In Netflix‘s Forever, Mara Brock Akil’s serialized adaptation of Judy Blume’s novel of the same name, two Los Angeles high schoolers navigate young love and their first forays with intimacy. The tender-hearted show, which updates the source material’s time period, locale and protagonists, caused its fair share of “nerves” for lead actors Michael Cooper Jr. and Lovie Simone as they took on their more “vulnerable” scenes.
“Lovie and I, we really made a conscious effort to check in on one another,” Cooper Jr., in his breakout role, told People in a new interview. “We’re a bit vulnerable, but immediately, we kind of felt comfortable with our intimacy coordinator. It’s a lot of technicality when it comes to those things.”
“There’s 30 people in the room with a camera, and the way that you’re positioning your body, I mean, everything’s choreographed,” he explained, adding that he and his co-star were “trying to make each other feel as comfortable as possible in such an interesting situation.”
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“I was nervous the very first time, I think. We both shared a bit of nerves. It got easier, for sure. It got easier the more you did it,” he said.
Simone, who has appeared in Prime Video’s Selah and the Spades and Power Book III: Raising Kanan, added of the filming process: “With the intimacy coordinator and Mara and Michael, it was very easy to go through those scenes because it was very seamless … We just really broke those scenes down [as with] any other scenes because they’re just beautiful and there’s intention in them, and there’s a motive, and there’s reasoning, and there’s all these things happening.”
Given that they’re playing each other’s first flames, capturing “the story and the age and the awkward tension and all of these things” was really important to the onscreen duo, she added.
Simone concluded, “Honestly, it’s refreshing for me to know that people want to see more awkward teens in regards to intimacy and romance, because usually it’s like these teenagers [who] know what they’re doing, they know exactly what they want to do [on TV]. It’s really cool to see.”
The stars’ sentiments echo what creator Akil — who is the creative force behind many leading Black TV shows including Girlfriends and its spinoff The Game, both of which she created — noted of the show’s relevance, that despite the novel’s 1975 publication date, its ideas about vulnerability, sex and teens’ rites of passage remain potent today, especially when paired with the drama series’ exploration of Black adolescence.
In an interview with Deadline, Simone further talked of her onscreen relationship with co-lead Cooper Jr. (and how they first met on the plane to their chemistry reads) and what she hopes young people take away from watching the show.
All episodes of Forever are currently streaming.