ET chatted with the Colombian singer about his feature film acting debut.
Maluma is in good company as he makes his feature film acting debut in Marry Me. The 28-year-old Colombian superstar co-stars alongside Jennifer Lopez and Owen Wilson in the upcoming rom-com, out Friday. While chatting with ET's Nischelle Turner, Maluma shared why Marry Me was the perfect first film.
"[It's] pretty surreal, that's the right word, pretty surreal. But it was beautiful at the same time," he shared at the press junket alongside Wilson. "When I told my friends -- because all my friends are huge fans, including me, huge fans of Jen and Owen because we grew up watching American romantic comedies -- and once they told me that they wanted me to be part of the movie, it was pretty exciting. I told all my friends they were like, 'No, are you kidding me? This is a joke, whatever!' But it really happened!"
"My first movie is a Hollywood movie," he continued. "I had a couple options before this, you know, there's some people that wanted to work with me. But I felt it wasn't the right timing and I was waiting for the right movie to feel comfortable to do it in a big way. And it happened. It happened. I'm pretty honored. I'm grateful, of course, with the whole team because they treated me so good."
And while he was "kind of nervous," for it being his first movie, he says, "I love the experience. I just fell in love with it. I want to keep doing it. I'm looking forward [to] many, many movies that I can make. It's just the beginning, so I feel like what's coming is beautiful."
Marry Me follows Lopez as pop star Kat Valdez who is engaged to Maluma's Bastian. Seconds before the two are set to get married in front of their fans, she discovers that he's been cheating on her. She then impulsively picks out a total stranger in the audience, played by Wilson, and decides to marry him on the spot.
To film one of the mega musical scenes, Lopez crashed Maluma's concert at Madison Square Garden in New York in 2019.
"Yeah and it wasn't planned. Like one day they were, 'You're touring right now?' I was like, 'Yeah, you guys want to come to concert?' They were like, 'OK, we wanna go, but we want to shoot one of scenes of the movie there in the concert,'" he recalls. "And it was amazing. All the lighting people that were there, and people [from] around the world at Madison Square Garden, a beautiful sold-out [show]. I don't know like 18,000 people, something like that, and when they saw Jennifer singing in Spanish -- because we sang a first song before we're singing 'Marry Me' -- everybody was getting crazy. It was a good surprise for the crowd in New York. It was great."
For Wilson, he adds that she's never had so many of his friends want to visit the set because of his superstar co-star.
"I don't think I've ever had a movie that I've worked on where I had more friends wanna visit me
on set see Maluma and see J.Lo singing," he tells ET. "And I remember even on a day off going up there when they were filming some of the big, kind of, dance sequences. And I love those movies, some of those classic All That Jazz and things. So seeing that and seeing how much kind of work and attention went into it, I think it makes it, really helps the movie."
ET also spoke with Lopez at the Marry Me premiere on Tuesday, where she touched on the "similarities" between her and the character she plays in the film.
"It's not exactly the same character, but there are a lot of things about the life, obviously," Lopez, who was accompanied by boyfriend Ben Affleck, explained. "She's a recording artist, she has her own businesses, she does branding, she had lived her life in the public eye, had some ups and down in a relationship -- anything that I could relate to, I obviously wanted to put that into the film. So, it was a good, little meta experience for me."
Hear more of what she shared in the video below.
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