Chloe Coleman and Dave Bautista return as Sophie and CIA agent JJ
Life can’t all be about thwarting nuclear attacks
PRIME VIDEO
Idon’t want to tempt fate,’ director Peter Segal says of planning sequels too soon after a film’s release. It makes sense, especially with the hand fate dealt him when it came to 2020 action comedy My Spy. After the film opened in cinemas in mid March and closed the following day, Segal never expected that the then-shelved movie would be bought by Amazon, subsequently becoming one of the biggest films of the year thanks to its streaming release. ‘Suddenly they were talking about a sequel!’
Said follow-up, My Spy: The Eternal City, sees the return of CIA agent JJ (Dave Bautista) and his young apprentice Sophie (Chloe Coleman), now a teenager. Coleman’s growth in the intervening years was something Segal very much wanted to incorporate into the story, not least because he lacks the power to halt time. ‘The other way to go would be to start feeding her lots of cigarettes and hope to stunt the growth, but we knew that wasn’t on the cards,’ he adds with a grin.
Drawing on his experience as a parent, Segal co-wrote the script for the sequel, which sees JJ chaperone Sophie on a school trip to Rome. Of course, there’s more to it, as they also have to foil a nuclear scheme aimed at the Vatican.