Watching Kevin Hart’s “Fatherhood” portrayal of widowed father Matt Logelin raising his baby daughter Maddy might seem like Hollywood fiction.
But the Netflix movie (now streaming) follows the major beats of the real Matt Logelin’s initially tragic but ultimately triumphant true tale, as told in his 2011 best-selling autobiography, “Two Kisses for Maddy: A Memoir of Loss & Love.”
“Fatherhood” screenwriter Dana Stevens and director Paul Weitz consulted Logelin extensively, with Weitz saying he called constantly with changes during filming “to make sure any emotion or beat wasn’t false.”
“The movie captured the really intense emotions here,” says Logelin, whose wife Liz Logelin died 27 hours after giving birth to the couple’s daughter. “But the movie also fights to find the humor. Not everything that happened in my life was 100% awful all of the time.”
Key names, details like the high school sweethearts’ Minnesota origins, and the true story’s spirit ring true (except for the film’s mother-in-law portrayal).
Logelin explains:
Kevin Hart can relate:Diaper disasters, blowouts, crying babies from new dramedy ‘Fatherhood’
Matt’s actual mother-in-law was nothing like the screen version
“Fatherhood” mother-in-law, Marion (Alfre Woodard), while grieving the loss of her daughter Liz, is critical of Matt’s raw child-raising skills and pushes to take over parenting of her granddaughter Maddy.
“She’s the exact opposite of my actual mother-in-law,” says Logelin of his…
