After collectively spending our weekends binge watching Netflix’s new murder mystery The Perfect Couple, we’re officially in recovery mode. But while all the episodes are done and dusted, the piping hot tea is not, with reports emerging that one particular scene in the show almost caused a full-fledged “mutiny” amongst the cast.
If you thought the scene in question would be that dance sequence, then congratulations! You’re right!
Based on Elin Hilderbrand‘s book of the same name, the six-part murder mystery dropped on Netflix on September 5 and follows a police investigation into a wealthy family after a body is discovered during a wedding. The show made it to the top of our to-do lists this weekend thanks to its packed cast, including the likes of Dakota Fanning, Meghann Fahy, and, of course, Nicole Kidman.
But despite the dark undertones of the show, the opening credit sequence saw a bizarre directorial choice, which saw the entire cast, including Nicole, participate in a flashmob-inspired dance sequence on a beach to Meghan Trainor‘s Criminals.
The show’s director says that the idea behind the scene was to show that the series was going to be “fun”.
“I’ve gotten so bored with title sequences,” director Susanne Bier told IndieWire. “There was, at some point in the script, a nightmare sequence where there was a dance. I was like, ‘No, I don’t want to do that.’ But there was something about the word ‘dance’ that stayed with me, and I was like, ‘We are going to do the title sequence as a dance with everybody.’
“First of all, it’s going to be really joyful and fun, but it’s also going to suggest to the audience, ‘Hey, you are allowed to laugh here. You don’t have to think this is very dark and very serious because it’s not.’”
But sadly, the cast weren’t buying the ‘vision’, with reports emerging that they created a WhatsApp group to protest the bizarre sequence and in the process, almost caused a “mutiny”. Yikes.
Meghann, who plays social media influencer Merritt, said that people hopped on a WhatsApp group chat because they didn’t want to do the scene. “Everyone was on that group saying they didn’t want to do this because we just didn’t understand,” she told Variety.
“I actually have a really, really huge issue with learning choreography so I was very nervous about it,” she added.
Similarly, Ishaan Khatter, who plays the best man Scooter, added that he couldn’t see the point of the dance. “I don’t think any of us could make sense of doing this choreography in these characters,” he told Variety. “We’re like, ‘Wait where does this fit into the scheme of things? This was not part of the assignment!’”
Nicole, who plays the lead in the show, also wasn’t convinced, explaining that she didn’t feel like her character Greer would dance. “I didn’t feel like Greer would dance! I felt like Greer would watch,” she said adding that she too, had joined the elusive WhatsApp group.
However, the star says that eventually, she came to love the scene. “But I danced as Greer. I think it’s great and I’m so glad they got us all to do it. ‘Cause there’s some joy in it.”
The only person who seemed like they were totally onboard from the get-go was Liev Schreiber, who played Greer’s husband, even adding that he wasn’t part of the WhatsApp mutiny.
“I wasn’t in that [WhatsApp] chain,” he said. “The entire cast had a mutiny about this idea except for me, I was already in my trailer practising the dance moves. I just like dancing, and I was kinda disappointed when it came out that I’m not in it more because I thought I did it really well.”
But despite the initial resistance and calls for a mutiny, it seems that the cast eventually got onboard with the odd sequence, with Fahy admitting that they all had “fun” filming it.
“The God’s honest truth is that at the end of the day, we were very, very joyful about it. We all sort of ended up giving in to it,” Fahy shared. “It was so fun and I actually weirdly think it’s amazing.”
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