“I admit, a horrible idea,” director and co-writer Peter Segal admitted

The My Spy story continues with My Spy: The Eternal City, bringing back Dave Bautista and Chloe Coleman to lead the action-comedy, and taking us to Italy. Now that Sophie (Coleman) is 14 years old, teenage milestones like crushes and first kisses have become a core part of the story, in addition to the action.

In My Spy: The Eternal City, JJ (Bautista) is trying to bond with his stepdaughter, taking the opportunity to be a chaperone for Sophie’s high school choir trip to Italy, to perform for the Pope in Vatican City. Sophie just really has her heart set on hopefully going to her school’s Homecoming dance with her crush Ryan (Billy Barratt).

But when Sophie’s best friend Collin (Taeho K), the son of JJ’s CIA boss David Kim (Ken Jeong), is kidnapped in Italy, a terrorist plot emerges with JJ and Sophie needing to save the world.

‘I admit, a horrible idea’

With Peter Segal, the film’s director and co-writer, having to navigate teenage girlhood in My Spy: The Eternal City, there was one idea in an earlier version of the script that he admitted was not the best for Sophie. It was also something Coleman wasn’t particularly a fan of.

“I think initially Sophie was a little bit more boy crazy than she actually is in the movie,” Coleman said at a virtual press conference ahead of the film’s release. “I remember reading one of the drafts and there was a thing where she’s on like this dummy, and she’s talking to JJ, she’s like, ‘J.J., how do I kiss someone? How do I go in for my first kiss?'”

“I remember reading it like, ‘Oh, my God! If I had to do this, I would freak out.’ But I think we got the perfect level of Sophie, because I feel like when you actually do become a teenager, first, you’re like, ‘No, that’s gross. I would never want to do that.’ … I think Sophie is very, like, reserved in that way where she finds it as something special and new. And something that she doesn’t understand. I think that’s what she’s scared of because she doesn’t know how to be a high schooler or teenager. She had no friends in the first movie, but now she does have friends, and she’s expanding her life in that way.”

“Kissing the dummy was a horrible idea. That, I admit, a horrible idea,” Segal said in response.

Chloe Coleman and Dave Bautista on the set of My Spy The Eternal City (GGraham Bartholomew/Prime)

But questionable ideas aside, something that all the stars of My Spy: The Eternal City have highlighted is that the cast of the film very much felt like a “family,” with the cast members of the first film coming into the sequel with an established connection.

“There’s a shorthand that we all have,” Ken Jeong said. “We could just kind of, in a great way, read each other’s minds of where to go creatively, where [Peter Segal] wanted us to go as characters, where we wanted to go as artists, and I just felt like we’re always moving in sync.”