Dove Cameron Breaks Down the Picnic Scene from Schmigadoon! with Cinco Paul | Vanity Fair

i have to say this was actually the most technically difficult part of the whole show for me was holding up these melons they're huge and my hands are so small and i was like i'm barely handling this but it looks very smooth hi i'm cinco paul and i'm dove cameron and this is no fun scene look betsy i feel like it's a good time to set some ground rules in terms of what's gonna happen between us tonight what dr skinner what makes you think anything's gonna happen between us you know i think you have the wrong idea about me wow the the idea came when i was watching american werewolf in london of all movies and it opens with the two guys backpacking through the wilderness and i thought wow the opening to this movie is exactly like the opening to brigadoon and i thought what if these two guys instead of finding a werewolf found a musical look betsy i feel like it's a in this scene there's just been a big picnic basket auction keegan michael key has bid on dove's basket and so now they're off on their little date let's press play i feel like it's a good time to set some ground rules in terms of what's going to happen between us tonight [Music] one thing we talked about in the writers room early on was what are the rules about singing for me i felt it was really important that no one in shmigadoon knows that they're singing right and that's what i've always felt musicals are that musicals just magically translate what to the characters would be just normal dialogue into song and dance and all those things and so music is playing and generally the shmigadoonians don't notice it and don't react to it but keegan because he's an outsider he knows he hears here's the little music there oh what do you think about that oh it's sort of that's so cute he's hearing the little notes i love that what makes you think anything's gonna happen between us you know i think you have the wrong idea about me i always thought of betsy as more of an idea than a human because i think that the whole idea you know that's that whole thing like i was written by a man like betsy's whole aura is that she is like an amalgamation of all of those sort of like early ideas about women in musicals that weren't women they weren't people they were ideas so many of these musicals i think in brigadoon there's this character called meg yeah right and in oklahoma there's edo annie and it was always the secondary female character that was allowed to be lusty it was interesting they never wanted the lead to like have any sexual feelings or being correct the princess that we marry and then there's the fantasy that we fantasize right so we're certainly playing with that trope here and then also yeah the fact that actresses who were not in their teens were playing teenagers which could be very confusing to a keegan who doesn't know like because she's an actress in her 20s playing yeah playing someone who's potentially much younger of the girls flirt and talk romance soon as they see a pair of pants i need to clarify something just for everybody because dove is singing live here this is live on the set and she is so flawless that you might think she's lip syncing it was really important to me that everybody sang live on the set and that's why we wanted people like dove there is a lot of necessity as the mother of invention in this because to me it's a great joke that we just cut to her and suddenly she's on the block that is so stupid it gets me every time that's one of my favorite jokes in this scene and no one really comments on it and it's the funniest thing and it happened because originally in the script it's like oh betsy sets out the blanket as she's singing and barry was like nah this is going to be too hard to do yeah yeah he was like we don't have time yeah we don't have time and then i said well let's just have it set up and it'll be stupid yeah and it's so stupid funny because it's like literally he looks up for one second and then suddenly she's like elaborate and she's just laid out there perfectly yeah [Music] and i can't believe you let me keep it in it was perfect because she's you know she's a church built out yes it's appropriate i'm very much a stickler for when we're on the set and the camera's rolling you should say what's on the page so i was a stickler in that way although cecily and keegan would play around a lot at the end but of course things like that you know gestures and and all those sort of choices were totally open to whatever you wanted to do and that was a great choice that's great to hear betsy because here's the thing you are way too young the girls like to show their skin get in a boy's mind set on sin so that's a good place to pause um there was discussion about like is that too much which direction that the melons which parts of the melons should be facing out i don't even remember doing that someone from props came and like adjusted them and said like dove could you perhaps face i don't know what part of the melon is that even called whatever it is they instructed her to do that whatever it was we took great effects we did it to great effect get in a boy's mind when i first started talking to um our lovely hair makeup wardrobe department the inspiration was like a very specific photo of bridget bardeaux i chose that one it was this great one of her with the pigtails it's kind of this iconic picture of barbara yeah she's got the two little like ribbons right yeah yeah you know i think the amazing thing about schmegadoon is that these are all characters that are like in the zeitgeist like the cultural zeitgeist of all of our minds so when i read it the vision was clear and i think that was the same for everybody so then like the more that we like leaned into these like super broad over-the-top like characters that we all know and love it just became more and more brilliant well i think you have to embrace the tropes before you smash them yes and so that was really what the show was all about betsy went to 11. right and then we ripped her apart yes yeah will and two do things that i have never tried you know i didn't know this was gonna happen until i showed up for rehearsal no but i just remember him being like chris being like okay so we're gonna this is what you're gonna be pulling out and i remember dying laughing like up in the little like production room upstairs as he's like and what do you think about like just like a big sausage this is chris catelli the choreographer yes yeah our choreographer who's brilliant i remember that morning you know you have props come in and they've got all this produce and so i i had the job of choosing the melons yeah and choosing the salami the salami we had so many different we were like is it is it like sausage links like is she just pulling out like an endless like like clowns pull out like scarves that just like never end and then we like nah it's gotta be like a massive just the most suggestive possible yeah to make keegan's character as uncomfortable as possible i have never tried because i'm gonna wait till this just kept getting more and more ridiculous we would shoot it and then you'd hear barry go take longer but from like the very back like this was a practical hill that we were on by the way and it's a very steep climb actually to get up there yeah it's a little scary up there it's all we were on like a football field sized sound stage yeah yeah huge with a real like forest behind us but in the stream oh that is to say that for so much of these scenes barry would be like miles away and you'd hear his note be like take longer slower and keegan was like i'm so sorry i was like it's okay just don't look me in the eyes when i'm doing this yeah i felt i felt bad about that oh my god no it's fine listen i'm an adult now listen okay yeah also the pie was like so um tasty oh it was was it good so good they did bake i mean these were real pies yeah all the baked goods were real and delicious and all the meat was real i will say [Music] i never wanted to write a song that actually wouldn't have been sung in one of those old mgm musicals i didn't want to put modern jokes in you know for the sake of getting the laughs so i really wanted all the songs to sincerely feel like they were real musical theater songs and they do but as far as performance wise the one thing in a comedy as you know specific as our show is that you have to play the characters straight like you have to play them with levity and with joy to bring that sort of level of fantasy but you can't play them like they know that they're a character because then you're not watching real people and that's what's funny is that these people are really in this town they really are these characters yes and also this what are you doing that's right don't give us markers okay i'm kind of getting some mixed messages you sort of have this picture in your head of what you want it to be and then you bring in people like dove and then like the rest of our cast like kristen and alan and jane and all these people that elevate everything they touch you know and and it becomes just beyond what was in my wildest dreams i have to say that makes me so happy that you feel that way because it was so important to all of us that we executed your vision in the way that you saw it because you know the reason that so many amazing performers were drawn to this project is because of what you wrote it was this amazing sort of magic environment that you and barry created and that we all just kind of like jumped into and you can really see how much we loved it we loved the project we loved each other like i think that's really the joy that that you see on the screen is how happy we were to be doing this yeah i mean the terminology that you hear in the industry is everybody knew the assignment and we uh yeah i think we're very proud of this

Channel: Vanity Fair

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Id: L73_EguBpDY

Length: 10min 11sec (611 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 13 2021