Nick Jonas reveals why he was nervous to sing in comedic drama ‘The Good Half’

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Nick Jonas has been singing and performing ever since he was a kid — first on Broadway at age 7 before forming a little band with his brothers you might have heard of called the Jonas Brothers. But when a scene in his upcoming comedic drama The Good Half required him to sing on-camera, he actually got nervous. It turned out to be “one of the hardest scenes to shoot.”

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Jonas stars in The Good Half as Renn Wheeland, a struggling writer living in L.A. who’s forced to face unresolved issues in his life when his mother (Elisabeth Shue) dies. On his flight home to Cleveland for the funeral, he strikes up a new connection with a fellow passenger, Zoey (Alexandra Shipp). But when he returns home to his family, he struggles to balance that new relationship while healing old ones with his overbearing sister, Leigh (Brittany Snow), his eager-to-connect father, Darren (Matt Walsh), and his frustrating step-father (David Arquette), all while dealing with his grief.

In one scene, Renn escapes his family’s home to go on a date with Zoey at a karaoke bar. After he throws back a few drinks, Zoey convinces him to get on the mic and perform a song. But this isn’t a Jonas Brothers-esque performance; Renn is just a regular guy with an okay singing voice, and that’s what Jonas struggled with the most.

“It’s really hard to think about how to try to sound not great, but not bad,” he tells Entertainment Weekly. “The balance of it was an interesting thing to navigate, but the triumph of the character in that moment was very necessary for his journey, so I was happy to get to do it, but it was the one scene that I was nervous about stepping into for the film.”

Jonas loved the “good challenge” of singing not as himself. “It certainly shakes things up mentally, but I thought it was a bizarre thing to try to figure out how to sing good-ish,” he adds. “I just tried to have fun with it and act like it was late in the evening after a few drinks, and that made it easier.”

It also helped that The Good Half was shot in Jonas’ home state of New Jersey, sometimes in locations that held a lot of good memories for him. “The very first day, we were shooting some scenes in a mall that my brothers and I had played at early in our career — like in 2005 or ’06,” Jonas says. “It was very funny to be back there and have those memories flooding back while I was shooting a film.”

While this is hardly Jonas’ first major role — he previously starred in the MMA fighter drama Kingdom, in addition to appearances in the Jumanji movies, Love Again, Goat, his Disney TV series Jonas, and many more — this is the first time he’s playing the lead in a feature. “I’m proud of the film and how I stepped into something where I was in every scene,” he says. “I’ve never done that before, and this was a very different kind of film for me. It was a big undertaking. I just tried to deliver a consistent and thoughtful performance.”

The Good Half deals with heavy themes like loss and grief, but Jonas loved how the script balances the darker subject matter with humor. But Jonas focused most on capturing the “stillness” of the story as Renn learns how to accept and cope with grief. “He’s obviously going through one of the toughest things we can go through in the human experience, and I wanted the performance to reflect the isolation that he was creating for himself,” he says. “Working with Robert Schwartzman, who’s a long-time friend of mine who directed the film, on trusting in those quiet moments and the stillness of that performance felt really important to me. Knowing I was in the hands of a trusted friend as far as the performance goes was really liberating.”

He also drew on his own experiences with grief to relate to Renn’s journey during filming. “We all, unfortunately, at different points in our lives, have experienced some level of grief,” Jonas says. “I kept thinking about my grandfather, who I adored and had a very close relationship with up until he passed. It was necessary to tap into that.”

Throughout the filming process, Jonas was moved by the movie’s ultimate message, which he hopes audiences will also connect to. “It’s okay to not be okay,” Jonas says. “Healing happens over time and on its own time, so patience is important in that process. And it’s a good reminder that life is really precious and to stay present with the ones you love.”

The Good Half hits select theaters through Fathom Events screenings on July 23 and July 25.