Yahoo Sports How ‘Dave’ Landed Drake and Brad Pitt in Wild Season Three Finale
This post contains spoilers for the entire third season of Dave, including tonight’s season finale, “Looking for Love.”
Season Three of Dave was all about the show’s title character — rapper Dave Burd, aka Lil Dicky, aka the star, co-creator, and one of the executive producers of the FXX comedy (which streams the day after on Hulu) — finally achieving his goal of international fame. After faking his own death — or, rather, allowing people to mistakenly believe he was dead for a day without telling anyone otherwise — he became a huge star with a fancy house, a bigger record deal, and invites to major-league events like the Met Gala.
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And as the fictionalized Dave’s celebrity rating kept rising, so did the caliber of guest star. The first two seasons featured notable guest stars like Justin Bieber, Kourtney Kardashian, and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, so it wasn’t as if Dave was interacting with nobodies. But the guests tended to appear in dribs and drabs, or only briefly, or (in the case of Doja Cat, who digitally flirted with Dave but never met him IRL) didn’t appear on-screen with them at all. In Season Three, the guests on average were more famous, more numerous, and often more prominently featured. An early episode saw Dave get in trouble when an expensive chain Rick Ross loaned him got stolen, and also put Dave into uncomfortable encounters with Killer Mike and Usher. The Met Gala episode not only had a subplot where Dave’s hype man GaTa appeared on a panel with Demi Lovato, but had Dave himself hanging out with Jack Harlow, Don Cheadle, Megan Fox, Machine Gun Kelly, Travis Barker, David Dobrik, and Emma Chamberlain. He also befriended Rachel McAdams in that episode, and she appeared in the season’s two remaining installments, as Dave wrote a parody song about becoming obsessed with her, and got her to star in the video. The video, which we see a bit of in the season finale, has a cameo by Brad Pitt, and Pitt spends most of the episode trapped in Dave’s house while a crazy Lil Dicky stalker holds him and Dave at gunpoint. And when everything seems resolved and it appears that Dave is flying to Wisconsin to reconcile with new girlfriend Robyn (Chloe Bennet), we instead see that he has gone to West Africa to meet up with his idol, Drake, who has offered to help Dave with both his musical and emotional journeys.
How did Dave keep landing all these incredible guests? Rolling Stone spoke with Burd earlier this week about that, as well as other aspects of another terrific season.
Was it a key part of the agenda going into this season to get all these big names to play themselves?
Not necessarily was that part of the agenda. But there are certain episodes where, if you’re at the Met Gala, you want it to feel realistic. You’re going to have to have X amount of people come for that. But the thing that I like about the show is that the guest stars come and it’s not splashy, like, “Here’s a famous person!” They’re more than just cameos in a random scene. A lot of the guest stars that we have, from Rachel to Brad to even Drake, they play really important roles.
One of the big themes of the season is that Dave claims he’s out there looking for love, but he also desperately wants to be famous. We get to the end of this episode, and Brad Pitt has a crossbow bolt sticking out of his chest telling Dave that he needs to love himself before he can worry about fame. And instead of going to work things out with Robyn, you go to Africa to hang with Drake. How did you want to intertwine those ideas with these celebrity appearances?
One of the main themes is love and romance, and a guy in his early 30s trying to find the one. And the other is a young aspiring artist at the pinnacle of success as far as the way the world sees him within the lens of the show. There are a lot of interesting parallels between them that weave throughout, which was really well-shown in Episode Nine. You’re seeing a lot of how I approach art from a perfectionist lens, and that can mirror itself in how I approach love, and how it isn’t necessarily fair to approach love in the same way. I feel like in the first two seasons, my character in the finale has a choice: In the simplest terms possible, do the right thing or do the selfish thing. In the first two seasons, I did the right thing. I didn’t want to say this is the dark side ending, but you think he’s learned all of his lessons through this huge ordeal of a night with Brad and the stalker, and he’s finally going to put his quest for validation behind him and focus on the important things in life, such as love. But I think a lot of people will feel that I’m going with Robyn. And I see the ending as my character not being ready for love, because he doesn’t love himself yet. And he could drag Robyn along to Africa, but I think that deep down, he knew he wasn’t ready. So I think he went all-in on career, and we’ll see what happens next.
Has it become easier to get people to appear on the show than it was in the first season?
Oh, yeah. First season, before the show was even out, it would be, “Oh, hey, I hope you like my music videos,” or “You believe in me as a human being to an extent, as we barely know each other.” But a guy like Brad Pitt isn’t going to get in a show that he doesn’t think is one of the best shows. Because I have this show out, it’s a lot easier for a guy on Brad’s level to believe in it. It didn’t take me moving mountains to get Brad Pitt in the show. I just knew Brad Pitt really loved the show. And I knew Drake. When I met Drake, he told me our show was one of the most important shows of our generation. So when I’m getting feedback from these people, I in my heart believe that if I ask them to be in it, they maybe say yes. And of course, it’s a scheduling nightmare. But at the end of the day, it’s the show. Yes, they like me interpersonally, but it’s not like any of the guest stars are great friends of mine, other than Benny Blanco. The show itself, they’re able to see it for what it is. And it’s very good. Sometimes, I do feel like this show can be overlooked. And to have people like that, who are two pillars of the industries this show is circling around, say, “I want to be part of that” — nothing can feel better.
We need to unpack Drake saying this is one of the most important shows of our generation. How did you two meet, and how did this come up?
I first met Drake in passing one time that I don’t count as a proper meet-up. I was backstage at a Drake show. I can’t count it. Then my real first time I met Drake, I was in the studio with Kanye West. I had no idea Drake was coming. I was on cloud nine with Kanye. I was playing the music video for “Freaky Friday” before it came out. I’m already texting GaTa, like, “This is the best day of my life. I can’t believe I’m with Kanye right now!” And then Drake walks in. I was so ill-prepared to meet Drake. My brain was, like, Ohmigod, how am I going to juggle Drake and Kanye? I’m a normal guy, and I idolize these men. I showed Drake the video, too, and Drake said it’s one of the best music videos ever. He literally said it to me. Then I saw him again at a bar, and we really connected and started talking more. He said, “Man, I watch your show religiously.” I was really moved by it. And then when I shot with him and was hanging out with him, he said, “This is one of the most important shows of our generation. The things I care about? I don’t know that there’s more important stuff.” And then I’m giving Brad Pitt direction! And he’s trusting me the same way he’s trusting Tarantino, or a Coen brother. It’s very validating for me as a filmmaker to be entrusted that way. And I feel I didn’t let him down. I started as a rapper. I never even had the Final Draft screenwriting software four years ago. I worked so hard on this show, and every detail of it matters to me. So for people like them, and Don Cheadle and Rachel McAdams, to trust me and my vision, it makes me really see how far I’ve come as a filmmaker.
How did you even hear that Brad was a fan of the show?
Ben Sinclair from High Maintenance is a director on the show. He took a meeting at Brad’s production company, Plan B, and came back and said, “Aw, man, they love you over there at Plan B.” I thought, Huh, I wonder if that includes Brad. I asked Ben, and he said, “Yeah, I heard Brad really likes the show.” That’s all I had to go off of. I sent a real impassioned email just to Brad, someone gave me his email. I drafted it for days. Then I got a response back, from an email that I had never known. I don’t even know if I want to share the email that he sent me. But it was so incredible. It made me think, like, Is this real? It was also kind of mind-blowing that it took him walking on set, and me seeing Brad Pitt in real life, to believe that this was actually happening. And of course I have to meet him while I’m covered in slop in the scene where the talker is trying to cast a mold of my genitals. But man, Brad and Drake and Rachel, the best people I’ve ever worked with. They’re so down to earth, so good to the crew, and inspiring. Everyone walks around with a pep in their step when these people are on set. You could feel the purpose of everyone.
Did any of the guest stars this season who were playing themselves want to see exactly what you were going to do with them? Did anyone have notes or concerns about how these fictionalized versions of them would be portrayed?
I didn’t just say, “Show up on set! You’re gonna love it.” I explained everything in detail to everyone. And conceptually, I think it all made a lot of sense to people. Certainly, there’s tons of back and forth about whether something makes sense, or, “Wouldn’t I do this?” And there was a lot of adjusting on the fly because of our amount of shoot days, and people went with it. I think you could ask any of them, and all of them had fun on set. Brad, he’s coming for night shoots at 8 p.m. and leaving at 6 a.m. Four night shoots with him. And afterward, he’s seeing how much I carry as far as the weights of all the different things I do on the show. I grew up idolizing these people, all of them. And for them to just trust me and show me that love, I’ve never really had a feeling like that before.
The answer seems obvious, but: why Rachel McAdams?
I wanted to do a lot to unpack the general overall landscape of dating, and how there’s such a stacked power dynamic against women to begin with, in society. And it turns even more when it’s a famous man who has more and more opportunities. I really wanted to highlight that imbalance, and there’s no better way to do that than to have everyone’s dream woman, the America’s sweetheart of my generation, present herself as a potential romantic interest, as the perfect foil to having everything you need in front of me with Robyn. There’s this problematic mindset, where I think a lot of men date thinking, Well, can I do better? That’s why I really love the line in Episode Nine where Robyn goes, “Women aren’t achievements.” A man shouldn’t look at his ability to get higher and higher in the pecking order of women as a way to go about dating.
In the Met Gala episode, Jack Harlow is your nemesis. What, if anything, is your real relationship with him?
Didn’t really have one until this show. I saw him from afar; I think he saw me from afar. I’d be totally lying if I didn’t think that was the perfect television rivalry. That Met Gala episode really needed a bad guy. I go in there with the purest of intentions, but all these ego things are pulling me in the wrong way, so we needed an antagonist. Boy, he played that role perfectly. We posted the outtakes of the scene, and we couldn’t keep it together during that stuff.
That was a really big group for the selfie scene. Were there specific types of celebrities you wanted, and then figured out who was available at the same time? Or was it something about these specific people?
It is a total schedule game. We had to move it a few times, for a variety of reasons. That jigsaw puzzle of a shoot day was the hardest thing for me to handle as a producer. You need all these ducks to fall in a row at the exact same time. Pretty much everyone who was first-tier I was hoping for we got, though there were certain people who just weren’t in town that day. I knew that we had to have Rachel. Rachel was numero uno, because she was a three-episode arc. I just needed Jack and Rachel to fall on the same day. And once we figured that out, it became, “Who can we get like Don Cheadle?” Don Cheadle, ever since Season One, when I said my email is DonCheadlesDriveway@lildicky2.com, I’ve been waiting to get him on the show. And when Don farts in the mirror, it’s my biggest laugh of the season?
When the show begins, the character of Dave is definitely less famous than you were at the time. Would you say after the fake death, he’s more famous than the real you? Or are you roughly at the same level now?
It just depends who you’re evaluating. Are you evaluating Lil Dicky the rapper? Then I would say the character has moved past the rapper. In large part due to the TV show taking up so much time, I can’t open Pro Tools and just create a new song. My rap fans, it’s been eight years since I put an album out, and I feel very bad. But fortunately, the show is about a rapper, so there is room for me to put some of my good music in the season.
Was Rachel familiar with the show? What was she like to work with?
I think she and her husband, it’s one of their favorite shows. They love the show. She was a dream to work with. She’s the nicest woman. She’s so awesome. She’s so fun and funny and game. That arm-wrestling scene, unfortunately there were a few things that didn’t make sense to put in the cut, but she was taking it so far, like eating all the eggs on the table. She was just so game and so wonderful. And she actually did it because she’s a massive fan of the show.
There are times when the show can be very deliberately uncomfortable to watch. There were a couple of episodes this year, like the one where you’re trapped in that family’s house during the storm, or this one with the stalker, that felt particularly uncomfortable. Did it feel like that to you?
Not really. I think that Season One was the most comfortable viewing. Season Two, I think there was a lot of angst, and a lot of psychological chaos going on, that created a vibe that was a little moodier, and perhaps there’s some discomfort in that. Season Three, the feedback I’ve seen is that it is the most fun and the most comfortable. But, yes, there are a few that are genre-specific. The storm one is like a horror comedy, and the psychological thriller. But there was more of an, “I can’t watch this!” feeling in Season Two.
The thing that I’m truly the most proud of this season is the tonal variety between episodes. With the tour having us in different cities, every episode was a chance at a totally new vibe, and week to week the show evolved into different iterations of itself. So we could have a chaotic one like the episode in Philly, a wandering desert saga, a slice of life romantic comedy, a horror episode, an episode rooted in documentary footage, down to the last episode, which is a high-stakes thriller, all in the same season. That was my personal favorite part of Season Three, was that week to week you didn’t know what to expect, yet there is a unity to it all.
Dave’s ex-girlfriend Ally isn’t in a lot of the season. Was Taylor Misiak not as available, or was it a story thing?
It was just hard. Six of the episodes are on tour. We could get her on the tour in the one episode. I don’t want things to feel inorganic or fake. I love Taylor, I love the character Ally. And I know we’ll be seeing more of her in the future. But I didn’t want to force it by having her on tour the whole time.
Robyn could have very easily just been a Manic Pixie Dream Girl type. But between the way everyone wrote her, and the way Chloe played her, she very clearly had an inner life. How did you put that character together like that?
Because we were going on tour, and I have a new love interest, Chloe kind of became the female lead of the season. We really wanted to dimensionalize her. One of our main writers is this brilliant woman named Vanessa McGee. She is a huge inspiration for a lot of what we do on the show. She really helped find the right voice for this character. I feel like this season really does tap into gender norms in surprising ways. To do that fairly in a historically male-dominated show, we needed to have a strong female character. I wanted Robyn to have a little more edge, to feel like a different type of love interest than Ally. For the whole season to land, and for that last climactic moment of, is he going to get her? You have to invest in that character. For the limited amount of time that can be woven into that character, you need people to want to say, “Man, go get her! You can’t let her go!” That was a big risk. So all kudos goes to Vanessa, and Chloe for really backboning this character and making her what she was.
Finally, the documentary in the ninth episode portrays the TV version of Dave as a perfectionist who feels like he has to control everything. How much do you have in common with that guy on that level?
I wouldn’t say I’m a perfectionist, but I strive to put my best foot forward, and know that I did it as well as I possibly could. I think my character in the show is way more abrasive interpersonally than I am in reality. Everyone who works with me in reality really respects that attitude from me, because I think I know how to carry myself on a human-being level. And we throw that out the window a little more in the show for the sake of the plot. But I think my drive to be great is, man. It’s pretty darn close.
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