Jennifer Lopez revealed this week that hiring a Latin artist to play her boyfriend in her most recent movie “Marry Me” was a top priority. Even though she had many artists that could play the role of Bastian in the movie, she finally decided to give the role to the Colombian artist Maluma.
Lopez, who plays Kat Valdez in the film, told Apple Music’s Zane Lowe that so many names came up, but not one from Latin America. “And I was like, ‘You know what? I really want to make a bilingual album for this for a mainstream Hollywood movie. Why don’t we pick a Spanish artist, a Latin artist? Somebody who just is in Spanish, and let’s talk Spanish in the movie,” Lopez said.
Lopez revealed that the film needed somebody that was a musician, superstar, super swag to play the character, but there was a caveat: it needed to be “the guy who you don’t want to marry, and who could that be?”
Finally, Maluma was hired for the role. As Bastian, he cheats on Kat the day they are supposed to get married. In the film, Kat, a singer, then decides to marry one of her fans played by Owen Wilson.
Lopez said Maluma wrote two songs specifically for the movie that she considered impressive. “It showed me that he really understood the character,” she said.
