It’s tough to outshine legendary co-stars Reese Witherspoon and Ashton Kutcher, but in the new rom-com Your Place or Mine, Wesley Kimmel does it with humor and ease. Kimmel plays Witherspoon’s character’s young son Jack, who’s caught in the middle when his mother swaps homes with her old friend Peter (Kutcher). With his occasionally overprotective mother out of the picture, Jack is free to learn a bit of irresponsibility from Peter. The part required a young actor who could hold his own against Kutcher’s freewheeling performance, and Kimmel was just right for the job. You can check out the audition tape that won him the role below.
“We looked at a bunch of kids,” writer-director Aline Brosh McKenna tells Tudum. “Wesley really stood out for his performance…. He really felt like the part was written for him.”
While Kimmel has had parts on a few high-profile series (he played a young Tusken Raider on The Book of Boba Fett), this is his first lead role. “He was very passionate about it and it kind of came across when he was auditioning,” McKenna says. “And then he read with Ashton and Reese, and he had great chemistry with both of them.” Maybe it runs in the family; Kimmel's uncle is longtime talk show host Jimmy Kimmel.
Kutcher concurs. “Wesley’s one of the coolest kids I ever met in my life,” he told Netflix. “We just talk shop the whole time.”
And Kimmel didn’t seek tips just from his co-stars. “He wanted to learn everything, wanted to know how the cameras worked and the sound department worked,” Witherspoon said. The young performer sped all over the set absorbing information.
“The kid learned every single craft, from sound department to camera to everything on the film set that you could possibly learn,” Kutcher said. “Every day, he just came in and he was like, ‘I’m gonna learn this discipline today.’” Who knows? Maybe someday Kimmel will be the one directing them.
