Sara Rue and Barry Watson Discuss My Future Boyfriend

ABC Family premieres My Future Boyfriend this Sunday, another original movie for those of us who are always on the lookout for a romantic comedy. Yes, that would be moi! There are so many things to look forward to in this movie. Most importantly, Sara Rue. Enough said. I’ve been a fan of hers since Less Than Perfect, and I loved her in the short-lived, under-appreciated, Eastwick. She commands the screen whenever she is on it and makes it look so easy.

I recently had the privilege of sitting in on a conference call with Sara and co-star, Barry Watson. They were so much fun together, which makes me even more excited about this movie. They talked about having great chemistry together, even though they had not met before filming began. Listening to both of them banter back and forth, it seemed to me that with their bubbly personalities, they would set each other off just fine. I’m thinking this will come out on screen as I watch the movie.

Sara and Barry both feel that there are a lot of similarities between the characters they play and their real selves. Sara says, “I always feel like just little pieces of my personality are always sprinkled across any of the characters I play. So some of her quirks—the footage I’d seen—I’m like, “Oh yeah. That looks like me,” and sometimes it doesn’t. It’s weird. It’s never planned to come out that way, but I think a lot of her timing is like mine in real life.” Barry adds, “I think there’s a lot of me in Pax, whether I knew that before I took the job—but I think I think you discover that as you go along. Also, I think to have Pax be a real character, if I didn’t bring a lot of myself into him, then I don’t think it really would’ve worked. If I tried to create this character that was too far away from who I really am, I don’t think it would’ve worked. So I think there’s quite a bit of Pax in me.”

Sara talked about working with the wonderful Valerie Harper, who is also in My Future Boyfriend. “Working with Valerie was so much fun. Shortly after we started working together, I started saying on-set that when I grow up, I want to be like Valerie Harper. Because on her days off—I mean, she was wonderful on-set, and then on her days off she would be like, “Today I walked six miles to the aquarium, and then I toured the whole aquarium. Then someone recognized me, and then they took me on a private tour, and I did this whole thing. Then the next day I went to the museum; I sat by myself for an hour.” She walked every day, everywhere, all over Atlanta, all by herself and did all these cool things every time on her day off. She is the most vivacious, lively, wonderful, funny, awesome woman. She was just so much fun to be around. Our last night shooting, we shot all night. I was worried that she was going to be—it’s hard on anybody, but I was worried that she was going to be super pooped come two, three ‘o clock in the morning, but I think she had more energy and spunk than any of us—like all of us put together. She had actually been on Less Than Perfect, so we had worked together before years ago. She played on of Andy Dick’s lesbian moms. So I knew she was awesome, but it was really great to have the time with her in Atlanta.”

Barry spoke of working with Fred Willard, who plays Bob, a fellow scientist working with PAX. “Now we’re going to talk about Fred. He’s not quite as exciting as Valerie Harper. Fred was great. There was a big, big chunk of the first part of the shoot that was just me and Fred because Sara wasn’t in town yet. So I spent a lot of time working with Fred, and we had very simple conversation. He’s a great guy. He almost killed me one day during a stunt and driving scene. We almost smashed into a brick wall, going 40 miles an hour, but other than that, I love the guy. All we basically talked about was the hotel’s apple cobbler because he just loved it. In fact, the day he flew back to Los Angeles I said, “Fred, it was great working with you,” and he just looked at me and said, “Man, I’m really going to miss that apple cobbler.” He could’ve cared less about me. All he cared about was the apple cobbler.”

Sara talks about her character in the film, Elizabeth Barrett, who is a romance novelist whose book has just been published. “I loved the idea of playing a hopeless romantic, and I think at her heart, that’s what Elizabeth is. She writes these romance novels, and she’s kind of stuck in this wacky day job where she’s reporting, and then basically for her, I felt like her worlds were colliding. I thought that was fun to play because she couldn’t allow herself to sort have these feelings that she thought she was having for this strange guy from the future, and yet, she was having them.”

In less than six weeks, Sara will be getting married herself. She’s excited about diving into all the wedding and honeymoon planning and last minute details. She will take the entire month of May off of work, but for now, she is still filming her arc on Rules of Engagement. After that, we’ll be on the lookout for her!

Watch Sara Rue and Barry Watson this Sunday night in My Future Boyfriend, airing at 8/7 Central on ABC Family.