It’s been 13 years since Oscar Nunez got to traumatize Sandra Bullock on screen in “The Proposal,” but, thanks to “The Lost City,” the two have been reunited once more. And according to Nunez, it was a pretty easy sell to him.
This time around, Bullock plays Loretta Sage, a romance author who gets kidnapped by a billionaire obsessed with finding the treasure she based her books on, while Nunez plays an eccentric man named, well, Oscar, who helps Loretta’s friend Beth (Da’Vine Joy Randolph) find the author.
“I think she texted and I’m like, ‘Whaaaaat!’ You know, I showed my wife like, ‘Yeah, that’s Sandra!’ And then I think we texted back and forth a little bit,” Nunez told TheWrap. “And then she called on the phone, and she’s like, ‘You want to?’ And I’m like, ‘Yes.’ And I said ‘How much?’ and she named the price. And I said that’s insulting, and then threw the phone out the window. Then she called back later, and we figured everything out.”
Joking aside, Nunez admitted that it didn’t take much convincing from Bullock to get him onboard, noting that “she’s just the best.” He knew the caliber of projects that Bullock signs onto, and didn’t need many details beyond that.
“She said it’s a comedy, and I think that’s it,” Nunez recalled. “And ‘You want to be involved in it?’ And I think that was enough for me. I said yeah, of course.”
Sadly, Nunez’s character didn’t get to traumatize Bullock’s this time around, as he did in “The Proposal.” The two only share one scene together, and it comes in the final minutes of the film. The wink to their history is clear, but it is unspoken.
For the most part, Nunez shares the screen with Randolph, who he previously worked with on “People of Earth,” and a goat. The actor says both were lovely, though Randy the goat was a bit shy at first.
Nunez also gets to share a brief scene with the movie’s villain, played by Daniel Radcliffe. When Radcliffe’s character attempts to flee the both — something fictional Oscar points out with curiosity because, well, it’s a boat — Nunez’s character dive tackles him.
But no, that wasn’t actually Nunez. He’d have loved to do the stunt himself, but when he saw the height he’d have to make the tackle from, and learned there would be no mat to land on, he had to rethink things.
“My brain says I could do these things. And then I’m like, I started looking, whatever. And my body’s like, ‘Remember our age? You’re not 23 anymore, Oscar. You’re not even 33 anymore. Remember your age?’” Nunez lamented. “And I’m like, ‘You’re right. You’re right.’”
“The Lost City” is now in theaters.