‘A Family Affair’ Ending Explained: Director Richard LaGravenese Breaks Down That Fun Plot Twist

The new Zac Efron and Nicole Kidman movie on Netflix, A Family Affair, is, in many ways, a typical romantic comedy. Efron stars as a fictional movie star, whose life changes when he falls for a slightly-older woman he meets named Brooke (Kidman). But there’s a twist: Brooke happens to be the boss of Chris’s 24-year-old personal assistant (played by Joey King).

Here’s where A Family Affair is a not-so typical rom-com, because the main protagonist of the movie is not Efron, or Kidman, but King. Even though King is not the one who is falling in love, she still has to grow and change as a character in order to make for a satisfying movie. Director Richard LaGravenese and screenwriter Carrie Solomon cleverly weave together three coming-of-age stories for these three main characters, each at a different stage in their life. It all comes together for a fun twist ending, that satisfies all the character’s journeys.

But that wasn’t always the A Family Affair ending. Read on a for a full break down of A Family Affair plot summary and A Family Affair ending explained, including a look at what the original Family Affair ending was, in an interview with director Richard LaGravenese.

A Family Affair plot summary:

Zara (Joey King) is a young, twenty-something personal assistant for a famous movie star, Chris Cole (Zac Efron), who is best known for his franchise of action movies based on the myth of Icarus. Chris is a stereotypical narcissistic Hollywood star, and an objectively terrible boss to Zara. She sticks it out, because he’s promised to promote her, and she dreams of someday being a Hollywood producer. She believes she can convince Chris to hire her writer friend to a do a rewrite on the latest Icarus film, which will in turn convince him to star in a movie written by her friend, and produced by Zara.

After Chris breaks up with yet another girlfriend—which he does in the same way every time, by buying them a certain pair of “break-up” diamond earrings—he forces Zara to retrieve his stuff from his ex-girlfriend’s house. She dutifully does this ridiculous task, but when she gets to Chris’s house, he’s changed the gate code. Why? Zara is late, and he’s punishing her. Enraged, Zara quits on the spot. Chris stops by Zara’s house later to try to win her back. But Zara’s not home. Chris finds himself having a drink with Zara’s mother, a famous author named Brooke Harwood (Nicole Kidman), instead. Sparks fly, one thing leads to another… and then Chris and Brooke tumble into bed together. Cue Zara walking in on her mom and her boss going at it.

Zara is horrified, of course. But when Chris tells her he’ll promote her to “assistant producer” on his new movie, she agrees to come back to work for him… on the condition he never sleeps with her mom again. Chris can’t seem to stay away. He and Brooke start secretly dating, and genuinely have a real connection. Zara inevitably finds out, of course. To make matters worse, Chris reveals he has hired Brooke to rewrite his script, not Zara’s friend. Zara feels betrayed, and tears into her mom for ruining her life.

Zara’s grandmother (Kathy Bates), intervenes, and convinces Brooke to invite Chris over for Christmas. Zara swallows her ego, and they manage to have a nice holiday together. But then Zara discovers a pair of the infamous “break-up” earrings in Chris’s bag. She confronts her mother and Chris, and reveals all the horrible things he’s done to her as a boss—including buying that pair of earrings to break-up with his girlfriend. Chris insists he wasn’t going to end things with Brooke—he only bought the earrings before he thought of a better, more thoughtful Christmas gift. Brooke nevertheless ends the relationship, but she tells Zara she wishes her daughter had told her about the earrings in a better way.

In addition to her mom’s disappointment, Zara is also getting it from her best friend Eugenie (Liza Koshy). Eugenie has been going through a tough break-up, but Zara was too focused on herself to notice. Zara realizes that she ruined a good thing in her mother’s life by making it all about Zara. So she comes up with a plan to fix it.

A Family Affair ending explained:

Zara drags Chris to the grocery store. Earlier in the movie, Chris had lamented to Zara than he could no longer shop in grocery stores like a normal person, because of his celebrity status, and he misses it. But, weirdly, no one in the store looks twice at Chris in the store today. Meanwhile, Kathy Bates gets Brooke to the same grocery store by insisting that she needs horned melons immediately, “for my dementia.”

When Chris and Brooke come together, Zara apologizes to them and tells them she’s done standing in the way of their relationship. Brooke realizes Zara has “produced” them. She’s more right than she realizes—because when Brooke and Chris finally kiss, Zara pulls out her walkie-talkie to “Go rainstorms, go, go go.” The rainstorm mist on the vegetables begins to spray.

Then Zara tells the cashier, “Let them stay as long as they want. Extras’s overtime is on Chris.”

In other words, everyone in this grocery store is an actor. Zara really did produce the entire event!

A Family Affair plot twist explained:

So, wait. Is everyone at the grocery store in A Family Affair an actor? Yes.

In a recent interview with Decider, A Family Affair director Richard LaGravenese confirmed that, yes, everyone in the grocery store at the end of A Family Affair is an actor hired by Joey King’s character. “Yes, they’re all extras,” LaGravenese said. “That’s why they’re not paying attention to [Chris].”

The director went on to explain the grocery store scene wasn’t always how the movie ended. “The original ending—they did come together, but it was on the New York set where he brings her on the date,” LaGravenese explained. “Joey’s character wasn’t as involved in pulling them together as she is in this one, and that didn’t do justice to her story. We didn’t have that ending of seeing her as a producer, and seeing her attain that goal, which is also very important.”

The director credits the movie’s writer, Carrie Solomon, with coming up with the new ending. “Carrie had this idea—she wanted to have a romantic comedy movie ending scene, in a place that was antithetical to that. She thought about a grocery store, and a vegetable stand. Then we had to shoot a scene, reshoot a scene, where we set that up.”

So there you have it! Any location can be romantic, as long as it has Zac Efron and Nicole Kidman kissing.