Actor Mark Wahlberg spent months memorising Mandarin lines for The Family Plan 2

LOS ANGELES – Mark Wahlberg has a few lines of Mandarin dialogue in his latest film, the action comedy The Family Plan 2.

But the American actor spent months memorising those sentences so he could do them justice and not embarrass himself, he tells The Straits Times over Zoom.

Now streaming on Apple TV, the movie is a sequel to 2023’s The Family Plan, which saw suburban father Dan Morgan (Wahlberg) go on the run with his family when his past as an assassin catches up with them.

In The Family Plan 2, he and wife Jessica (Michelle Monaghan) fly to London so they can spend Christmas there with daughter Nina (Zoe Colletti) and sons Kyle (Van Crosby) and Max (Peter and Theodore Lindsey).

But they have to flee once again when threatened by Finn (Kit Harington), a mysterious figure from Dan’s past.

And when the family makes a pit stop at a Chinese restaurant in the British capital, Dan has a brief conversation in Mandarin with an old contact.

Asked how hard it was to memorise those few words compared with the French and other languages his character also rattles off, Wahlberg, 54, says: “Very difficult”.

“Thankfully, my friend Zach was my Mandarin teacher, and he came and spent some time with me and was actually there on the day we filmed,” says the actor, who starred in the Ted (2012 and 2015) and Daddy’s Home (2015 and 2017) comedies.

The Hollywood star knows he cannot master the accent for any of the foreign languages Dan speaks, “but I always want to make sure that I try to at least be in the ballpark”.

“And that’s something I take very seriously, so it was months and months of practising,” adds Wahlberg, who received a Best Supporting Oscar nomination for playing a police officer in the 2006 crime drama The Departed.

Co-star Monaghan chimes in and confirms this.

“I have watched and heard this and you really dedicate yourself to it. It’s really impressive. You’ve got a knack for it,” says the 49-year-old American actress, who recently starred in the third season of the comedy-drama anthology The White Lotus (2025).

“Well, I don’t want to embarrass myself or anybody else, so I try to make sure that I get it down as good as possible,” Wahlberg responds.

And he can still remember every bit of non-English dialogue Dan speaks.

“I think because of the number of times I will record it, play it back, listen to it and write it out phonetically the way I see it being pronounced, I can remember all languages I’ve spoken in these films, whether it be Arabic, Hebrew, French, German, Cantonese, Mandarin or Spanish.

“Most of them are usually bad words, so they’re not something I try to repeat that often,” he adds.

As with the first film, there are plenty of fights, car chases and other action sequences in The Family Plan 2.

Monaghan found herself wishing she could pull off stunts as effortlessly as her on-screen husband, whose action credits include The Fighter (2010), The Perfect Storm (2000) and the 2014 and 2018 Transformers films.

“I wish I could be more like Mark. I love doing stunts, but it takes me a good month to rehearse so I don’t hurt myself or anyone else.

“But Mark just rocks up on the day, watches a 30-second sequence of 10 to 12 different moves, does maybe two to three takes, and it’s flawless.

“It’s a testament to his agility and probably his experience of doing action throughout the years,” says the actress. She also appeared in the 2006 and 2011 Mission: Impossible spy movies and has two children aged 17 and 12 with her Australian graphic artist husband.

But Wahlberg says the action scenes are not the most important to him.

“I want the audience to feel like the action is great and that it’s really me. But for me, it’s more about the character and the humour,” says the entertainer, who is married to American former model Rhea Durham, 47, and has four children aged 15 to 22.

“I’m also pretty lazy, old and banged up, so I kind of save it for the day when the cameras are rolling.”