Cameron Diaz Is In Her ‘Mom-Com Era’ as a Mother Having the Worst Day of Her Life in First Look at Netflix’s “Bad Day” (Exclusive)

“I don’t want to give away too much, but Cameron gets hit by a car,” teases ‘Bad Day’ director Jake Szymanski

NEED TO KNOW

• PEOPLE is exclusively revealing the first look at Bad Day, starring Cameron Diaz
• The Jake Szymanski-directed action-comedy “is a story of a mother just trying to do her best by her kids,” says Diaz
• Bad Day, on Netflix Dec. 11, costars Ed O’Neill, Danielle Brooks, John Higgins and more

Cameron Diaz is having one of those days in her new movie. 

Bad Day, which PEOPLE can exclusively reveal will premiere on Netflix on Dec. 11, stars Diaz as “a single mom fighting to keep one little promise to her daughter on the absolute worst day of her life,” as an official synopsis states. 

“I’m in my mom-com era, as I say,” Diaz, 53, tells PEOPLE. Bad Day, her follow-up to hit Netflix comedy Back in Action, “is a story of a mother just trying to do her best by her kids.”

As the mom of three herself knows, “You only have 100% to give. And you want to give it all to your kids, but you have to break it up and you have to put it in all these categories.”

Diaz’s character Joy is going through “an extreme” version, she says, of “trying so desperately with other things in her life that are just kind of compounding. She’s at a deficit currently without a partner. And she’s just trying to make it work. And there’s nothing more that she wants to do than that.”

A first-look image from the action comedy shows Diaz’s Joy making that fateful pinky promise with her child. Others show her dealing with getting her car towed, making her way down the street by scooter instead and riding what appears to be a bus driven by Ed O’Neill, who plays her father. 

Costars Danielle Brooks and John Higgins can be seen as the befuddled detectives who are in hot pursuit of Joy as her day spirals comedically out of control. 

As director Jake Szymanski says, Bad Day has as much action as it does comedy. “We had a stunt person for Cameron that most days was just sitting around on the side because Cameron’s so game to get in there and knows how she wants to do it,” the Jury Duty director tells PEOPLE. “Cameron can do everything.”

“Not that much stuff though!” interjects Diaz. 

“I don’t want to give away too much, but Cameron gets hit by a car,” adds Szymanski. “That’s true. I did get hit by a car,” concedes the actress. 

Diaz, who shares three young kids under 7 with husband Benji Madden, says she’s not yet at her character Joy’s phase of parenthood. “With older kids, the scheduling is really outrageous, especially with multiple children,” she says. 

Her own work-life balance, as she returns to Hollywood following a decade away focusing on parenting, is “so far so good,” adds the Charlie’s Angels alum. “I thought [Bad Day] would be a fun movie to make. So that’s where I’m at with wanting to do work, is just enjoying myself and working with people that I respect… I’m not really looking to go into anything that takes me too far away from my life because that’s where ultimately I want to be.”

Do Diaz or Szymanski, also a parent of three, make solemn pinky vows to their children? “I don’t make promises,” says Diaz, shaking her head with a knowing smile.

“You can’t be throwing them out willy-nilly,” agrees Szymanski. “Because there’s nothing worse than breaking a promise to a kid.”

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Bad Day, written by Laura Solon, costars Rhenzy Feliz, Jessica Belkin, Emma Pearson, Sam Richardson, Ben Schwartz, Rob Corddry, K Callan and Mark Duplass. The film will premiere on Netflix on Dec. 11.

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