Remember When Bill Hader Parodied The O.C.?
Barry star Bill Hader and O.C. alum Rachel Bilson, recipients of adorable portmanteau “Billson,” shared their relationship with the HFPA (and beyond) on Sunday Jan. 5 when they made their red carpet debut at the Golden Globes. Since the couple boldly confirmed their romance, we, the people, have been left with a lot of questions: 1) Where did Billson meet? 2) What does Billson talk about? 3) Can we expect a crossover of The O.C. and “The Californians”?
Steve Granitz/Getty Images
As for our first query, it seems the unlikely duo met in 2011, while filming The To Do List, which was directed by Hader’s ex-wife, Maggie Carey.
And our second question? Well, we’d like to think they’ve at least touched on “Dear Sister,” the Saturday Night Live/Lonely Island O.C. parody Hader starred in alongside Andy Samberg, Shia LaBeouf, Jason Sudeikis, and Fred Armisen in 2007.
Said parody, a touchstone for O.C. fans far and wide, plays with the series’ season two finale, “The Dearly Beloved,” which aired nearly two years ahead of the sketch’s release. In the episode, fraught brothers Ryan and Trey Atwood engage in a passionate (and unrelenting) fight after Ryan learns that his brother attacked his girlfriend, Marissa Cooper. In the moments before what seems the younger Atwood’s inevitable defeat, Cooper arrives on the scene and shoots Trey in the back. Cue: Imogen Heap’s “Hide and Seek.” It’s dramatic. It’s emotional. It’s quintessential O.C.
The parody hones in on the heightened drama of the scene. Samberg, who told Entertainment Weekly he was “obsessed” with the show, began working on a parody soon after the episode aired (and before he’d been hired on SNL). Though time had passed and The O.C. finale was no longer fresh in people’s minds, on a particularly slow week for SNL he decided to return to it. What ensued is a cinematic bloodbath set to “Hide and Seek.”
RELATED: Rachel Bilson and Bill Hader Made Their Couple Debut at the Golden Globes
In EW's oral history of the short, Samberg said that Hader ���loved” the sketch. “For a lot of the early stuff, we would be working with Bill since we have a very similar sensibility to him. He’s a super cinephile as people now know. But he understood and loved it immediately as I recall… But we didn’t really have to explain that we were parodying The O.C. because the song was the only thing that made it 100 percent from the show.”
So … does this mean Hader is an O.C. stan? We’ll take that as a “yes.” Now, that “Californians” crossover … ?
