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Andy Samberg learned the hard way not to take his fashion cues from Charli XCX — especially when there’s choreography involved.
The Saturday Night Live alum recently teamed up with the Brat superstar to shoot the musical SNL sketch “Here I Go,” which sees them terrorizing a neighborhood as two suburbanites obsessed with anonymously calling the cops on their neighbors. Towards the end of their song, they whip off their upper middle class garb to reveal matching pairs of very short shorts. As it turns out, that particular article of clothing caused Samberg some serious anxiety during filming.
“There was a lot of debate about how high my shorts should be,” Samberg explained on the latest episode of The Lonely Island and Seth Meyers Podcast. “And I kept being like, ‘Well Charli’s are gonna be pretty high because that’s how she rolls, so I should really have mine high.'”
thelonelyisland/YouTube
In fact, Samberg briefly considered wearing the “exact same outfit” as Charli — short shorts and a bright red bikini top — before thinking better of it.
“I was like, well no, I don’t think anybody actually wants to see that, despite what they might think,” he quipped. But while he stuck with his polo shirt, he also asked the costume department to cut his shorts significantly higher — and immediately suffered the consequences. “They cut them higher and I was like, ‘I don’t know, maybe I should go higher.’ And then as soon as we started, like, really dancing, I really almost flopped out. I was like, ‘Oh no!'”
In the end, it was for the best that he didn’t go back for a second cut: “Thank God we did not make it any higher cause it would have been really bad.”
Samberg’s former SNL colleague Seth Meyers chimed in to say that, potential mishaps aside, the shorts were ultimately the perfect length for Samberg’s unlikable character.
“I thought it was the perfect height for that dude,” the late night host said. “That’s what that dude wanted everybody to see.”
The video sees Samberg playing a watchful neighbor with an “itching for snitching.” As he reveals via song, his greatest joy in life is calling the police on people who commit petty crimes. “Here I go, I report you to the cops, and I report you anonymously!” Samberg sang in the digital exclusive, sporting khakis and a puffy vest. “I’m gonna sleep like a baby tonight!”
Charli, who pulled double duty as host and musical guest of the Nov. 16 episode, appeared mid-track as his equally snitch-y wife — a late stage addition to the song that was originally going to be carried by Samberg alone.
“It is very funny that it was not originally written to have a wife in it because it is so perfect,” Meyers said. “I love the reveal just knowing that Charli XCX was standing behind you. It’s just really funny to think about, like, a giant musical superstar at that level agreeing to do something like this, and then her reveal is just sort of crouching behind Andy. Welcome to showbiz!”
The pre-recorded sketch sees Charli sing, “Hold up, wait a minute/’Cause I’m about to snitch like I invented it/I literally dare you to park within two centimeters off my driveway, bitch.”
thelonelyisland/YouTube
Akiva Schaffer —who makes up one third of The Lonely Island along with Samberg and Jorma Taccone — went on to praise Charli’s performance in the digital short, noting the time crunch and how quickly she picked up the song.
“She knew every word, and she had little choreographed things, not by anybody else, just herself. Like, she knew how to present the jokes and and pantomime and do things that would make them play and be in the spirit,” Schaffer said. “And she fully, from the very first take, was better at this than almost anybody I would say we’ve worked with. There’s other good ones. I don’t wanna disparage [anyone], but I wanna give her her props that she was very good.”
Samberg echoed his collaborator’s sentiment: “All of this to say, heading into it, we were expecting to really like her, and we liked her even more than we expected. She was super good at the jokes, but also was super fun and just a good hang and delightful,” he said.
The video ends with the couple gleefully watching the arrest of their latest targets: a girl scout selling cookies and a dog that dared to poop on their lawn.
Listen to Samberg go behind-the-scenes on the video shoot with Meyers and Schaffer in the podcast episode above.
SNL returns on Saturday, Dec. 7, with host Paul Mescal with musical guest Shaboozey at 11:30 p.m. ET/8:30 p.m. PT on NBC.
