Benjamin Bratt Makes a Surprising Confession to Brooke Shields About His First Impression of Her

Everyone knows that first impressions can go a long way. After all, first encounters can possibly dictate how you feel about someone for years to come. Unfortunately for Mother of the Bride co-stars Brooke Shields and Benjamin Bratt, they have quite different recollections about meeting for the first time.

“We met in LA at a dinner,” Shields told SheKnows (in the video above) of the first time meeting Bratt, to which the actor immediately shakes his head.

“I remember very specifically the first time I met Mrs. Brooke Shields because I had a crush on Brooke Shields since I was probably 12, so that’s most of my lifetime,” he candidly admits. “Now he tells me,” Shields jokes.

“I was on a flight from New York City to London to go to Wimbledon and I immediately assumed that she was going to Wimbledon too because there was likely going to be a specific player there,” Bratt remembers, referring to Shields’ previous marriage to former Tennis player Andre Agassi from 1997 to 1999. “Of course, that was the wrong idea entirely.”

“The beginning of the demise,” Shields quickly adds about her first marriage.

As for what the impression was, Bratt couldn’t stop gushing. “[I was] Immediately struck by her beauty but then immediately after that by the self-deprecation, the ability to be so generous in compliment and in word and just so down to earth,” Bratt remembers.

“All those beautiful attributes, she’s never changed,” Bratt adds about his co-star. “She’s the same person.”

In Mother of the Bride, Shields and Bratt play Lana and Will, two exes who reunite decades after their breakup when her daughter (Miranda Cosgrove) and his son (Sean Teale) get married in Phuket, Thailand.

“We bring quite a bit more of life experience to this new relationship,” Bratt adds. “I’m so happy that we not only get a chance to get to work together, that we actually have established a real and hopefully lasting friendship.”

“It’s rare for that to happen,” Shields adds, echoing Bratt’s sentiments. “When we were thrown all together in this very foreign place, really isolated, we didn’t have our families to go back to at night, so we were with each other all the time. It’s a quick bonding that’s accelerated.”

“It’s really nice when you watch all the different people just come to really have a good time, give their best and hopefully make a story that is and funny,” Shields adds.

Bratt then continued to gush about his co-star, describing how Shields brought the cast together. “Brooke likes to have fun, so even when the camera’s not rolling, she’s organizing dinners or she’s organizing a trip to the elephant sanctuary or she’s gonna get on a puddle jumper tomorrow morning [and] everyone’s invited to go to another exotic part of the island,” he remembers.

“What made this such an adventure outside the work is we got to establish these real friendships with all the people there led by our fearless leader,” Bratt says. Fearless indeed! It seems like Shields is truly the dream co-star of anyone’s dreams.

To watch both Shields and Bratt in action, check out Mother of the Bride on Netflix!

Before you go, click here to see our favorite rom-coms where the main couple isn’t white.