DIEGO DOUBLE
THE nephew of movie stars and brothers Mark and Donnie Wahlberg has quietly slipped into the role of Diego in Dora The Explorer, filming on the Gold Coast.
Jeffrey Wahlberg will play Dora’s cousin after the actor originally cast in the role, Micke Moreno, returned to the US following a rumoured romance with Dora actor Isabela Moner.
LIGHTS, camera, action and Take 2!
Meet the US actor who has quietly slipped into the role of Diego on director James Bobin’s live action Dora The Explorer movie, filming on the Gold Coast.
The nephew of Hollywood stars and brothers Mark Wahlberg and Donnie Wahlberg (his dad is their brother, James “Jim” Wahlberg), Jeffrey Wahlberg, 22, has stepped into the shoes of Dora’s cousin Diego in the film after the actor originally cast in the role, Micke Moreno, returned to the US following a rumoured romance with Isabela Moner. Crew members said Colombianborn singer and actor Moreno, who turned 20 on September 14, was sent back to the US and replaced as Diego after romancing the film’s leading lady. The film’s producers are yet to officially announce the change.
Best known for his roles in the 2018 apocalyptic thriller Future World, directed by James Franco and Bruce Thierry Cheung, Don’t Come Back from the Moon (2017) and Toyed (2016), Wahlberg was photographed on the Dora set for the first time this week but has been on the job for several weeks.
A “deeply creative kid” of Irish and Dominican American descent who grew up in Miami, Florida, Wahlberg was wearing Diego’s trademark blue shirt on Monday when Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk visited a location shoot for Dora at the Old Museum Building in Brisbane.
Wahlberg uploaded pictures on Instagram of a recent trip to North Queensland with fellow cast and crew from Dora The Explorer.
Another image uploaded on September 22 shows an old postcard that reads: Greetings from Australia, the friendliest place on Earth.
Wahlberg captioned the post: Hope the jellies don’t get me!
Wahlberg isn’t the only member of his famous clan filming a movie Down Under. His uncle Mark has reportedly signed on to star in Mel Gibson’s World War II drama The Destroyer, which is set during the Battle of Okinawa in April 1945 and scheduled to be based at Fox Studios in Sydney.