Girls5eva Is About to Be the Girl Group Show Of Our Dreams
Sometimes, lyrics just really speak to us.
Take, for example, this masterpiece that Peacock just debuted from its new girl group show, Girls5eva.
Gonna be famous 5eva, 'cause 4ever's too short (too short) / Gonna be famous 3gether, 'cause that's one more than 2gether / So what are you waiting 5? Girls5eva
Like, wow. Taylor Swift who?
This brief clip, which you can watch below, is the first footage we've seen from the upcoming series, which comes from Meredith Scardino, Tina Fey and Robert Carlock. It stars Sara Bareilles, Busy Philipps, Renee Elise Goldsberry and Paula Pell as the former members of a '90s girl group who reunite as adults to give their popstar dreams one more shot. As you might be able to tell, it's a very serious show.
The cast and creative team, along with executive producer and composer Jeff Richmond, gathered on Zoom for a virtual TV Critics Association panel on Wednesday to promote the series, and Scardino explained that she set out to create a show about women in her "age group" that could talk about the realities of being a woman in her 40s.
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"Then it kind of came to me and I thought, oh, it would be amazing to be able to do it with this backdrop of pop music and trying again as a metaphor for like trying at this stage, at a time when you might be more like sitting back at life or getting cozy and comfortable, and getting uncomfortable," she explained. "I just thought it was like the Venn diagram of interesting things of relatability of life in your 40s, and also like putting it all up against the pop star world. It felt like a very fertile duet."
Fey revealed that they started the process of casting by taking a "wild run" at Bareilles, who she had seen in Waitress on Broadway. After they "tricked her" into signing on, they went after Hamilton star Renee Elise Goldsberry.
"Then we were realizing we're hitting the jackpot," Fey said. "Let's shoot for people who can all sing for real, because it makes it so lovely and present."
Pell and Philipps, two comedic stars with vocal chops to boot, rounded out the rest of Girls5eva.
Scardino teased that the show would find these women looking back at the things they were singing as young women and realizing the messaging was not quite on brand. Philipps said that was part of the appeal for her.
"When they were popstars, they had no control over the words that were coming out of their mouths and the dance moves and the things they were wearing and the relationships that they were put in, and now they're in a different place in their lives, and the question becomes, how do you take ownership of your own story and how do you rewrite it?" Philipps said. "I was a lady working in the '90s. I was a young woman. A lot of times you think that these ideas were yours, and then you look back on it and you're like, 'I didn't want to do Maxim. What?'"
Girls5eva does not yet have a premiere date, but it's coming soon to Peacock.
(E! and Peacock are both part of the NBCUniversal family.)
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