On Monday, January 9, 2023 at The Langham Huntington, Pasadena was the TCA Winter Press Tour for Paramount+. One of the panels for the day was for the upcoming now movie called “At Midnight.” The romantic comedy starring Diego Boneta and Monica Barbaro premieres Friday, Feb. 10, just in time for Valentine’s Day.
Watch the Trailer here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oalcKgae2yM
A charming romantic comedy, At Midnight centers around Alejandro (Diego Boneta, Father of the Bride), an ambitious hotel manager, and Sophie (Monica Barbaro, Top Gun: Maverick) a movie star navigating the politics of Hollywood. He’s focused on opening his own boutique hotel. She’s trying to focus on shooting her new superhero film Super Society 3, in hopes of getting her own spinoff.
Fate strikes when she catches her co-star (and boyfriend!) Adam (Anders Holm, Workaholics) cheating and the shoot brings them all to Alejandro’s hotel in Mexico. Despite their radically different lives, Alejandro and Sophie begin to secretly meet at midnight…
At Midnight also stars Casey Thomas Brown (Father Of The Bride) as Chris, Sophie’s talent manager and old friend; Catherine Cohen (Netflix’s Catherine Cohen: The Twist…? She’s Gorgeous) as Rachel, Sophie’s loyal and free-spirited best friend; Fernando Carsa (Acapulco) as Tachi, Alejandro’s best friend and bartender at the hotel; Whitney Cummings (Good Mourning) as Margot, a powerful Hollywood agent who represents both Sophie and Adam; and Maya Zapata (Selena’s Secret) as Aurelia, the hotel manager and Alejandro’s strict boss.
STREAM: Sign-Up for Paramount+ Now
The film is produced by Paramount’s international studios and Fred Berger (La La Land), David Bernon (Hearts Beat Loud), Brian Kavanaugh-Jones (Loving), Eréndira Núñez Larios (Sundown), Josh Glick, and Diego Boneta through his production company, Three Amigos.
Directed by Jonah Feingold (Dating & New York), and written by Feingold, Maria Hinojos (Cindy la Regia), At Midnight will be a perfect addition to your Valentine’s Day celebrations.
Make sure to put a heart on your calendar around Friday, Feb. 10, and stream At Midnight exclusively on Paramount+.
During the panel, the media had the opportunity to ask questions about the upcoming movie. It started off with Christina Ringstrom from Paramount+ communications. She told the audience “before we kick off the Q&A, I’m going to toss over to our director, Jonah, who has a few remarks, and to share with us a little bit of a reveal.
So director and co-writer Jonah Feingold said “Hello, TCA. It’s always been a dream of mine to, you know, win a Teen Choice Award, and I’m really excited to be here today. (Laughter erupted!) After that he went on to say that it had always been a dream of his to be at the Television Critics Association. He was thrilled to be there with the two wonderful stars of “At Midnight.” He was looking forward to showing a trailer of his movie and told us all that they had a wonderful time making the film in Mexico.
He also said before the clip was shown “There’s a great song called “At Midnight” that I think you’ll enjoy as well. We might sing a verse from it after. He is a funny guy!
From the clip we saw, it sure looks like a great movie and can’t wait to see it on February 10th.
The first question asked was: I think chemistry between the lead actors is important, especially in a genre like this. So, I’m wondering, for both stars, did you do a chemistry read? And do you think that’s important for a genre like this?
Monica Barbaro answered with she thinks it’s incredibly important and that they did their chemistry read and it was done on Zoom because Diego had Covid while he was in Spain and she was in New York at a friend’s house. She had a table set up with a chair and tried to create the romance of her friend’s tiny apartment.
Jonah said it’s all about the chemistry. You look at all the great romantic comedies that we all have idolized growing up and ask what do you remember the most? “It’s the chemistry. They read on Zoom together, which was obviously very scary. I also had Covid.”
Diego Boneta said he was frustrated because it was via Zoom and he was stuck in Spain, but figured that if it worked via Zoom, it was going to work while they shot the movie.
Another question asked for Diego was. “Can you talk about your history with “At Midnight”? Are you one of the people who developed it over five years? And you decided that you should star in it either because you really loved the part or because that just made it easier to do it?
Diego Boneta: It was kind of a crazy story. So right after producing “Luis Miguel” and “Mi Gordon” 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. You know, we realized how we all loved romcoms and, you know, classic, like, ’90s romcoms. How there hadn’t been a romcom shot in Mexico City or in Mexico and showing that side as well. So, we were like, you know, there’s a cool opportunity here. So, you know, I wanted to partner up with the best producers I knew and Michel Franco came on board, which was amazing to work with him. Fred Berger, Brian Kavanaugh Jones, and then, Josh, Dave, my sister. We started working on the script. We wanted it to be like an international kind of love story, shot in Mexico, something that was very simple but also kind of had like a classic vibe. And that’s when Jonah came along. We started looking at many different directors, watched Jonah’s movie, “Dating & New York,” and we were all like, “Wow, this is who needs to direct “‘At Midnight.'” And Jonah came on board and made it his, worked more on the script. We worked on this for like five years. Paramount was an amazing partner throughout the whole process, making this as authentic as possible while, at the same time, universal.
A question for ask for Monica. “Tell us a little bit more about seeing Mexico City from fresh eyes with an expert guiding you. What surprised you about Mexico City?
Monica Barbaro: Well, it wasn’t my first time in Mexico City. My grandma is from there, and a friend of mine and I, Danny Ramirez, who was in “Top Gun” with me, actually. While we were filming that movie, I met up with him on a trip he was doing to visit his family there, and we ran all around the city and had a very good time but didn’t necessarily know, like, where to go. I guess I echo something that my mom has always said to me about, you know, I was always very aware of the representation of Mexico and, like, particularly Mexico City, either just Mexico City not being represented or all of Mexico being represented as this, like, desert wasteland, and that is just not the case, and that should be obvious, but it really isn’t to some people. Mexico City is truly a city, and it feels like a city just like New York City does. I mean, every city has its own personality and, like, could play its own character.”
A question was asked about where the character Adam Clark came from.
Jonah Feingold said that he was based on some, in his opinion, based on a summation of some sort of Hollywood behavior that has happened throughout the years. The most important thing about that character, which he thinks they 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.
He also said: “What part of us, you know, we’ve all dated people who have wronged us, but there was a part of us that once was drawn to this person.”
