Jennifer Lopez Declares a 'Jen-aissance' as She Returns to Rom-Coms in 'Office Romance'

When I need a little comfort on a Sunday afternoon, I throw on a Jennifer Lopez romantic comedy. A dose of The Wedding Planner or Monster In Law really helps fight those Sunday Scaries. Well, yesterday wasn’t scary at all because the queen of rom-coms is back. Her latest, Office Romance, co-starring Brett Goldstein, is now on Netflix, and it’s officially going into my Sunday rom-com rotation.

Office Romance follows the love story of airline CEO Jackie Cruz (Lopez), who suddenly falls for a new employee at her company, lawyer Daniel Blanchflower (Goldstein). Goldstein, a longtime fan of Lopez, actually wrote this film for Lopez and said it wouldn’t have been made if she turned it down.

In New York City earlier this month, Refinery29’s Taylor Loren sat down with Lopez to talk all about the current rom-com renaissance, her chemistry with Goldstein, and the scene everyone is talking about.

Jennifer Lopez: It's a Jen-aissance. “On The Floor” is on the charts again. We're having a Jen-aissance. [laughs]

JL: I just think things go in phases; it's like whenever something great is made, everybody kind of does that thing for a little while. A great action movie will come out, and then a bunch of action movies will come out. A great television show like Game of Thrones [comes out], and everybody's trying to do Game of Thrones. It just depends on the era or what's going on in the world and the “zeitgeist” and all of that. But I think romantic comedies always come back because they include two of the most real things about life, which is that life is funny, and we're always going to be laughing through it. Even in the hardest, darkest moments, you'll find yourself laughing with your friend just to survive it, right? Laughter is a key. Comedy is a key. And the other is that we're all searching for someone. Everybody in the world is looking for their other half, or that person to spend their life with, and that's always going to be part of life. With all the disconnection that comes with tech, people still need that human contact. We need that connection with other people that's real, tangible, and felt. I think that's what romantic comedies give us. We know how they're going to end, but it gives us hope that it could happen to us, too.

JL: Oh my god.

JL: I love that.

JL: That's what drew me to it. There were two things. One, we got to see a Latina CEO. In all of these movies previously, I was always the person who was aspiring to be something. [I was] the working girl who's trying to figure it out, and quirky. This woman has it together. She created this company. She's Latin and nobody talks about it. And she's the CEO. She's the boss. For me, that was a big part of it. The other thing that I really liked about the script is that it had hard jokes. It had adult jokes. It's for grownups, in that sense. I think it's unexpected, but the minute you have that first [raunchy] thing that happens, people go, "Oh, that's what we're doing. Okay." And I think because Brett wrote it with his partner Joe Kelly, it has a male sensibility to it. It's not the typical rom-com in that way, where people think [it’s a] chick flick. Which I think reduces the genre so much. It's not that at all. But [this movie] has this kind of masculine edge. The women get the romance, but you also get these really great jokes. Everybody's happy.

JL: I think I've always been underestimated and, in a weird way, continue to be. But I also feel like the secret to my success is that I keep surprising people. They’re like, "Oh." [laughs] And you're like, "Yeah." You just have to keep doing your thing and keep proving everybody wrong. And not that I feel I have anything to prove anymore, [but] it's always funny to me that people will continue to do that to you for whatever reasons, but mostly because you're a woman.