Are sex scenes in romantic comedies too unrealistic? Damon Wayans Jr. likes to think so.
The actor, who stars in Netflix’s new rom-com, Players, out now, tells Yahoo Entertainment the tropes he’d like to keep and which ones should be retired from the genre.
“I think what I would lose is how good the sex is in all the movies because they’re always like rolling off each other, like, ‘That was crazy.’ … It’s wack a lot of the time,” he says.
Wayans says he’d prefer something more realistic, “stuff that happens in real life.”
In Players, Wayans stars as supportive friend Adam opposite Gina Rodriguez, who plays sportswriter Mack. In the movie, the pair are longtime friends and co-workers who assist each other in getting laid. That’s until they come to the realization they want more out of their dating lives.
Players is not your typical rom-com. Mack and Adam concoct a whole playbook of pickup lines and hookup techniques used by their entire crew of friends to ensure their success in playing the field. They are used to meaningless hookups, but Mack wants to call an audible when she “unexpectedly falls for one of her targets.” the movie’s description reads.
Wayans and Rodriguez are no strangers to rom-coms. Rodriguez starred in 2019’s Someone Great, where her character leans on her friends after a devastating breakup comes before her cross-country move.
Wayans starred in 2020’s Love, Guaranteed, and played a man who sues a dating app company because, after going on nearly 1,000 dates, he never found love, which the app “guaranteed.”
While Wayans would change the way sex scenes are portrayed in rom-coms, he does stand by the genre’s blueprint.
“I used to not like the idea of knowing how the movie is going to end from the beginning, but after doing this movie, I thought because this was such a fresh take on the rom-com, that I’m OK with [knowing the ending],” he said. “I already knew how the movie was going to end by the second scene, even when reading [the script], but the journey is what kind of differentiates it. So I’m cool with that staying the same.”
Another rom-com trope is that the city in which the movie is set often plays a leading role. New York City, where Players is set, was an essential backdrop for the cast.
“New York is just, that energy is so unique. I actually loved it so much when we shot that summer, I actually ended up moving from L.A. to New York. That is how integral New York is to this movie,” Augustus Prew, who plays Adam and Mack’s friend Brannagan in the movie, tells Yahoo Entertainment.
“It’s another personality … and I’m looking at places out there because of this movie,” says Liza Koshy, whose character Ashley becomes an addition to the friend group, added. “We hope it has that effect on everybody who watches it too.”
‘The best pickup line was my husband’
In real life, a pickup line led Rodriguez to true love.
“Oh, the best pickup line was my husband,” she tells Yahoo Entertainment. They were on a first date, but she had another date scheduled for later in the evening.
“I had a blind date that night. I completely forgot about it. I said, ‘Oh my god, I have a blind date. I can’t believe that I completely forgot. I don’t even want to go to it’ and my husband said ‘Go to it. Call me after’ and I was like, OK and 1707936729 we’re married … it was so smooth.”
Players is available to stream on Netflix.
