Amy Smart is one of the stars of Tyler Perry’s latest comedy-drama, The Single Moms Club. In the film she plays Hillary, a wealthy woman who has just gotten divorced after 12 years of marriage and sees the financial support from her husband quickly evaporate. It doesn’t take long for Hillary to find herself completely unprepared for this situation and overwhelmed with responsibilities that she had previously been able to elude. Thankfully, she soon finds a group of single moms from different walks of life who are also dealing with the immense challenges of raising children without a father around. Through their collective friendship they discover how they can become better parents than they already are.
Recently, I had the chance to talk one-on-one with Amy when she appeared at the Four Seasons Hotel for The Single Moms Club press day. She spoke about what it was like working with Tyler Perry, the key to doing comedy well on the big screen, and what it was like making the cult classics Rat Race and Starship Troopers.
Check it out below, and enjoy!
What drew you to this film?
Amy Smart: Well, one, I’m a huge fan of Tyler Perry. I just think he’s incredibly talented. He’s this self-made uber successful man that came from nothing, and I think he’s hilarious as Medea in all his Medea movies. And I love that this film is based around these five women who really are going through struggles in their life in trying to figure out how to be a single mom, and they just so happen to throw this fundraiser for the kids that they bond over and form a single moms club. I think it’s a great representation of a lot of single moms in this world that have to raise their kids, and each mom is so distinctly different than the other. So I think that somebody can relate to one of them if not more of them.
It also looks like there was a lot of improvisation going on during the making of the movie, like the scene with you and your neighbor. Were there any moments where you went off script at all?
Amy Smart: Well yes, that was definitely all improv and Tyler is really good at coming up with really funny one-liners on the spot. So basically he kept making a suggestion and I just kept saying it. It was like in one ear, out the mouth. So he kept throwing these like hilarious zingers and my challenge was to deliver it with a straight face.
Yeah that’s always a big challenge, keeping a straight face.
Amy Smart: Yeah, when he allowed for some good improv. And Cocoa and Wendi are amazing improvers.
What was it like working with the other women in this film? It looked like you all bonded very quickly.
Amy Smart: Yeah. I had actually never worked with any of them prior to this movie. It’s fun working on set because we spend 15 hours a day with somebody every day, and because it was on location we all just lived in hotel rooms or rented apartments or whatever. We all bonded on such a deeper level, and I think the film really lent it to us to all come together and have a fun time. Tyler makes really fun movies. His end goal is for all of us in the movie to have a fun time filming, and he sort of placed that down prior to filming. We all really got to know each other and learn more about each other and play and talk about all of the traumas of life (laughs).
From the outtakes that were shown during the end credits, it really looks like you all had a lot of fun making this film.
Amy Smart: Yeah, and we all are so different just as people. So that was fun to all get to know each other on a personal level.
