MARK WAHLBERG ON HIS ACTION-COMEDY THE FAMILY PLAN' & HIS DREAMS FOR HOLLYWOOD 2.0

It's part of the reason he latched on to "The Family Plan," a charming action-comedy about a former assassin turned suburban dad whose past catches up with him. It's streaming on Apple TV+.

"You always have movies that parents can go to with the kids and they'll tolerate them because the kids really want to see it or vice versa,” Wahlberg told the AP. “But this really felt like it was a movie that actually was for the whole family.”

Early in “The Family Plan,” his character is attacked in a grocery store and he must fend off the assailant with his 10-month-old in a baby-carrier on his chest. With his minivan cover blown, he then must convince his wife and teenagers to embark on a cross-country road trip to outrun the danger that he’s also desperately trying to keep secret from them.

The grocery store fight with the baby needed to be a big, tone-setting moment. Director Simon Cellan Jones, a veteran television director whose credits include “Boardwalk Empire,” thought it was a “fantastic concept. It was a real spin on an action movie scene.”

But he also wanted to use real babies rather than dolls. That, everyone quickly found, would prove immensely difficult.

“The baby’s supposed to be enjoying seeing daddy in action. The baby and the audience are they only ones privy to that. But getting (the twins) to chuckle or laugh while somebody’s kicking or flinging us around, that was next to impossible,” Wahlberg said. “I thought we were in trouble.”

Then in the editing room, they were relieved to discover that the babies had in fact performed. As Wahlberg said, the twins knew when to turn it on.