Lucy Paez’s journey to The Mother began, appropriately enough, in a movie theater. The 14-year-old actor was in the audience waiting for the lights to dim, when she learned of the chance to play Jennifer Lopez’s daughter, Zoe, in Niki Caro’s new action thriller. Paez would end up missing the movie, but the good news is she got the part after what she calls a whirlwind audition process. It was her first role in a Hollywood movie. “Of course I was going to jump at the opportunity,” Paez tells Tudum. “I went to my house and did my first self-tape.”

Caro, who screened hundreds of young women during a global search to find the right actor for the role, was immediately impressed. “There was something about Lucy’s real natural strength,” the director tells Tudum. “The process is exhausting to find that needle in that haystack. But Lucy was definitely that, she was the right kid, and her quality is that she can hold her naturalism even when asked to do complex and repetitive things.”

After a few meetings with Caro over Zoom, Paez flew from her home in Houston to Los Angeles to meet with Lopez. “I don’t normally get anxious when I meet people — and then I saw Jennifer,” she recalls. “She was all glammed up, she had combat boots, goddess mode head to toe, and that’s when we started doing the scene.”

In the film, Lopez plays an assassin who comes out of hiding to protect the daughter she gave up 12 years earlier. Things get intense fast in the story, and Paez says her chemistry read with Lopez reflected the characters’ strained and volatile relationship. “She was in full Mother mode,” Paez says. “She was throwing the chair, screaming a little bit — not a little bit, she was screaming a lot — taking the gun out of my hand. Jennifer really helped me bring myself to that level because she was a force.” 

Little did she know, Lopez wasn’t just running lines with Paez — she was testing her. “You have to see if they choke under pressure,” Lopez tells Tudum. “I knew that I was going to really push it, do more than just read the scene with her. I wanted her to feel safe, like we could play together, so I smiled, but I stayed in character. It was such a big part for a [then] 12-year-old that I wanted to make sure she could really handle everything that was going to happen.”

To find out for sure, Lopez decided to improvise. “[Lucy’s character] holds up a gun to me, and I [thought,] ‘I’m going to snatch it out of her hand,’ ” Lopez says. “I wanted to see if she’d stop or if she’d keep going. I did, and she got jarred but she stayed in character. I thought to myself, ‘OK, this little one can handle this. This is going to be good.’ ”

Soon after, Caro called the young actor to ask her if she wanted the part. “I logged off  Zoom and I started bawling my eyes out,” Paez says. “I really wanted Zoe, and I loved the story about the female connection of mothers and daughters.” After drying her tears, she decided to solemnly mark the moment: She went to the Cheesecake Factory and celebrated by ordering a massive birthday cheesecake. 

Check out Paez’s audition tape above, and watch her performance opposite Lopez in The Mother, now streaming on Netflix.

Director Niki Caro Examines the Role of Motherhood in The MotherIt takes a mother to make The Mother.