Matt Damon and Luciana Barroso are partners in life and work!
ET’s Rachel Smith spoke to the 53-year-old actor at the New York premiere. The Instigatorsand he discussed the possibility of joining his wife of nearly two decades in the Apple TV+ film.
When Casey Affleck came to Damon with The Instigators script he co-wrote with Chuck MacLean, the actor passed on the project. So Affleck responded by showing the script to Barroso, who asked her husband to take it on.
“Casey likes to say she’s the smart one of the couple and he’s not wrong,” Damon joked about his wife.
The Instigatorswhich follows two thieves (Damon and Affleck) who must go on the run with the help of one of their therapists (Hong Chau) after a robbery goes wrong, marks the first time that Damon and Barroso have officially teamed up to produce a film together.
“She’s been reading every script and watching every cut of every movie for 21 years. This is the first time we’ve kind of codified that,” Damon explained. “She didn’t even want to take credit. She was there every day, she was doing all this work on the script, and then she was like, ‘Nah, I don’t want to take credit.'”
“The other producers of the movie, at the end of the movie — and I had nothing to do with it — they came out of their own accord (and said), ‘If you’re not taking credit, we’re not taking credit,'” he continued. “(It was) really sweet. She succumbed and took credit.”
Damon and Barroso were in attendance at Wednesday’s screening of the Doug Liman-directed film. The couple even brought their daughters — Isabella, 18, Gia, 15, and Stella, 13 — to the event, along with Barroso’s daughter Alexia, 24, from a previous relationship.
“It happens so fast. It’s weird,” Damon told ET about his kids growing up. “It happens kind of slowly and then really fast in a beautiful way.”
The Instigators will hit select theaters on August 2 and begin streaming on Apple TV+ on August 9.
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