It wasn’t so perfect.
The cast of “The Perfect Couple” absolutely hated the show’s opening dance sequence — just ask Meghann Fahy. The “White Lotus” actress, alongside co-stars Nicole Kidman, Dakota Fanning and Liev Schriber, had a WhatsApp group text to complain about the embarrassing montage.
“Everyone was on that group saying they didn’t want to do this because we just didn’t understand,” Fahy told Variety.
Now streaming on Netflix, the show is a murder mystery based on a novel by Elin Hildebrand. It follows a police investigation after a body is discovered at a wealthy family wedding, which leads to secrets getting uncovered.
However, even though the story has dark subject matter and isn’t a jaunty musical like “Mamma Mia!” oddly, it opens with a sequence showing the cast dancing on the beach in formal attire, to the Meghan Trainor song “Criminals.”
It’s a baffling choice, and many cast members agreed.
“I actually have a really, really huge issue with learning choreography so I was very nervous about it,” Fahy added.
Kidman said that she also had misgivings, “Because I didn’t feel like [my character] Greer would dance! I felt like Greer would watch,” she said, adding that she had joined the WhatsApp group.
The “Big Little Lies” star added, “But I danced as Greer. I think it’s great and I’m so glad they got us all to do it. ‘Cause there’s some joy in it.”
Ishaan Khattar, who plays best man Scooter, told the outlet, “I don’t think any of us could make sense of doing this choreography in these characters. We’re like, ‘Wait where does this fit into the scheme of things? This was not part of the assignment!’”
Director Susanne Bier said that the cast also didn’t get much time to learn it.
“Normally you would spend a full day, probably two days shooting something like that and we did it in one and a half hours,” Bier revealed. “I had serious conversations [because everyone] went, ‘Are you sure you want to spend time doing this when we are so short of time?’ and I was like — I could hear myself being like a two-year-old – ‘I want it! I want it!’”
Schrieber, who plays Greer’s husband Tag Winbury, was one of the only actors who said he was enthusiastic about it.
“I wasn’t in that [WhatsApp] chain,” he told Variety.
“The entire cast had a mutiny about this idea except for me, I was already in my trailer practicing the dance moves. I just like dancing and I was kinda disappointed when it came out that I’m not in it more because I thought I did it really well.”
Bier explained her reasoning for the sequence.
“I feel this time [period] is a little bit gloomy and I felt I wanted to do something which had a lot of life and a lot of fun. And I wanted to see all the characters having fun.”
Luckily by the end, Fahy eventually came around.
“The God’s honest truth is that at the end of the day we were very, very joyful about it, we all sort of ended up giving in to it,” she said. “It was so fun and I actually weirdly think it’s amazing.”
