JUST GOING TO toss something out there: more shows should open every episode with a chaotic, hilarious, choreographed dance sequence. A few years ago, James Gunn’s subversive and hilarious superhero series Peacemaker kicked off each episode of its first season with an irreverent opening song and dance number sit to “Do Ya Wanna Taste It” by Wig Wam, announcing to viewers that in a genre so often filled with too much dark and brooding angsty-ness, this was going to be a fun time. And it delivered! Tone set, mission accomplished.
Netflix’s The Perfect Couple, the streamer’s star-studded murder mystery limited series based on the Elin Hildebrand novel of the same name, follows Peacemaker‘s lead, and for many of the same reasons. “I felt that the title sequence needed to be something which was suggestive that the audience is allowed to have fun with this show,” Susanne Bier, who directed all six episodes of the show, told The Hollywood Reporter in an interview. “There’s something joyous in a lot of people dancing together. And with all these characters, who are not necessarily sympathetic, having that moment, just seemed right to me.”
It’s certainly jarring for any show to open up with a dance sequence that doesn’t necessarily seem to be part of the story, or part of anything that actually is happening (especially in the case of The Perfect Couple, where a character whose death becomes the driving force of the show is prominently featured as part of the dance sequence). But just like with Peacemaker, that’s the whole point—it’s an invitation to turn your brain off a little bit, and know you don’t need to be taking everything you’re taking so seriously. The show still has top-notch actors doing great work—including Nicole Kidman, Liev Schreiber, Dakota Fanning, and more—and a juicy story that everyone can dig their teeth into, but the tone is set right from the stop that this is going to be more of a fun, campy experience than some of the other murder mystery shows you may have watched.
The setup of The Perfect Couple is simple enough: a gaggle of some of the most obnoxiously wealthy and privileged people out there—think hotel guests at a White Lotus—head up to a New England estate for a fancy wedding. There’s all sorts of inter-family, and inter-personal drama going on already… and then someone turns up dead! It’s a classic set-up that makes for both an addicting series and a nice showcase for a bunch of great actors.
Convincing some of those actors to actually do the dance—which was entirely shot in an hour-and-a-half, according to Bier in THR—was a little trickier. In fact, the cast (with the exception of Schreiber) made a WhatsApp group with the purpose of protesting.
Nicole Kidman didn’t want to dance because she didn’t think her character, the author Greer, would, according to Variety. Meghann Fahy, who plays wedding Maid of Honor Merritt Monaco, said she had issues with choreography and was worried about it.
The only one who was into it all along was Schreiber. “That was interesting because he didn’t want to play Tag. He really had to be convinced,” Bier said in the THR interview.
“We probably had 20 phone calls before he said yes. Once he was in, he was full on. He was even excited to dance.”
And she’s not lying—Schreiber was maybe the most excited person on the entire set about the dance. “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.”
What is the song in Netflix’s The Perfect Couple opening dance sequence?
The song in The Perfect Couple‘s opening dance sequence is “Criminals” by Meghan Trainor.
