How Ticket to Paradise crafted that hilarious beer pong scene
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One thing we didn't have on our 2022 bingo cards: watching Julia Roberts and George Clooney dominate at beer pong.
That's exactly what they do in a key scene in Ticket to Paradise, in which their characters, bitter exes David and Georgia, face off against their daughter, Lily (Kaitlyn Dever), and her fiancé, Gedde (Maxime Bouttier), in an epic drinking game.
Though no beers were actually consumed while filming, that didn't mean the entire cast didn't have as much fun shooting the scene as audiences will watching it. Much of the day was as loose and playful as it looks.
"It was funny because when we got to the set, everyone was like, 'Okay, we're going to talk about the scene,'" Clooney tells EW. "Julia and I were like, 'Let's just shoot it, man. Don't worry. We know what to do. We've been down this road a few times.'"
Adds writer-director Ol Parker, "There was a choreographer available to them if they wanted, but they didn't. They'd much rather just go for it and see what happened."
Universal Pictures
Clearly Clooney and Roberts knew what they were doing, because Parker ended up using the very first take of Clooney landing a ping-pong ball in a red cup. "That is his first take," says Parker. "When he puts the ball in and goes off and dances — that set the tone."
"There was real shock," laughs Clooney. "Shock on the faces of the younger actors."
"I think people thought we might warm up," adds Roberts. "They thought we'd start off a little slow, and we just came in going 100 percent from the beginning — and we left some people speechless."
Both Clooney and Roberts describe that day of filming as one full of laughter ("It's like she swallowed the sun," Parker says of Roberts' inimitable laugh). And it culminates in a hilarious sequence, which not only features the two of them making more and more unlikely shots as their state of intoxication increases, but also showcases Clooney doing some true dad dance moves to House of Pain's "Jump Around."
When EW asked if Clooney or Roberts needed to bone up on the song to prepare for the sequence, Roberts slyly replies, "No boning necessary," as Clooney adds, "There was no boning in the film." As Roberts points out, it is a PG-13 movie after all.
But in all seriousness, Parker reveals that Clooney actually had a far more personal connection to "Jump Around" than he realized when he chose the song. "'Jump Around' is George's closer at parties," the director says. "When I'd chosen the tracks and I sent them to them, George wrote back going, 'Nice — 'Jump Around' is my go-to dance song for the end of parties.' I was like, "Cool, so that's going to be fine.'"
Ticket to Paradise is now in theaters.
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