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"I can't even believe that that is over 20 years ago ... I swear, it feels like yesterday."
There aren't a lot of people who would hesitate to appear in a Jennifer Lopez music video now, but Adam Rodriguez didn't exactly jump at the chance back in 1999.
The actor starred in her debut video for "If You Had My Love," a video which rocketed her to another level of stardom and officially made her a multi-hyphenate performer ... but he took some convincing.
"When I got the call to do that video, Jennifer was a friend at the time and we had a bunch of other mutual friends that were participating in making the video," he recalled in an interview with TooFab. "I actually think she called, she called and said, 'Do you want to do this music video?' and I was like, 'I'm an actor, I don't really want to be in a music video, it's not what I'm shooting for.'"
Her response was something along the lines of, "Come on, just do it, it'll be fun" -- and, eventually, he agreed.
"Sure enough and smart of me, got off my stupid high horse, do the video. I went and did it, fortunately," he explained. "Never imagined the video would have the amount of eyeballs that have seen that over the course of time and for it to be something that's talked about is so crazy to me, man."
On YouTube alone, the video has racked up over 114 million streams since it was uploaded in 2009 -- 10 years after its debut. Factor in how much it played on both MTV and VH1 when they actually played music videos and, yeah, it's safe to say this was a popular one.
"I can't even believe that that is over 20 years ago ... I swear, it feels like yesterday," said Rodriguez, before pointing to something in the video that really dates it now.
"There's a scene at the opening of that video where the Apple computer, there's an iMac there. It was the first iMac that had come out," he said. "It's like the monitors used to be. It was a tube. It was not an LED screen that was flat, it was a tube, it was heavy, you carried it by a handle. When I see that, that makes me realize wow, that has been quite a while."
Adam went on to star on the incredibly successful "CSI: Miami" and "Criminal Minds," both "Magic Mike" movies and currently appears on "Penny Dreadful: City of Angels." And J.Lo, well, you all know what she's been up to.
"In terms of how far our careers have come, it's one of those things where, I've never claimed to be someone who could predict the future but I always believed in myself and believed I was going to get whatever I was going after," said Rodriguez. "So, while I can't say that surprises me, I will say I am completely humbled by it and grateful for every single little achievement and failure that I experienced along the way to being here to sit and talk to you today."
Looking back, he said he's "very glad" to be part of that piece of Lopez history too, especially seeing what the success of that song in particular meant for her career.
"That moment in time for her, that really is what made her J.Lo," he said. "She was on her way, she was making her mark in Hollywood as an actress, but that album really launched her into another stratosphere as an entertainer and couldn't be more proud of her as someone who wanted to achieve something and went after it and did it, put the hard work and the dedication into it."
He added, "I salute her 100%."
"Penny Dreadful: City of Angels" airs Sundays on Showtime.
