Nick Jonas talks fatherhood, grief and ‘The Good Half’

In “The Good Half,” Nick Jonas plays Renn, a young writer who flies home to Cleveland from Los Angeles for his mother’s funeral. In real life, the actor and singer actually got to fly home – to New Jersey – to film the project.
“It felt kind of perfect,” Jonas, 31, tells USA TODAY of working in the Garden State on his new movie (in theaters now). He was born in Dallas but raised in Wyckoff, New Jersey. “Being in Jersey brought a sort of element to it that I didn’t really expect. There was a sort of melancholy to being back in your home state that I think was good for this film.”
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Jonas notes that he enjoyed getting to see his eldest sibling, Kevin, 36, his wife, Danielle, and their two daughters. But he gets to see Kevin and older brother Joe, 35, a decent amount anyway: The three were set to play a show on Joe’s birthday (Aug. 15), then will prepare for another leg of the Jonas Brothers world tour. The trek resumes Aug. 21 in Mexico City and wraps Oct. 16 in Poland.
But first, Jonas’ latest film gets a wider theatrical release on Friday. “The Good Half” also stars Brittany Snow, Matt Walsh and David Arquette. Elisabeth Shue plays Jonas’ mother, who is grieved by the characters while confronting their own problems. Alexandra Shipp plays a stranger Jonas meets on the flight home who ends up helping him deal with emotions and situations he has tried to avoid.
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Walsh plays Renn’s father. The dialogue between the characters moved Jonas to think about his own child, Malti Marie, 2, whom he shares with wife Priyanka Chopra.
“I think parenthood, even at the early stage of my daughter’s life, is all about these moments,” he says, referring to a scene where Renn and his father, Darren, form a deeper connection in the midst of their grief. “(Renn’s) father not knowing what to say or how to act is just so raw and real.
“It’s what I think a lot of us go through when we’re trying to console somebody. You just don’t know what to say and you don’t want to say the wrong thing, but you don’t really have any ideas of what the right thing might be.”
Creative outlets can certainly help, and the Jonas Brothers have plenty of those. Kevin and the youngest Jonas, Franklin, co-host ABC’s “Claim to Fame.” Joe will release a solo album, “Music for People Who Believe in Love,” on Oct. 18. And in addition to movies, Nick is returning to Broadway next March. He’ll star alongside Adrienne Warren in “The Last Five Years.” Jonas, who was last on Broadway for a role in 2012, calls the project “a dream come true.”
As for “The Good Half,” Jonas notes that while it’s a sad story, “there’s some humor in it” as well.
“There’s no right or wrong way” to navigate loss, he says. “Each person is going about the grieving process in a different way. I think you can see a lot of yourself in any one of these characters, and sometimes just feeling seen and knowing that it’s OK to not be OK … that conversation I think is an important one.”