Movies

Ryan Reynolds reveals how his father's death inspired a moment in The Adam Project

Director Shawn Levy and his cast unpack the personal connections they all made to the story.

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Published on March 8, 2022 10:00AM EST

The stars of The Adam Project came to the film for different reasons.

Director Shawn Levy and actor-producer Ryan Reynolds, who previously worked together on Free Guy, started with the idea of revisiting and making peace with your own history, which was a personal subject for Reynolds.

The story follows 13-year-old Adam Reed (newcomer Walker Scobell), who's still dealing with the death of his father (Mark Ruffalo) with his mom (Jennifer Garner) when he meets his future self. Adult Adam (Reynolds), a time-traveling pilot from the year 2050, crash lands in the past in search of his missing wife (Zoe Saldana).

"There's a line in there that is from my real life, which is that 'boys always come back for their mamas.' And that's very true when my dad passed away," Reynolds says during the latest installment of EW's Around the Table video series, referring to a scene when adult Adam runs into his mother at a bar. "I'm one of four boys and it was just like this circling the wagons around my mom. We really all came back for her in a way that I know was incredibly meaningful to her. And to this day she still talks about it."

Walker Scobell and Ryan Reynolds as kid and adult versions of Adam Reed in 'The Adam Project'. Doane Gregory/Netflix

Garner connected with the idea of mothering a preteen boy, which she is doing in her real life with 10-year-old son Samuel Garner Affleck. "The idea of meeting your own son grown up, I I feel like our initial phone call got emotional," Levy recalls.

"It just destroyed me on that first phone call," Garner says.

"There're some ideas in the movie that all of us yearn for," Levy adds. "Forgiveness of your parents through understanding your parents, and making peace with your former self. All of us have been that kid wondering if everything's going to be okay. What a dream that would be. So, this movie got to explore a lot of what I think are like collective human what-ifs."

The Adam Project premieres on Netflix this Friday. Watch the full Around the Table with Levy and the cast above.

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