Minor spoilers for the Freakier Friday premise.

The sequel to Freaky Friday, which is aptly titled, Freakier Friday, is out in theaters on Friday, August 8. The basic premise is that Lindsay Lohan’s character, Anna, is now in her late 30s and has a 15-year-old daughter. She’s engaged to a British chef, who happens to have a teenage daughter of his own. Throw Jamie Lee Curtis’ Tess into the mix, and somehow, they end up with a four-way body swap.

Manny Jacinto (swoon) plays LiLo’s fiancée, Eric. I freaking love that Manny is getting more roles and has fought to avoid being typecast as the same character he played on The Good Place. I still think it’s a tragedy that The Acolyte didn’t get a second season to show us more of what he can do as a badass maybe-Sith. Anyway, Manny sat down for a lengthy profile with InStyle to chat about his career, the women who have believed in him, his fitness routine and more. It’s a long interview, and here are some highlights:

He used to be a competitive hip hop dancer: Despite his bachelor’s degree in civil engineering and his work as a competitive hip hop dancer (cards on the table: The Freakier Friday dance scene was Jacinto’s brain child), the actor’s breakout role was playing the ultimate Florida Man, Jason Mendoza, on the Kristen Bell-fronted NBC comedy The Good Place. This led to parts like the maybe-too-zen-to-be-believed Yao in Nine Perfect Strangers, Hulu’s dismantling of the wellness industrial complex starring Nicole Kidman, and the mysterious Qimir in The Acolyte, the first female-centric Star Wars series for Disney+.

Women have always been his biggest champions: Although he does do more macho work—all of his lines were famously cut from Top Gun: Maverick and he just wrapped the Old West comedy The Stalemate—Jacinto will happily concede that he owes his career to women-led stories. “Women have been a huge champion for me. It’s always been women who have been able to look past what I have done and see the potential of what I can do,” he says, name-checking Kidman, Ganatra, and The Acolyte’s Leslye Headland. “Thank God I get to do this during this day and age when there are so many women at the top … who see my potential and are not afraid to explore that.” By this point in his career, Jacinto knows both what’s expected of him and how to still surprise us. “I love proving people wrong,” he says.

“It’s wild that I get to do this. I never would have thought I’d play the love interest to Lindsay Lohan; I watched Lindsay Lohan as a kid,” he says with genuine awe. “It’s wild what you can do if you put your mind to it.”

He’s more than just a meathead character: After The Good Place, Jacinto says he was offered roles similar to the adorable meathead he played in that comedy, but that the “good looking dope thing—it’s never comfortable for me.” He loves that Freakier Friday, which he describes as a celebration of Lohan’s work in its predecessor as well as The Parent Trap (1998), lets him plumb other ranges of comedy. (Judging by the end-of-film outtakes, a lot of improv was involved.)

His role on FF was originally smaller: Initially, Jacinto’s role wasn’t as central to the story, but it grew as the creatives realized what a gold mine they had in the actor. “He is just one of those rare artists that can do this earnestness that you believe,” Ganatra, the director, tells me. “He can do comedy and he can do drama and when I realized the breadth of his talent, we just kept asking him to do more and more and more.”

His little crush on CMM: “I think I even had a crush on Chad Michael Murray when I was younger,” Jacinto says, laughing off any potential #TeamJake versus #TeamEric wars brewing within the fandom. Off-screen, the two bonded over their shared love of fitness. “He had some amino acid protein powder,” Jacinto says. “I was like, This is my guy…We’re gonna be best friends.”

The crew couldn’t stop staring at his hot bod: [Director Nisha] Ganatra tells me that she had to sequester her actor to his own tent between takes of a beach scene because the crew couldn’t stop staring. But Jacinto says he pitched the Freakier Friday dance scene not so much to show off as because he felt he might as well get it on camera now “while my lower back is still functioning.”

“There’s nothing like knowing that you might be shirtless on-screen to motivate you to hit the gym,” he jokes.

[From InStyle]

That is so wild that the director had to sequester him to stop the crew from ogling him. I mean, I don’t blame ‘em. Those arms have lived rent-free in my mind ever since he first showed them off in The Acolyte. But yeah, being shirtless on-screen is a good motivator to go to the gym! Remember when he first showed everyone how buff he got for The Acolyte and deflected the heartthrob talk by saying his hotness was all due to “baby oil and wet hair?” Good times, good times.

I really love that Manny took the time to acknowledge and appreciate the women who have helped “champion” his career. He has a very Keanu Reeves-esque quality to him in that he comes off as humble, grateful, and kind. That makes me want to root for him all the more. I’m so glad he’s ended up being one of the good ones. I hope his star continues to rise because he deserves all of the success in the world. I also hope we get to see Manny pop up as Qimir in a future Star Wars property. Give us more Darth Bortles!

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Photos credit: Julie Edwards/Avalon, James Warren/Bang Showbiz/Avalon, Justin Ng/Avalon