Matthew McConaughey and Jennifer Lopez’s The Wedding Planner is so renowned that it excused the actor from being stopped at the United States-Mexico border.
“Wedding Planner got me out of a major mess up in Mexico one time,” McConaughey, 56, quipped on the Thursday, August 13, episode of the “Happy Sad Confused” podcast. “I pull in one late night, and I’m crossing the border going way down south. I get pulled over. It’s one of those pullovers where they noticed me, [a] gringo in … a nice truck.”
As McConaughey began explaining his arrival to local authorities, he realized how “it was going down” before he mentioned Lopez, 57, by name.
“Then, I brought up, ‘You guys know Jennifer Lopez? Ever see Wedding Planner?’” he recalled, subsequently pointing at himself. “‘That was me.’ They [excitedly] went off, and we end up taking pictures together, and they let me go.”
McConaughey starred as Dr. Steve “Eddie” Edison in 2001’s The Wedding Planner, in which Lopez played the titular wedding planner Mary tasked with organizing his nuptials to Fran (Bridgette Wilson). The ceremony, however, doesn’t go as planned once Mary realizes her sizzling attraction and chemistry to the groom following their dumpster crash meet-cute.
In the decades since wrapping The Wedding Planner, both McConaughey and Lopez have held the beloved rom-com in high esteem.
“You said, ‘Miss Lopez, I’m going to kiss you now,’” Lopez recalled during a 2021 Instagram livestream with her former costar, revisiting their first onscreen smooch. “And I’m, like, ‘OK, let’s do it. Let’s hit it.’ I remember that clearly.”
She continued at the time, “One of my favorite lines in the whole thing, one of the reasons why I love that script [is], ‘You smell like grilled cheese and plums.’ It was just that idea of her fading out and kind of like this Prince Charming just rescuing her and her saying, ‘You smell like grilled cheese and plums.’ It was just so real.”
For McConaughey, that line made him realize that Lopez was a “baller.”
“I’ve always called you a quad-threat, which is actually underselling,” the Oscar winner said of Lopez’s many talents, including handling her own stunts. “A lot of people wouldn’t have done that. That was the day when I was like, ‘Oh, yeah, J. Lo breaks a sweat.’ When you’re on set, you love to do the work.”
Lopez had a similar experience working alongside McConaughey.
“I so enjoyed working with you. It was, like, a magical time,” Lopez gushed at the time. “I’m such a romantic too that working on those types of movies have a real feel to me. … We’re going to do something again, baby. I miss your energy. I hope to be around you soon.”
