The “terrible” idea cut from the action comedy “Dave Bautista, Chloe Coleman”

The My Spy Story continues with My Spy: The Eternal Citybrings Dave Bautista and Chloe Coleman back to star in the action comedy, and takes us to Italy. Now that Sophie (Coleman) is 14, milestones of teenage life like crushes and first kisses have become central to the story alongside the action.

In My Spy: The Eternal City, Trying to bond with his stepdaughter, JJ (Bautista) jumps at the opportunity to chaperone Sophie’s school choir trip to Italy to perform for the Pope in Vatican City. Sophie hopes to go to her school’s homecoming dance with her crush, Ryan (Billy Barratt).

But when Sophie’s best friend Collin (Taeho K), the son of JJ’s CIA boss David Kim (Ken Jeong), is kidnapped in Italy, a terrorist plot comes to light and JJ and Sophie must save the world.

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“I admit, a terrible idea”

Peter Segal, the director and co-writer of the film, has to find his way in his teenage years. My Spy: The Eternal CityThere was an idea in an earlier version of the script that he admitted wasn’t the best for Sophie. It was also something that Coleman wasn’t a particular fan of.

“I think Sophie was a little more boy-obsessed at first than she actually is in the movie,” Coleman said at a virtual press conference ahead of the film’s release. “I remember reading one of the drafts and there was a part where she’s sitting on some kind of doll and talking to JJ and saying, ‘JJ, how do I kiss someone? How do I go about my first kiss?'”

“I remember reading it and thinking, ‘Oh my God! If I had to do that, I would freak out.’ But I think we hit the perfect level of Sophie because I feel like when you actually become a teenager, your first thought is, ‘No, that’s gross. I would never want to do that.’ … I think Sophie is very reticent about that because she sees it as something special and new. And something she doesn’t understand. I think she’s scared of that because she doesn’t know how to be a high school student or a teenager. In the first movie, she didn’t have any friends, but now she has friends and she’s expanding her life in that way.”

“Kissing the pacifier was a terrible idea. That, I admit, was a terrible idea,” Segal said in response.

But questionable ideas aside, something that all the stars of My Spy: The Eternal City highlighted is that the cast of the film felt very much like a “family” as the cast members of the first film brought an established connection to the sequel.

“We all have a kind of shorthand,” Ken Jeong said. “We were just great at reading each other’s minds, where we wanted to go creatively, where (Peter Segal) wanted us to go as characters, where we wanted to go as artists, and I just felt like we were always moving in sync.”