Kevin Zegers hopes that by the time his 4-year-old daughters see his new film — in which he plays an entitled Wall Street banker named Chad — predatory behavior without consequence will be a thing of the past.
“There’s thousands of Chads out there,” the 35-year-old “Nighthawks” actor said of his character, whom he describes as a “complete douche” who “skates by on privilege.”
“I’m hyper aware of sending my kids out in the world right now,” Zegers told Page Six on Thursday. “They’re only 4, so we have time.”
Zegers — who’s married to CAA agent Jaime Feld — added that in the wake of the #MeToo movement, he’s noticed a difference in the atmosphere in Hollywood.
“People don’t quite know how to behave yet, but it is different, so my hope is that by the time my daughters are out there in the world that it’s sort of amended itself a little bit,” he said. “My girls are tough, like my wife. So my concern level for them, I think, is pretty low. I actually pity the the boys who end up pursuing them at this point. They’ve got very strong opinions about things.”
He added that he hopes that when his kids are eventually old enough to watch the movie, they will say to him, “Were people really like that before?” and he can respond, “Yeah, they were before things changed.”
Zegers — who has been adamant that he won’t lie to his twins about being an alcoholic — also spoke to us about acting in a film where much of the plot involves his character drinking.
“It’s not [hard],” he told us. “I wasn’t a social drinker. I wasn’t going out and drinking with people, so my experience of drinking doesn’t compute with doing a movie where I’m drinking socially. If I was someone sitting in bed drinking alcohol, OK, that resonates for me a little bit more … In terms of like triggering some impulse in me, I’ve never played a character who was quite the same as I was when I was actively doing my thing.”
“Nighthawks,” starring Zegers, fellow “Gossip Girl” alum Chace Crawford and Janet Montgomery, is available to rent on iTunes.