Jerry O’Connell admits that parenting 17-year-old twin daughters isn’t easy, but working with Sophia Bush definitely earned him some brownie points at home.
“My daughters have watched every episode of One Tree Hill, and they wanted to go to dinner with Brooke,” O’Connell, 52, told Us Weekly exclusively of his Summer’s Last Resort costar, referencing her character from the beloved teen drama. “They were very excited about that. Basically, Sophia is the link between myself and my daughters. That’s the only communication I have.”
He kept the joke going, adding, “I actually don’t even talk to them anymore. I just send messages to Sophia, who then talks to them in emoji and young people dialect.”
The actor shares 17-year-old twin daughters Charlie and Dolly with his wife, Rebecca Romijn, and Bush, 43, appreciated the adoration from their girls.
“The joke became, like, they never wanted to talk to any of us,” the actress recalled to Us. “And then we all went to dinner for [Jerry’s] birthday in L.A., and they came, and I was like, ‘Oh, the girls wanna…’ It turns out they want to hang out with us. We’re pretty cool. So I feel like we really got there.”
To be fair, O’Connell got plenty of love from the young ones in Bush’s life as well.
“On set, you’d figure out the time change, and then everyone would be FaceTiming their families, and we were all talking to each other’s families, and our kids would be like, ‘Mr. Jerry!’ like, so excited,” she recalled of her own brood with partner Ashlyn Harris and her two daughters, Sloane, 5, and Ocean, 3.
Both O’Connell and Bush applied what they know about parenting to their roles as Milly and Glenn in Summer’s Last Resort, a couple who tries to unite their blended family on a tropical vacation, much to the dismay of Milly’s high-strung daughter, Summer (Violet McGraw), and Glenn’s free-spirited daughter, Sadie (Clara Alexandrova).
“Most of the friends in my peer group have toddlers of varying ages, but we have three girlfriends that had kids really young, like they’re graduating high school now, and so to be in that position as characters where we’re playing mother and daughter, but we’re also playing friends is a really interesting dynamic,” Bush said of her chemistry with McGraw, 15. “I feel so protective of [her], but I’m also like, ‘Should we go to dinner?’”
While his own dynamic with McGraw’s character onscreen makes for a great movie, O’Connell is currently dealing with the woes of teenage girlhood in real life.
“I’m a much older parent to my kids, so we don’t have anything in common,” he joked to Us. “All I do is say, like, get off your phones. Go outside. What are you doing? Stop with the selfies!”
With that being said, leaning into the embarrassment of a role like Glenn allowed O’Connell to live out his dadhood dreams.
“Living with two teenage girls made me really appreciate Summer’s Last Resort and also made me play a lot of the scenes, I’m not kidding, I did things on the movie that I know I should never do around my children, because they won’t talk to me for months at a time,” he told Us. “I was like, ‘Oh, what would I do that would anger my daughters if I did it?’ And I could see that it was really working, because I could see that I was angering Violet IRL — that means in real life for some of your older readers.”
McGraw countered with an immediate “When?!” — though O’Connell had an example ready to go.
“I mean, when we had scenes with the dolphin and stuff, I was doing things that would mortify you and mortify my daughters,” he recalled.
As for Bush?
“I got to be mortified from the stands that day,” she joked.
Summer’s Last Resort premieres exclusively on Tubi Friday, July 3.
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