Getting creative. Rachael Leigh Cook has been acting for 25 years, but for her new film, she was more involved than ever. In fact, she came up with the idea for Love, Guaranteed.
“The expression in the industry is ‘development hell’ but this was an absolute dream. I left an audition that I didn’t feel great about one day and I thought, ‘What could I do? What would I want to do if I could do anything?'” the actress, 40, told Us Weekly exclusively while promoting the film, explaining that she thought back to a false advertising lawsuit that happened years ago. “Then I thought, ‘You have all these dating sites with all these crazy places that just say, ‘For $29.99 a month,’ or ‘Sign up is free and you will meet the love of your life.’ What if they actually went out on a very foolish limb and guaranteed that you would find love? I thought, ‘Well I love romantic comedies, so what if I’m a lawyer?’ Then the whole concept and the whole movie sort of flashed before my eyes.”
After coming up with an idea, she took it to her manager and decided to find a writer. Then, they went to Netflix.
“We were shooting about eight months later,” the Minnesota native continued. “The plot is about a slightly disgruntled man who’s a little bit burned by love [and] places a lawsuit against a website that guarantees that you will meet The One after going on the requisite number of dates. I’m his lawyer, but complications ensue. … My character’s name is Susan Whitaker and I don’t mean to be a rom-com trope, but she’s definitely someone who’s given too much of her life to her work and has put all of her clients first and herself largely last — and definitely her relationship life last. When it comes walking through her door she doesn’t quite know what to do with it.”
In the film, Damon Wayans Jr. portrays Susan’s love interest — and Cook couldn’t have chosen a better a costar.
“I love Damon. I don’t even care how he feels about me because I love him and he doesn’t even have to like it, we’re going to be friends,” she told Us. “We had a great time. We’re both people who are a little bit reserved at first, and then when we sort of got in the groove. We laugh a lot. … Mark [Steven Johnson], our director, said, ‘The problem is you two are cutting up all the time so you seem like best pals and it killed all my romantic tension, we had to cut it all out.'”
Love, Guaranteed hits Netflix on Thursday, September 3.
With reporting by Marc Lupo
