How Never Have I Ever cast Reese Witherspoon's son Deacon Phillippe
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Warning: This post contains spoilers from Never Have I Ever season 3.
Some things just run in the family.
Deacon Phillippe, son of Reese Witherspoon and Ryan Phillippe, made his acting debut during the third season of the hit Netflix comedy Never Have I Ever. A little ways into the season, Devi (Maitreyi Ramakrishnan) meets Des (Anirudh Pisharody), the (extremely handsome) son of her mom's friend. At first, Devi writes Des off as a nerdy guy she's not interested in getting to know. But once she, you know, sees him, she realizes all of her assumptions were incorrect, and the two start hanging out.
As they get to know each other, they start having group hangs and getting to know each other's friends. And one of Des' friends is Parker, played by Phillippe. Des and Parker attend a fancy private school together and are both members of the debate team (and therefore rivals of Devi's school's debate team).
Lara Solanki/Netflix Deacon Phillippe on 'Never Have I Ever'
"We wanted Des' character to go to a swanky private school, and we had written this character of Parker and we just were like, 'Deacon would be great at this,'" Never Have I Ever co-creator Lang Fisher tells EW. "So he joined the cast and he was such a nice kid, which is funny, because the character's really unlikeable."
The connection between Phillippe and Never Have I Ever is fairly obvious: Co-creator Mindy Kaling and Witherspoon have worked together on a number of projects — including the upcoming Legally Blonde 3 — so it's not difficult to see how Phillippe's name could've come up as a possibility.
Although he's not in a ton of the season — he's only a guest star — he does show up in a couple key scenes. "This is his first acting gig, but he just was great," Fisher says of working with him. "He showed up like a real pro. He was really, really professional on set. He was just a joy to work with."
Never Have I Ever season 3 is now available on Netflix.
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