In the first scene of “I Want You Back,” actor Scott Eastwood’s Noah pulls an unforgivable move. Or so it would seem. Over brunch he dumps his girlfriend Emma (Jenny Slate). It’s an opening that would normally elicit boos and hisses from the audience who would align with the brokenhearted.
But Eastwood’s exuberant personal trainer Noah isn’t the traditional “bad ex-boyfriend” in “I Want You Back.” In fact, he bubbles with so much effervescence and sincerity that it’s nearly impossible to hate him.
The 35-year-old Eastwood realized going in that the scene could very well trap Noah in a tired rom-com archetype: the heartless, villainous ex.
But “I Want You Back,” dropping Friday on Amazon Prime, doesn’t go there, and by flouting tradition, it joins other Valentine’s Day-themed cinematic upstarts this love season, including “The Worst Person in the World,” the supernatural weeper “The In Between,” the grief journey “The Sky Is Everywhere” and, to a much lesser extent, the latest J-Lo rom-com “Marry Me.” Each of the new releases eschews the tired-and-true formula, and each is better for it.
To make Noah real and not just a stock character, the cast along with director Jason Orley – who previously whipped up the comedy gem “Big Time Adolescence” with Pete Davidson (who has a killer cameo in “I Want You Back”) — and screenwriters Isaac Aptaker and Elizabeth Berger took care in making the characters and their issues far more nuanced than the norm.
“They didn’t slide into archetypal villains,” Eastwood says, “And they didn’t have the cliches — like here’s the the guy we don’t like, here’s the girl that’s kind of evil that you don’t want to root for. There was none of that.”
The comedy follows emotionally wrecked Emma as she joins forces with another recent romantic roadkill Peter (Charlie Day), to break up each other’s former lovers’ new relationships. Of course, not all goes as planned.
Given Eastwood’s athleticism and magnetism, the role of the fit Noah would seem to be tailor-made for him. But the Monterey native says he’s not much like his character.
Yes, Eastwood loves to “challenge my body” by working out, as his social media accounts can attest to. But he’s not the rah-rah kind of guy and works out for a variety of reasons, not only to stay in shape but also to quiet his restless mind.
“I’ve got ADD going bing, bing, bing and if I work out and run the body it quiets my mind.”
Even Noah’s bright outlook on life doesn’t mirror him.
“I’m more of a pessimist,” he says. “You stick around long enough, it happens to us all.”
One of the biggest laughs in “I Want You Back” is generated while Eastwood appears “butt naked.” He only has himself to blame for it.
“That scene (which happens in Noah’s new girlfriend’s bedroom where Peter is hiding in a box) was impromptu in some ways. It wasn’t in the script that I was naked. When we rehearsed it, it was funny and I sort of offered it up. I said it’s way funnier if (Noah’s) naked and that box gets opened and my junk’s right in Charlie Day’s face.”
Everyone liked the change, and it got added to the script.
“We knew as soon as I said it that the cat was out of the bag and now we had to do it,” he says.
Eastwood’s no stranger for getting “butt naked” before, in a career in which he’s made quite an impression in mostly action films — Rod Lurie’s “The Outpost,” David Ayers’ “Fury,” the sequels “The Fate of the Furious” and “Pacific Rim: Uprising” and “The Wrath of Man.” He hasn’t appeared in many rom-coms, but he did star in 2015’s “The Longest Ride,” an adaptation of a Nicholas Sparks novel.
In the future, the son of Hollywood icon Clint Eastwood says he hopes “to keep mixing it up.”
“I do enjoy a great action film, especially if it’s got an interesting story or an elevated piece of material, not just the run-of-the-mill action movie — getting to be part of of a cool action film is always fun.”
While he won’t rule out donning a superhero costume in the future, he says “it’s gotta be the right one: a superhero that doesn’t play by the rules.”
One of his best experiences on set was working with one of his favorite filmmakers, Guy Ritchie, on 2021’s action-packed thriller “Wrath of Man,” which starred Jason Statham and Josh Hartnett.
“That was incredible,” he said. “I felt very lucky because we just finished it right before the pandemic so it was kind of like: ‘Oh, man, snuck that in!”
While Eastwood was born in Monterey, he spent much of his childhood years in Hawaii and came back to the region and attended and graduated from Carmel High School. While he loved movies early on and would “watch my father make movies, develop movies and be a part of the creative process,” he wasn’t convinced about becoming an actor.
Then something happened.
“I was in college, barbacking in Santa Barbara and going to college and there was a moment where I realized (in the first year) that I needed to start (acting) while I was in college and that I couldn’t wait till I was out of college because that would be a waste of four years that I could be paralleling – taking acting classes and going on auditions and kind of fighting to get into the business. So I packed up my bags and moved to Los Angeles.”
And hasn’t looked back since.
