ET also spoke with Joey, Matthew and Andrew Lawrence about their new thriller, 'My Husband's Secret Brother.'
Joey Lawrence's latest movie is an extra special one.
The actor made a real-life love connection, meeting his fiancée, Samantha Cope, on the set of My Husband's Secret Brother. The LMN (Lifetime Movie Network) film is also a Lawrence brothers reunion, with Andrew Lawrence writing and directing the project and Matthew Lawrence co-starring.
"Honestly, it was very unexpected," Joey tells ET's Nischelle Turner of his romance with Samantha while promoting the film with brothers Matthew and Andrew. "And coming out of a year or two that was crazy…You don't plan on anything. It really is the age-old adage that life happens in between the plans that you make."
"It was just wild the whole thing, the way it happened. There was somebody else who was supposed to play that part, they fell out at the last minute," Joey recalls of the chance meeting. "Everything happens for a reason, you have to believe that."
Joey and Samantha got engaged in August of this year, one year after he filed for divorce from Chandie Lawrence. Andrew jokingly recalled his brother being cautious about meeting Samantha amid COVID-19 protocols.
"I will say, on the set before they met, he came up to me and was like, 'Look, with COVID, I don't know this person. I am not touching her, I am not kissing her, there will be nothing physical,'" Andrew remembers, with Joey adding, "I didn’t even have an opportunity to talk to her because it was so last minute and I'm like, 'Who is it?' And the first scene was I have to be in bed with her!"
"It's crazy because we met in such a time. There was no wining and dining, I wasn’t even in an emotional place to do that, we were in COVID, there's nowhere to go," Joey continues. "We met and sort of grew and fell in love with each other like totally confined. We didn’t even go anywhere. We went out to see our very first movie about three weeks ago."
"We have been, literally, confined to just hanging out and it has been the greatest thing ever," he gushes.
My Husband's Secret Brother follows Jackie (Samantha), the heiress to her husband’s fortune after his death, who finally finds love again with plastic surgeon Kevin (Joey). However, as secrets about Kevin and her late husband’s family come to light, she and her daughter find themselves in danger.
Joey's daughter, Charleston, 15, makes her acting debut as Samantha's character's little one. The proud dad shared that Charleston and 11-year-old daughter Liberty "have always been performers."
"I made it a point to never really talk about what I did, other than she was able to grow up and sort of realize it," Joey explains. "We just talked about it and I said, 'Look, there might be an opportunity at some point where if you want to try it.' Like anybody else, if you were doing something professionally and your child showed a little bit of interest you'd go, 'If you want to try it, let's try it and there's no pressure if it doesn't end up feeling like the right thing to do. You don't have to do it.'"
While his daughter was on the fence of wanting to give it a shot and then being nervous about it, Joey reassured her that this would be a great place to give it a try. "There won't be a better opportunity, you're protected," he told his daughter of working alongside family.
As for Uncle Andrew, he praised his niece, saying, "When she hits her home run or executes something, amazing. It's pretty cool."
The brothers, meanwhile, have loved working with each other over the years.
"I really enjoy it," Matthew expresses. "Love working with Andy. He is a great director. And you know, it just works. I do know that though, coming from other families, l come across other families like, 'How do you work with them?' Every now and then we will come to disagreements, but it is like, no one can tell me like Andy if I am doing a good job, quite like my brother can…I know he has my best interest in mind."
"There was a period of time where we didn't work together for a while," Joey adds. "You go through this transitional period and I think we all went through it at different stages, because I got 11 years on [Andrew], and Matt and I are only three-and-a-half years apart and then it just made sense again."
"We have something good here and it works and our fans are awesome. We're ready to do it again and hopefully they're ready to see it again," he continues, teasing more work together. "So this happened and there's another movie that we did together and there's a really exciting TV project. We have an amazing team that we are blessed to be working with and we'll talk about it at a future time."
My Husband's Secret Brother premieres Friday, Sept. 17 at 8 p.m. on LMN.
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