Lovie Simone and Michael Cooper Jr, stars of Netflix’s Forever, on first love
Producer Mara Brock Akil and stars Lovie Simone and Michael Cooper Jr discuss the feeling of first love, as well as the making of Forever
The story of how Lovie Simone and Michael Cooper Jr, the stars of Forever on Netflix, first met is like a perfectly scripted meet-cute that was fated to fuel a tender portrait of young love.
Cooper was on a flight bound for Los Angeles in the US state of California from Atlanta, in the US state of Georgia, for an audition, stressed because his car had been stolen three hours earlier. But he heeded his agent’s advice to worry about it later.
“He’s like, ‘Just go! If you book this, you can buy another car’,” Cooper recalls.
Simone was his seatmate, en route to audition for the same television series. Not that they had any clue then – they did not speak to each other on the flight. And they did not encounter each other in that first round. It was not until they both got a callback for the chemistry read that it clicked.
Both are relative newcomers – Simone, 26, has several television credits to her name, including Greenleaf and Manhunt, while Cooper, 23, has a handful of shorts and film credits. They were cast last year to play the leads, Keisha Clark and Justin Edwards.