'Please Like Me': Behind the 'Chandelier' Moment
Spoiler alert! If you haven’t watched this week’s episode of Please Like Me, stop reading now.
As Arnold (Keegan Joyce) contemplated coming out to his family, Josh (Josh Thomas) and Tom (Thomas Ward) literally staged a rehearsal of how the scene should go, complete with Arnold singing a rendition of Sia’s “Chandelier,” and Josh’s dad (David Roberts), playing the role of Arnold’s disapproving father, having a change of heart as the song reached its crescendo.
“We really love scenes in shows where, like, the dad, who’s been disappointed in the son and doesn’t want him to dance, then goes and watches him dance and then slowly just starts standing up, and everyone stands up with the dad for no apparent reason. That’s the whole plot of Billy Elliot, I think,” Thomas tells Yahoo TV. “Or like in Sister Act 2, when she’s like ‘No, you can’t go there,’ and she goes to the choir, and the mom comes and stands up…”
“He loves parents being proven wrong,” Ward says.
“Being proven wrong and being proud,” Thomas clarifies. “But obviously we couldn’t like do that, so we just manufactured it. We just wanted to do that scene.”
“Chandelier” was their first choice for the song. “I wanted something that everyone knows,” Thomas says. “It’s been around for a while now. It’s just the best song, isn’t it?”
Music has played an important role in Josh and Arnold’s relationship this season: In the premiere, Arnold and Josh had sex for the first time in a warehouse after Josh sang a few bars of Sixpence None the Richer’s “Kiss Me.”
“The story was that Arnold had gone way over the top and made just a crazy first date, because he felt a lot of pressure to be great and romantic. It’s a weird location because Arnold is weird,” Ward says.
“But also, I did just want to have another romantic scene with Six Pence None the Richer. It’s sort of like I’m undercutting it: We’re pretending that we are not doing it,” Thomas says. “I think the moment when Josh kisses Arnold and then Sixpence None the Richer starts playing is a moment when you realize that they’ve given me just a little bit too much control,” he adds, laughing. “Like, someone should have stepped in and said, like, 'I don’t know about that. I’m not sure that makes a lot of sense.’ That’s when you know, ‘My god, they are really just letting him go.’”
"Just took it straight out of Dawson’s Creek,” Ward says. “It’s Dawson’s Creek, made with two boys.”
“Yeah, yeah. That’s the twist,” Thomas says.
Please Like Me airs Fridays at 10 p.m. on Pivot. Seasons 1 and 2 are now on Hulu.
