Dave Franco shares story of how his proposal to Alison Brie didn’t go as planned

Dave Franco’s proposal to Alison Brie didn’t go as he had expected it to.

During an appearance on The Late Show With James Cordon on Thursday (3 February), the 36-year-old actor, who was also joined by four-time Oscar nominee Annette Benning, shared the story of how his proposal to his wife was an epic fail.

“My wife and I, we met at Mardi Gras in New Orleans,” Franco said. “Over that weekend, she was wearing this silver Mardi Gras mask on her head, and I’d try to take it from her and she wouldn’t let me take it.”

“It was this playful back and forth,” he recalled. “And when she left New Orleans, I was still there for work, she left a little note for me [with the mask].”

The Now You See Me actor revealed that Brie had no idea he “kept that mask”.

“So, cut to five years later, we’re going up to Big Sur and I decide this is the trip where I’m gonna propose,” Franco said. “I knew she wanted to pick out the ring herself, so I was like, ‘I’m not gonna have the ring, but I’ve got the mask. That’s the special thing I’ve got’.”

The day before he was going to propose, Franco thought to himself that he should at least have a “placeholder” ring for when he pops the question.

“So I go down the street to his old Hollywood antique store, and I get this vintage stone ring that I thought was cool, it was like 10 bucks,” he said.

On the next day, when Brie was standing on a balcony overlooking the view, Franco decided to propose.

“So, she turns around, I’m on one knee, I’m wearing the mask and holding up the ring,” Franco said. “But, because it had been five years, she couldn’t place the mask. She didn’t know what it was!”

“What she sees is me wearing this weird, stupid mask holding up this janky stone ring,” he added. “So the entire proposal is her saying, ‘What is happening right now?’ And it’s me trying to explain how sweet it is that I kept the mask for five years!”

Franco and Brie were set up by a friend in 2011.

In 2020, Brie told Jimmy Fallon that her friend Jules bumped into The Disaster Artist star at the airport and invited him over for dinner, where some “incredible matchmaking” took place.

During dinner, Jules texted Brie telling her she should “hook up” with Franco, to which Brie replied, “Yes please”, with numerous thumbs-up emojis. Jules then secretly showed Franco Brie’s response under the table and Franco apparently said he was “in”.

Later, in the bathroom, Jules revealed to Brie that she had showed Franco their texts and that he liked her.

“It was a perfect set-up because we both got to leave the restaurant [and] head out to the evening of drinking and debauchery having a sexy secret that we knew the other person was on board,” Brie said. “So then it was 48 hours of drugs and sex [and] a lot of making out.”

After that, added Brie, Franco “wined and dined” her in New York and left a secret note in her jumper asking her come with him to Paris while he filmed a movie.

“How could I say no?” she said.

Brie and Franco got engaged four years later in 2015 and have been married since 2017. They spent the lockdown writing a romantic comedy together.