‘The Mother’ star Lucy Paez Auditioned For Daughter Role In Front Of Jennifer Lopez’s Daughter

Actor Lucy Paez really had to prove she could play Jennifer Lopez’s daughter in their new movie, “The Mother.”

While speaking to Netflix’s Tudum about the film, Paez, 14, said she had to audition for the role of Zoe in front of J. Lo’s actual daughter, Emme, 15.

“I normally don’t get anxious when I do auditions but then I came into the room. I saw Jennifer’s daughter sitting there and I was like, ‘Oh my gosh. I’m about to play Jennifer’s daughter in front of her real-life daughter,’” she recalled. “You know, this is a huge responsibility.”

“And then I saw Jennifer. She was all glammed up. She had, like, combat boots. She had goddess mode, head to toe. And that’s when we started doing the scene,” Paez continued.

The “Exorcism of Carmen Farias” star said that Lopez really got into character by going full-on “mother mode” in the audition.

“She was throwing the chair a bit. She was screaming a lot and taking the gun out of my hand,” Paez said.

But little did she know that Lopez was just testing her to see if she could handle herself on-screen.

“You have to see if they choke under pressure,” Lopez also told Tudum. “I knew that I was going to really push it, do more than just read the scene with her. I wanted her to feel safe, like we could play together, so I smiled, but I stayed in character. It was such a big part for a [then] 12-year-old that I wanted to make sure she could really handle everything that was going to happen.”

Lopez even improvised by recreating a scene in the movie where she snatches a gun out of Paez’s hand.

“I wanted to see if she’d stop or if she’d keep going. I did, and she got jarred but she stayed in character,” Lopez said. “I thought to myself, ‘OK, this little one can handle this. This is going to be good.’”

Paez said that she was feed off of Lopez’s energy, which “really helped” her to succeed.

“She was a force and I kind of matched to that force. And I think we, like, helped each other in a way,” she said.

In “The Mother,” Lopez plays an assassin who comes out of hiding to protect her daughter (Paez) she gave up long ago.

During a May 3 appearance on TODAY With Hoda & Jenna, the pair talked about their bond in the film, and Paez said that Lopez was “like a mother figure” to her on set because she taught her “a lot” about the entertainment industry with her work ethic.

“I saw that she would come in at 5 a.m ready to do this and last night she was at the MTV Awards,” Paez said.

“That to me was so impressive,” she added.