'Please Like Me' Stars Talk the Danger of Filming in a Maze, That Time Josh Really Did Barricade Tom in His Room

Please Like Me — the critically-acclaimed Aussie comedy from creator/star Josh Thomas known for its light, deft touch when dealing with family drama, coming out stories, romantic struggles, longtime friendships, and mental illness — returns Friday for a third season on Pivot. If you haven’t seen the show yet, there’s time to catch up: the first two seasons (a total of 16 episodes) are now on Hulu.

In the exclusive clip above from the Season 3 premiere, Josh (played by Thomas) is on a date with the adorable, anxiety-filled Arnold (Keegan Joyce) in a maze. Visiting Yahoo TV for a Periscope chat this week, Thomas explained exactly how difficult shooting that sequence was.

“Whenever you do walk-and-talks, the first thing you do is you read the script and you walk the path so you know how far you are going to go when you do the scene — then you can plan everything. So we did that as we always do. Then we got in the middle, and we didn’t know where we were, because that’s what mazes are designed for — that’s the point, you know? Then we got lost. Then people came in to try and find us, and they got lost. And then everyone is just yelling, and we lost like 20 minutes to half an hour of shoot time, which is quite expensive. This huge crane with a camera on it was trying to find us, then give us directions back,” he said. “And then after that, we were like, ‘We need a system to get back through the same path.’ The second AD just put markers down in the maze, but the maze was open to the public when we were shooting there — we didn’t have the whole maze — and people kept coming in and taking our markers, and we were getting lost all day. It’s a really bad idea to film in a maze. It’s just sort of not worth it, to be honest. And also, we were there for like four hours. I got so crazy, not being able to see anything beyond the hedge maze. It was a bad day. And it was my birthday.”

We’ll see Josh and Arnold trying to give a serious relationship a go in Season 3 as they “sort their own s–t out,” Thomas said. Fans will recall that their attempt at a first date, with third wheel Tom (Thomas Ward) in tow to appease Arnold’s therapist in Season 2′s penultimate episode, “Skinny Latte,” came to an abrupt end after Josh hit a possum with his car — and then had to repeatedly hit it to put it out of its misery. “My only problem with that scene is that I had to do some stunt driving,” Thomas told us. “I had to pretend to hit the possum and then hit my brakes, and then had to stop the car just before I hit the cameras. The car has to hit a mark, and I’m very talented at it. I don’t think you would realize, but I’m very good at hitting marks when I brake very hard. The camera crew didn’t trust me. They literally ran like three times. Just sprinted off.”

Ward, who’s been friends with Thomas since they were 12, also joined us for the Periscope, which got especially fun when a fan asked Josh, “Would you really kill the house WiFi over a bowl of mac and cheese?” In Season 2′s “Truffled Mac and Cheese,” written by Thomas and Ward, Josh barricades Tom in his room after Tom eats the last of the mac and cheese Josh made with truffle oil given to him by Patrick, their ex-roommate and Josh’s unrequited crush. He places Tom’s cell phone on top of the furniture, so Tom would risk it falling and shattering if he tried to escape.

Thomas: That’s true. That happened.
Ward: In my room, because I ate all the mac and cheese that we had made. Didn’t know it was special.
Thomas: Then I unplugged the WiFi and pulled the little cord.
Ward: He locked me in my room, but he also knows that is my favorite place to be. So he had to cut off all of the entertainment.
Thomas: Because you were thrilled to have just a long day in the dark. That’s the dream to just have an excuse to just be alone in the dark all day. Then I took the WiFi. Then you ended up climbing out the window on the second story.
Ward: I thought about it. It was very, very high. You’d put a bottle of wine on the top bit of furniture that was against the door, and you said, “It’s open. If you open the door, the red wine will spill and spoil all of our furniture. Do you want that to be on your head?“ And so I stood on the windowsill of my window and I went, "Can I make this?” And I just couldn’t bear the thought of breaking a bone.
Thomas: Because of my prank.
Ward: Because of your prank. So then I looked again at the furniture, and I called his bluff. I decided that I didn’t believe he was going to ruin all the furniture and he hadn’t opened the bottle. So I got out of there, and drove to my mom’s house.
Thomas: No, that’s not what you did. You got out of there, plugged the Internet back in, went back into your room, and closed the barricade again for a few more hours. You plugged it back in, because I went online and I was like, “How’s the Internet back on?“
Ward: So that’s when you put the wine on. The first time I came out, and you went, "Uh, I can’t have this.” And then you tried the wine move, and then I went, “He’s just going to keep switching it back off. I need to go somewhere where the Internet is permanent.”
Thomas: So you went to your mommy’s house.
Ward: So I went to my mom’s house.
Yahoo TV: How many years ago was this?
Ward: Six. I mean, I’d do it now.

Other tidbits learned during the Periscope chat:

— A proper relationship may be in Tom’s future as well after he meets Ella (Emily Barclay), a character that Thomas and Ward based on a friend of theirs. “We wanted someone that was a bit funny, and you would be happy to see Tom with, and can give Tom a bit back,” Thomas said. “She’s really pretty, which is a shame. We wanted someone that was sort of on par with [Tom]… but she was the most talented. The same with my love interests — they’re always a bit prettier than what we want, because they just happen to be good actors.”

— As creator of the show, Josh has the final word on whether something ends up in a script. “Once I pitched the idea that Tom comes out wearing leather pants and Josh and Claire tease him about that,” Ward said. “That wasn’t enough of a premise for a story line.” As Thomas put it, “He just thought that might be a good starting point, and I was just like, ‘I don’t think Tom should be wearing leather pants.’ I think you just wanted to wear leather pants, like a weird fetish thing. No?”

— Josh dresses Tom on the show — and in real life. In fact, Tom was wearing one of Josh’s sweaters during our chat. Asked by a Periscope viewer if they had any fashion tips, this was the exchange:

Ward: His number one fashion tip to me was, “Make sure that your chest hair doesn’t go outside of your T-shirt.”
Thomas: Because sometimes your chest hair would curl all over the top of your T-shirt. And that had to stop.
Ward: So you had to trim that.
Thomas: Very good advice. I pick all of Tom’s clothes in the show. And it’s one of my favorite tasks, to pick his wardrobe. Just the dumbest clothes. I like to get them just not the right size, and then the wardrobe people put them on and they say, “Josh, that doesn’t fit.” And I’m like, “Good, good, good, good, good.”
Ward: And then that wardrobe becomes my real-life wardrobe, because it’s easier then going and buying clothes.

— They think L.A. is a weird place. Asked what it was like for the duo to navigate Hollywood and the industry when they visit the States, Thomas admitted he accidentally crashed Kristen Wiig’s birthday party: “I felt awful about it. Someone said to me, ‘Do you want to go to Kristen Wiig’s birthday party? We’re not really invited, but I think we can go.’ And I just thought Kristen Wiig was some friend of theirs, so then I got there and that’s that girl from Bridesmaids. And they were like, ‘Oh yeah, it’s her birthday party.’ And I was like, 'Oh wow, we’re at Kristen Wiig’s birthday party.’ I felt bad about that. We shouldn’t have been there.”

Ward doesn’t like the Hollywood Hills, a.k.a. “that big hill of famous people that looks over the less famous people. … It’s very stressful having that big, big collection of mansions overlooking you if you’re not in them. … You can’t be delusional when Jay-Z’s up there looking down on you.”

Thomas, who like Josh on the show is a big fan of Everybody Loves Raymond, has still yet to meet Ray Romano. “I just can’t believe it. Where is he? What’s he doing? He can’t be that busy. He’s got to go out for coffee at some point,” he said. But he’d also like to run into Curb Your Enthusiasm’s Larry David: “I just think that would be so fun, especially since his show is set in LA, so if you saw him, it would literally be like seeing the show. Like, obviously, the Hollywood dream is to see Larry David get annoyed at Pinkberry.”

On a happy note, “The good thing about being in LA is sometimes you run into porn stars. That’s really fun,” Thomas added.

Thomas: We’ve met a few porn stars.
Ward: We met those porn stars —
Thomas: Yeah, that were like dating.
Ward: He was a gay porn star and she was…
Thomas: His pregnant wife. And they met in a scene. He’s like a bisexual porn star, I guess.
Ward: I mean, I’ve never met that combination of people before.
Thomas: Only in Hollywood.

— Though food is clearly a passion for Josh on- and off-screen (in addition to his character cooking and having a coffee and candy cart, Thomas names every episode after food), the actor won’t be starting his version of Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop — which he’d never heard of — anytime soon. “If I was less lazy I would. It sounds pretty good. Figure out how to start Goop. Probably won’t call it ‘Goop.’ I’d have to call it something else because Gwyneth Paltrow took it, that witch,” he joked.

Season 3 of Please Like premieres Friday at 10 p.m. on Pivot. Seasons 1 and 2 are now on Hulu.