you still wanna kind of kiss her on the lips
Jennifer Lopez, appearing on a podcast alongside her new co-star Brett Goldstein, turned a conversation about cinema into a small meditation on what great acting does to a person — how it magnetizes, how it lingers. Her candid admiration for the ensemble of the 1993 cult film 'True Romance' became a way of articulating something older and harder to name: that excellence, when it lives fully in the body and the choices of a performer, becomes a kind of desire. The occasion was promotional — a new Netflix romantic comedy, 'Office Romance,' in which Lopez plays a CEO who has already arrived at power rather than striving toward it — but the moment that will be remembered was the one where she simply told the truth about what moves her.
- Lopez didn't hedge — she said plainly that the performances in 'True Romance' were so alive, so 'incredibly fucking good,' that she would have slept with any of them, and she meant it as the highest compliment she knew how to give.
- Her praise landed on Patricia Arquette in particular, on a scene where Arquette's character endures a brutal beating and emerges still magnetic — Lopez's point being that great acting doesn't just survive difficult material, it transforms it.
- The candor created a small disruption, the kind that happens when a celebrity says something true in public rather than something careful, and the moment cut through the promotional machinery around it.
- Beneath the frankness was a coherent aesthetic argument: that performance is a physical, irreducible thing, and that the 'True Romance' cast understood exactly what their material demanded of them.
- The promotional context — 'Office Romance,' a Netflix rom-com where Lopez plays a woman already in power rather than climbing toward it — framed the whole conversation as a portrait of someone who knows what she values and is no longer shy about saying so.
Jennifer Lopez sat down with Brett Goldstein on his podcast and the conversation found its way to 'True Romance,' the 1993 Tarantino-scripted, Tony Scott-directed crime film that has hardened over the years into something like a cult object. She was effusive — about Christian Slater, Val Kilmer, Patricia Arquette, Brad Pitt, the whole dangerous ensemble — and she was candid in a way that made the moment stick.
She lingered on Arquette's work in particular, on a scene where her character takes a brutal beating from James Gandolfini's and spends the rest of the film with her face swollen and bruised. Even damaged, Lopez said, Arquette remained magnetic — 'you still wanna kind of kiss her on the lips.' It was her way of saying that great acting transcends circumstance, that it lives in the body and the choices a performer makes moment to moment. Then she said it plainly: she would have slept with any of them. She framed it not as objectification but as a response to excellence — to the sheer force of what they did on screen.
The occasion was promotional. Lopez and Goldstein are releasing 'Office Romance,' a Netflix romantic comedy in which she plays a CEO with a strict rule against workplace relationships — a rule that gets tested when an attractive lawyer joins her firm. Goldstein co-wrote the script, and he's shaped it as a kind of evolution of Lopez's rom-com legacy: where her earlier films cast her as a woman aspiring and climbing, this one finds her already arrived, already in power, proud of what she's built.
Lopez said she was drawn to the script immediately — it had what she called a 'wholesome quality,' but also teeth, hard jokes, the kind of edge that comes from Goldstein's sensibility as a writer. The film feels like another step in the direction of his work on 'Ted Lasso' and 'Shrinking': taking a familiar form seriously while refusing to sand down its rougher edges.
Jennifer Lopez sat down recently with Brett Goldstein on his podcast to talk about movies, and the conversation turned to "True Romance," the 1993 crime film that has aged into something like a cult object. She was effusive about it—about the cast, about what they did with their roles, about the sheer magnetism of the ensemble. And she was candid in a way that made the moment stick.
The film itself is a strange, violent love story: an Elvis fanatic and a sex worker fall into each other, steal a suitcase of cocaine by accident, and spend the rest of the movie running from the mob. It's a Tarantino script, directed by Tony Scott, and it's populated with actors who seemed to understand exactly what the material wanted from them. Lopez named them as she went: Christian Slater as the record-store clerk who hallucinates conversations with Val Kilmer's Elvis. Patricia Arquette as the woman with the damaged face and the unshakeable kindness. Christopher Walken, Dennis Hopper, Brad Pitt, James Gandolfini, Gary Oldman—a roster of performers who brought something dangerous and alive to their scenes.
What struck Lopez most was the quality of the work itself. She praised their performances as "top-notch" and "dynamic," the kind of acting that feels both believable and heightened at once. She lingered on Arquette's work in particular, on a scene where her character takes a brutal beating from Gandolfini's character and spends the rest of the film with her face swollen and bruised. Even damaged, Lopez said, Arquette remained magnetic—"you still wanna kind of kiss her on the lips." It was a way of saying that great acting transcends circumstance, that it lives in the body and the face and the choices an actor makes moment to moment.
Then she said it plainly: she would have slept with any of them. "That is the truth," she added, acknowledging that the admission said something about her taste, about what drew her. She framed it not as objectification but as a response to excellence—to the sheer force of their performances, to the fact that they were so "incredibly fucking good" in the film.
Lopez and Goldstein are promoting a new Netflix romantic comedy called "Office Romance," in which she plays a CEO with an ironclad rule against workplace relationships. The rule gets tested when an attractive lawyer joins her firm. Goldstein, who co-wrote the film, has positioned it as a kind of evolution of Lopez's rom-com legacy. In her earlier films—"Maid in Manhattan," "The Wedding Planner"—she played women who were aspiring, climbing, working toward something. In "Office Romance," she's already arrived. She's the one in power. She's built something and she's proud of it.
Lopez told an interviewer that she was drawn to the script immediately. It had what she called a "wholesome quality," but it also had teeth—hard jokes, profanity, the kind of edge that comes from Goldstein's sensibility as a writer. He's known for his work on "Ted Lasso" as both an actor and a writer, and he's since co-created "Shrinking," which stars Harrison Ford and Jason Segel. "Office Romance" feels like another step in that direction: a film that takes the rom-com form seriously while also refusing to sand down its rougher edges.
Citações Notáveis
I would've had sex with any one of them. That is the truth. They were all so incredibly fucking good in this movie.— Jennifer Lopez, on the cast of "True Romance"
We wanted to make a love letter to workaholics and also a more grown-up, adult film. What if she's the CEO now? What if she's made it?— Brett Goldstein, on the concept of "Office Romance"
A Conversa do Hearth Outra perspectiva sobre a história
Why did Lopez's comments about "True Romance" land the way they did? It wasn't just praise—there was something else there.
She was naming something that doesn't get named often enough: that great acting is seductive. Not in a cheap way. In the way that watching someone do their work at the highest level actually moves you.
But she said it in a very direct way. She didn't hedge.
Right. She could have talked around it. Instead she said: I would have slept with any of them. And then she explained why—because they were so good. She made the connection explicit.
Does that change how we think about the film itself?
It might. It suggests that "True Romance" works because everyone in it is fully committed, fully present. There's no performance that's phoning it in. When you watch people that alive on screen, you feel it.
And the new film she's promoting—is it trying to do something similar?
In a different register, maybe. She's playing a woman who has power now, who has built something. The film seems interested in what happens when someone like that has to reckon with desire, with the rules she's made for herself.