Courteney Cox has revealed what it was like directing her daughter, Coco Arquette, 22, in her new film Evil Genius, saying she did not need to act like a "mama bear" on set.
Cox, 62, is best known for playing Monica Geller on the sitcom Friends, which aired from 1994 to 2004 and followed six friends living in New York City. She shares Coco with her ex-husband, actor David Arquette, 55, who also appears in the film. The true crime dark comedy premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival, one of the world's largest publicly attended film festivals, founded in 1976 and held annually in Toronto, Canada, where it typically screens hundreds of films from around the world.
"I would be more like, 'Get it together!' No, I'm just kidding," Cox teased in an interview with E! News.
She said of her daughter, "She holds her own. I don't need to be protective of her."
"Of course, I loved having Coco on set. Everybody loved her. She's just a little force, but she's an incredible actor," Cox added.
Coco's 22nd birthday tributes
The Toronto premiere came three months after Coco's birthday, which both of her parents marked with tributes on Instagram.
Cox shared two photos of her daughter, one recent image showing the pair smiling cheek to cheek and a childhood photo showing her holding Coco in the ocean. "Happy Birthday Co. You are such a wise soul. Funniest person I know and my life teacher. I love you x," she wrote.
Arquette, who is best known for playing Dewey Riley in the Scream horror franchise since 1996 and is now married to Christina McLarty, also shared two posts for the occasion, including one that read, "I'm so proud to be your papa @cocoarquette_ Happy 22nd Birthday! I know this is going to be a magical world."
Coco commented under a separate post featuring three photos of the pair, "I love you so much!!"
Sending Coco off to college
In October 2024, at the Inc. 5000 45th Annual Conference and Gala, an event honoring the fastest-growing private companies in the United States, Cox reflected on sending Coco off to college.
"It's weird because people get upset the first year your kid goes off to school and I was like, 'What's the big deal? She doesn't talk to me anyway, she's always in her room,'" she said.
"Then she comes home after her first year in college and she was all mature and talking more," Cox continued. "I was like, 'I don't want you to go back to college.' The second year was harder for me."
Cox and Arquette married in 1999 and divorced in 2013, three years after they separated. The former couple have remained on amicable terms, and Coco is their only child.
What is Evil Genius about?
Evil Genius stars Patricia Arquette and David Harbour as Marjorie Diehl-Armstrong and Bill Rothstein, a toxic couple at the centre of the story. Patricia Arquette, David Arquette's sister, won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for Boyhood in 2015, while Harbour is known for playing Jim Hopper in the Netflix series Stranger Things.
The film was adapted by Courtenay Miles from the 2018 Netflix docuseries of the same name, Evil Genius: The True Story of America's Most Diabolical Bank Heist, which examined the case across four episodes. It is based on the 2003 "pizza bomber" robbery, which ended in the death of Brian Wells, played in the film by Tom McCarthy. Wells was forced to rob a bank with a bomb strapped around his neck.
David Arquette and Christine Taylor appear in the roughly hour-and-a-half-long feature as bank employees. Michael Chernus, Garret Dillahunt, Danielle Macdonald and Owen Teague are also in the cast, according to Deadline.
