‘The Family Plan’ Director Talks Mark Wahlberg Spy Comedy

The Pacifier meets Mission: Impossible III in director Simon Cellan Jones’ third feature film: The Family Plan (now streaming on Apple TV+).

Written by David Coggeshall (Orphan: First Kill), the movie stars Mark Wahlberg as Dan Morgan, a retired assassin raising a family in suburban Buffalo. There’s just one teensy-tiny problem: Dan’s wife, Jessica (Michelle Monaghan) and two teenage children, Nina (Zoe Colletti) and Kyle (Van Crosby), have no idea about his blood-soaked past. The only person in the know is 10-month-old Max, but since he can’t exactly form sentences just yet, there’s no risk of exposure.

When a group of old colleagues led by the ruthless McCaffrey (Ciaran Hinds) tracks him down after all these years, however, Dan must whisk his loved ones off to Las Vegas under the guise of a spontaneous vacation. The true goal is to meet up with an old friend (Saïd Taghmaoui), who can provide them with new identities. The resultant road trip across the country is full of wacky misadventures that yield greater understanding and transparency between the five family members.

I recently caught up with Cellan Jones (Boardwalk Empire, Jessica Jones) to learn how he deftly blended a relatable family tale with a rip-roaring spy caper.

Director Simon Cellan Jones discusses his new spy comedy The Family Plan on Apple TV+

*The following interview contains light spoilers for the film*

Josh Weiss: Just to start off, tell me what first attracted you to the film?

I’d already worked with Mark on a film called Arthur the King, which is coming [out] after this one, next March. I loved working with him — it was really fun and easy and exciting. Then this project came up. I got sent a script and went, ‘Right, I’m gonna kick the door in. Whatever it takes to do this.’ The script was sweet and funny and interesting and original. It was just a complete no-brainer for me. And also, it was a bigger budget and more ambitious. More action and so on.

Weiss: What would you say your overall vision was for the project?

Cellan Jones: To be funny and exciting. But also to make people think about their own families — to watch a family, which starts out being kind of boring and stuck in a rut and perhaps not noticing each other’s worlds — and then to watch that family grow throughout the movie.

Weiss: Talk to me about the ensemble cast…

Cellan Jones: When you’ve got Mark, you want to you want to cast people who are going to be in the same zone, otherwise, it’s just going to unbalance it. And I think that’s why someone like Michelle is so good, because she has this easy confidence to her. She’s gorgeous and cool, but she’s a brilliant actress and you still believe her as a mother because she is a mother [in real life]. She was so exciting to work with because she’s very good at improvising. Her and Mark had a similar way of working together, where they like to keep it fresh.

Maggie Q, who I’d never met before, was just awesome. Wow! She was brilliant. I don’t want to give too much away, but she plays a slightly darker character and was brilliant to work with. She had a couple of really big fight scenes that she was fantastic at. I think she’s trained with the best in Hong Kong. And, of course, Ciarán Hinds, who I knew, but had never worked with [before]. He’s classy. He had that gravitas and that weight, but also that wit. And, of course, we had two brilliant kids. So the casting, for me, was one of the things that makes the film work.

Weiss: Michelle and Maggie both starred in Mission: Impossible III, which has similar vibes to The Family Plan. Did they acknowledge the fact that this movie was an espionage reunion for them?

Cellan Jones: They certainly did. Because they were both a little younger and less experienced then, I think they both found that to be a brilliant experience, where they learned an awful lot. They were thrilled to see each other again, because they’d started out a few years ago doing that. So it was great for them to have come full circle.

Weiss: What did Mark bring to the table as producer?

Cellan Jones: He brings massive commitment. It’s not a courtesy title. He’s very invested. He really wants the project to be good. He wants the crew and actors to be looked after. He wants to make sure the film gets treated well by all the people he’s working with. He’s one of the few guys in Hollywood, who can make things happen with a single phone call or even just a word. It’s really exciting working with someone who’s at that level.

Weiss: What have you learned about Mark as a fellow storyteller now that you’ve worked with him on two movies?

Cellan Jones: Quite a few things. One of the things that impresses me most is his commitment. You hear stories about movie stars running around, doing all sorts of different things, and not having much concentration. He walks onto a project so invested and so committed. He also has this amazing peripheral vision. He can walk on a set and instantly know that the sound man’s got a problem there and the set dressing isn’t quite ready there. He just knows. If you ever get a chance to work with Mark Wahlberg, I’d say jump at it because he’s great.

Weiss: I was really intrigued by the concept of a secret agent trying to live a life of anonymity in the age of social media and facial recognition. Can you talk about exploiting that aspect of the story?

Cellan Jones: It’s getting harder and harder to hide. I think things like the Witness Protection Program still exist in different countries. But social media is interesting, because his character hates social media for two reasons. Firstly, because he might get discovered by facial recognition. But secondly, he genuinely hates it, because he thinks that kids spend all that time worrying about what their peers are thinking of them. I think social media is here to stay, and I’m not arguing with that, but it is amazing when you can try and persuade kids and, indeed, adults to tear themselves away from their phones a little bit.

Weiss: You’ve got some memorable fight scenes in a supermarket, a college chemistry lab, and an abandoned Vegas hotel. How did pull those off?

Cellan Jones: I’ve done action, but nothing on that scale. So it was slightly nerve-racking, because I was working with a lot of very, very good people. I had to come in and say what I wanted without being too nervous or arrogant about it. It was really fun. As I say, the trick with those things is work with good people and that makes your life easier. I definitely enjoyed rising to that challenge.

Weiss: Looking at the production as a whole, what would you say was the most fun? Conversely, what proved to be the most challenging?

Cellan Jones: The easiest was actually the scenes in the car with the family. Because you sort of think, ‘Oh my God, we’ve got so many of these scenes. It’s going to get repetitive, it’s going to get boring, it’s going to look the same.’ But the actors were so good and so fun and we had different bits of music and stuff like that. Some of them were [shot] in a studio, some of them are on the road. It was like a genuine road trip. We were all along for the ride. I think the hardest one was certainly the baby in the supermarket; getting the baby to look happy and excited, rather than absolutely furious that it was being wrapped up and someone pretending to punch near it. The big, big sequence in this huge hotel lobby was literally a week shooting with hundreds of stunt people and so on. Those things are very daunting, but you have a plan and once you get going, you get into a rhythm.

Weiss: The film is essentially a hybrid of the family comedy and spy thriller genres. What classic hallmarks of each did you want portray, while delivering something new at the same time?

Cellan Jones: Some of the scenes that I really enjoyed were scenes that you’d absolutely expect in an action movie, but with a spin on them that makes them different. Our hero is discovered by somebody who’s trying to kill him in a supermarket, and there’s a big fight scene. So okay, we’ve all seen that before, except that there’s a baby attached to his chests in a BabyBjörn, and I have not seen that. There’s another scene where it’s a big, exciting motorbike chase through the streets with people shooting at them. Again, you go, ‘Okay, that’s a car chase…’ But the spin on that is he can’t wake up his family, otherwise, they’ll discover his secret. So he has to avoid all these gunshots and get rid of people chasing him without bumping the car too hard or making too much noise.

Weiss: Have you had any discussions about a potential sequel?

Cellan Jones: No, not yet. You never know. It’s something that might be worth doing. We haven’t had a specific conversation. But I’m sure the writer’s got more stuff in him and this family is so good together, that it would be great to work with them again.

Weiss: Your filmmaking career began in the UK. What was your journey to the American side of the entertainment business?

Cellan Jones: I’m very experienced, which is another word for old. But I’m still just young enough to love what I’m doing. My background is in British TV and then I’ve worked on a TV show made by a British company, but written by David Simon, called Generation Kill. I think David is one of America’s great, great writers. And suddenly, my head was turned actually, because this was an HBO show with quite a good budget and I’m making a big war movie about the Iraq War with big writers and locations. That turned me on to the American way. So since then, I’ve almost exclusively worked in America. I’m not saying your country’s perfect, but there’s something fantastic about this country’s ambition. I love being here.

The Family Plan is now streaming on Apple TV+.