dependable actresses of the genre after starring in such films as The Wedding Planner and Maid in Manhattan nearly two decades ago. But it’s the biggest film role ever for Remini, 48, who is best known for her sitcom television work opposite Kevin James on The King of Queens and the recently cancelled Kevin Can Wait.
“I’m not film person,” Remini shrugs. “I don’t love the genre. I don’t enjoy the actual work of it. I like live shows. I like an audi- ence. I don’t love filmmaking and doing things out of sequence.”
She says she agreed to the role before even reading the screenplay because of how much she trusts Lopez. The two first met 14 years ago, when Remini was enmeshed in Scientology. She and husband Angelo Pagan were close with Marc Anthony, who had just begun dating Lopez. Anthony invited the couple to the premiere of a movie he was in, Man on Fire — where he and Lopez were having their first public outing — and excitedly introduced them to his new girlfriend.
“He was like, ‘She’s the love of my life, blah, blah, blah,’ ” recalls Remini. (Anthony and Lopez would go onto wed and divorce and share custody of their 10-year-old twins.) “As I was walking up to the table, I was like, ‘Ugh, God, you’re even prettier in real life.’ She started laughing, and I was like, ‘Ugh, and you have a sense of humour even?’ ”
Within the week, Remini was hanging out at Lopez’s house. The two immediately bonded, she says, forming the kind of friendship where “you just take the armour off.” She credits Lopez with being one of the few people in Hollywood to stand by her when she left Scientology in 2013. Another pillar of Remini’s life remains in place, though: her preference for TV.
“I’ve always been like, ‘Why don’t you do more movies?’ ” Lopez says. “But performing on those sitcoms in front of an audience — it’s a different talent. It’s a real rhythm, it’s a real family, it’s bit comedy. It’s different than scene comedy and even romantic comedy. I remember Leah walked up to me in one of the emotional scenes (in Second Act) when I was outside, like, ‘OK, I gotta prepare.’ And she opens the door and she’s like, ‘Oh, wow, you’re really crying.’ ”
“Because in comparison to me and Kevin James,” Remini says about her sitcom co-star, “we’d be outside the door waiting for ‘action,’ saying, ‘So, are you going to order the pizza? Because I don’t want it to be cold.’ And (Lopez) is, like, doing a job.”