The movie-making process isn’t always filled with glitz and glamour, and actress Sophia Bush can certainly attest to that.
“I spent that day mortified from a distance,” the 43-year-old actress recounted to Us Weekly in an exclusive interview, referring to a particular scene in her latest film, Summer’s Last Resort. “I’ve never been more thankful to remain just an onlooker during a shoot.”
In the Tubi film, Bush plays Milly, starring alongside Jerry O’Connell and Violet McGraw, who portray her boyfriend and daughter, respectively. The movie follows their attempts to bond on an adventurous tropical getaway. The memorable scene in question features O’Connell, 52, and McGraw, 15, humorously attempting to save a dolphin, while Bush’s character observes the chaos unfold.
Talking about the comical dolphin scenes, O’Connell, who is the father of 17-year-old twins Charlie and Dolly with his wife Rebecca Romijn, quipped to Us, “I was doing things with the dolphin that would completely embarrass [Violet], as well as my own daughters. I really embraced it. Honestly, I’m terrified of my daughters—I’m scared even to mention them. But on the set of Summer’s Last Resort, I could finally indulge in the antics I hold back from doing at home because Violet was there, doing her job, and I got to join in.”
Jerry O’Connell and Sophia Bush in ‘Summer’s Last Resort’ Courtesy of Tubi
McGraw shared that the scenes involving the dolphins stood out as particularly unforgettable for her. “Working with the dolphins was undoubtedly the most memorable experience for me,” she said.
The movie is action-packed and filled with physical comedy, so it should come as no surprise that the dolphin scene wasn’t the only behind-the-scenes moment that pushed some boundaries.
“There really was a moment where I was like, I don’t know how long we should stay here,” Bush recalled of things getting chaotic during a “big” fire scene. “I think I’m going to remove her now and save us both? And we made it.”
But O’Connell didn’t come out of that one unscathed.
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“I get nose hairs. Hairs grow out of my nose. It’s my family tree. My dad gets them, his father got them, I have them. My daughters will get them someday. When we were shooting that scene, I was 20 feet behind these two next to the fire, and I took a breath in, and my nose hairs… I could feel them burn,” he told Us. “I didn’t have to use [my trimmer] for like two weeks because that’s how hot it was.”
Admittedly, that wasn’t the actor’s only nasal incident on set. He joked that he “singed all my nose hairs” once again after catching a whiff of sardines on the dolphin’s breath.
Violet McGraw and Jerry O’Connell in ‘Summer’s Last Resort’ Courtesy of Tubi
“I kissed the dolphin and, I’m not kidding, no offense to dolphins, their breath the worst,” O’Connell said. “It’s just sardine breath, like in your face, and they have no concert of blow hole and mouth and everything. They think everyone wants to be near them.”
At the end of the day, the heart of the movie rests on the mother-daughter relationship between Milly and Summer, McGraw’s character.
“It was just kind of easy because she felt like my mom in real life and took such great care of me,” McGraw told Us of working with Bush.
For her part, the One Tree Hill alum added, “We’re playing a mother and daughter, but we’re also playing friends. It’s a really interesting dynamic. … We’re all very tight, and I think that grew naturally between us, but also for all of us as a group, because we were essentially at summer camp.”
She concluded: “We just had so much fun.”
Summer’s Last Resort premieres exclusively on Tubi Friday, July 3.