“After producing Luis Miguel and Nuevo Orden, I started my own production company with my best friends and my sister called Three Amigos, and this was the first project that we developed,” actor and singer Diego Boneta revealed during a TCA press conference for the Paramount+ original romantic comedy, At Midnight, now streaming. “We realized how we, A, all loved classic '90s romcoms; B, how there hadn't been a rom-com shot in Mexico City or in Mexico and showing that side as well.” The project spent five years in development, with director Jonah Feingold (Dating & New York) taking a final pass at the script. “Little by little, all the pieces started kind of coming together.”
(Randy Shropshire/Getty Images / Paramount+)
At Midnight stars Diego Boneta as Alejandro, an ambitious hotel manager, and Monica Barbaro as Sophie, a movie star filming the latest superhero blockbuster at Alejandro’s resort. “There's nothing better than a meet-cute in a rom-com,” expressed director Jonah Feingold, a self-described rom-com obsessee who took a queue from Billy Wilder by keeping a notebook handy to list any ideas that came his way for potential meet-cutes. The one viewers will see in At Midnight was inspired by a memorable classic. “I was just watching Serendipity on an airplane, and it's, like, ‘Oh, my gosh, they both go for the glove.’ Sometimes meet-cutes can be these contrived things. Sometimes they make no story sense, and sometimes they make story sense. And in this one, I was trying to think organically, what is both physically fun, what has some good blocking, what can we get them to do to move around but is also derivative of the story for these characters in that moment?” Nailing the meet-cute was critical, which is why Jonah reset it from an elevator in the version of the script he inherited to Sophie’s hotel room, giving them more space.
“When I first was cast, we actually did a sort of a version of this in Mexico City before we filmed anything,” revealed Monica Barbaro, who auditioned and did her chemistry tests with Diego Boneta over Zoom. With At Midnight conceived as being romanticizing Mexico City and being the city’s own version of Vicky Cristina Barcelona or Midnight in Paris, understanding the heart and soul of the city was crucial before filming took place. “[Diego] just knows everything you need to know about Mexico City and showed us all a lovely time. We had some amazing dinners and went to the anthropology museum and got to know each other really well.” Monica shared that the script was stil l being refined at the time and recalls a lengthy lunch meeting where a character played by comedian Whitney Cummings was conceived. “By the time we were filming, we just knew each other really well, and we did rehearsals too. We knew the heartbeat of the story. We had done dance rehearsals as well. So, we really were quite a tight-knit group by the time we were filming.”
The inciting incident that drives Sophie into Alejandro’s arms is the infidelity of her co-star and boyfriend, actor Adam Clark, played by Anders Holm. “He was based on a summation of Hollywood behavior that has happened throughout the years,” Jonah Feingold shared, declaring that the character was not based on a specific public figure. “The most important thing about that character, which I think we all were relying on, including Anders, who is brilliant, was there needs to be some part of you that understands why Sophie liked him in the first place.”
“There were lots of moments that we've all had in this industry where we've either seen it happen to someone else, or it's happened to us with, the way he sort of takes over that interview or the way we've seen women treated in a breakup and things like that,” Monica added. “There were personal elements, I guess I should say.”
Another reason the project was important to Diego Bonita was the ability to continue to act in both English and Spanish. “When I did the first season of Luis Miguel years ago, I hadn't done anything in Spanish in ten years,” Diego shared. “So, it was kind of like a reverse crossover going back to Mexico and Latin America… Acting in Spanish was a bit different. And since then, my dream has been to marry both worlds and unite them and tell Latin stories that are universal. And being able to do that with my best friend and my sister is a dream come true. So, now, we are trying to find more projects that have that tell more universal stories.”
At Midnight is now streaming on Paramount+, a perfect viewing option this Valentine’s Day.
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