Milo Ventimiglia is willing to admit his physique for his shirtless scene in Second Act wasn’t the best it could be, but he’s totally fine with the dad bod vibe — especially because he says it fits the character.
“I mean if we’re being honest, I’m playing an assistant baseball coach at a college,” the This Is Us actor told Us at the film’s NYC premiere on Wednesday, December 12. “I think he’s probably healthy but not entirely model fit.”
Even if the Heroes alum, 41, had wanted to get a chiseled six-pack for the scene, he wouldn’t have had the time. Laughing off the idea that he did extra crunches to prep his abs, he told Us, “No, actually I’d gotten off a plane, a red eye, to get to work on my first day and they told me, ‘Hey, it’s the scene post-shower and you’ll have your shirt off and you’ll walk across the room to get your shirt. And I went, ‘Oh, OK.’”
In the rom-com, Ventimiglia’s character Trey is married to Jennifer Lopez’s Maya, who reinvents her life story and lands a high-powered executive role. The day before the NYC premiere, the actor admitted the hilarious way he psyched himself up to star alongside JLo: “I tell you how to prepare,” he told E! News, laughing. “You talk to yourself and say, ‘Motherf–ker, just be cool!’”
As Jack on the decades-spanning NBC weepie This Is Us, Ventimiglia is no stranger to changing his physicality for a role. In an interview with Us earlier this month, he credited the crew for helping him look younger in flashbacks. “You know what, it’s a great hair and makeup team,” he told Us. “And it’s a great post-production who is helping relieve me of the wrinkles I’ve got on my face over the last 41 years. There is some movie magic that happens.”
