Meet Dora’s new cousin Diego
LIGHTS, camera, action and Take 2!
Meet the US actor who's quietly slipped into the role of Diego on director James Bobin's live action Dora The Explorer movie, filming on the Gold Coast.
The nephew of Hollywood stars and brothers Mark Wahlberg and Donnie Wahlberg (his dad is their brother James "Jim" Wahlberg), Jeffrey Wahlberg, 22, has stepped into the shoes of Dora's cousin Diego in the film after the actor originally cast in the role, Micke Moreno, returned to the US following a rumoured romance with Isabela Moner.
Crew members said Colombian-born singer and actor Moreno, who turned 20 on September 14, was sent back to the US and replaced as Diego after romancing the film's leading lady.
The producers are yet to officially announce the casting change.
Best known for his roles in the 2018 apocalyptic thriller Future World, directed by James Franco and Bruce Thierry Cheung, Don't Come Back from the Moon (2017) and Toyed (2016), Wahlberg was photographed on the Dora set for the first time this week.
A "deeply creative kid" of Irish and Domincan American descent who grew up in Miami, Florida, Wahlberg was wearing Diego's trademark blue shirt on Monday when Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk visited a location shoot for Dora at the Old Museum Building in Brisbane.
Wahlberg uploaded pictures on Instagram of a recent trip to North Queensland with fellow cast and crew from Dora The Explorer.
Another image uploaded on September 22 shows an old postcard that reads: Greetings from Australia, the friendliest place on Earth.
Wahlberg captioned the post: Hope the jellies don't get me!
Wahlberg, whose Future World co-stars included Lucy Liu, Suki Waterhouse, Margarita Levieva, Snoop Dogg, George Lewis Jr. and Cliff "Method Man" Smith, isn't the only member of his famous clan filming a movie Down Under.
His uncle Mark has reportedly signed on to star in Mel Gibson's World War II drama The Destroyer, set during the Battle of Okinawa in April 1945 and scheduled to film in Sydney.
