Last year when NBC aired The Sound of Music Live!, a lot of people watched it just to make fun of it on Twitter. I mean, hell, that’s a given with any big televised event nowadays, from awards shows to stuff like Sharknado, but when it comes to something as earnestly corny as a live, televised musical — oh, people are gonna hatewatch the crap out of that stuff.
And with Peter Pan Live! airing tomorrow night, the cast is well aware that people are going to treat this production the same way. Personally, I loathe musicals and even I’m considering tuning in for as long as I can stand it. But in this interview with The Daily Beast, Allison Williams asks that you put your snark and cynicism aside and just give it a chance, OK?
“I will say this about last year: today’s audiences like to watch things cynically,” says Williams, who has been rehearsing to play Peter Pan on her off-season break from shooting HBO’s Girls, on which she plays grating goody-two-shoes Marnie Michaels. “And I’m on a show that’s cynical in tone so I’m no stranger to that.”
“Hatewatching is a thing,” she continues. “It’s a whole way of watching something, and it’s not an audience that’s natural to a non-cynical performance. Peter Pan, you cannot watch cynically. If you do, you’re going to hate it, no question. It falls apart instantly.”
Later in the interview, Williams goes so far as to say it’s actually going to be really difficult — nay, impossible — to really hate on Peter Pan Live! Uh, challenge accepted?
“I have full faith that this will happen,” Williams says, prepping her fairy dust for a flurry of happy thoughts. “People will hear the opening strings of music that they know deep, deep down in their heart, and it will make them nostalgic again. And they’ll crumble. And they might get one hate-tweet out really quickly, and then we won’t hear from them for a while—because they’ll have been sucked into the sense memory that hopefully will be Peter Pan.”
See, it’s quotes like this that make the character of Marine and Allison Williams the person almost completely indistinguishable in my head. On one hand, that’s really adorably optimistic that she thinks that hatewatchers will be lulled into happy complacency by the virtual Care Bear Stares coming out of their televisions, but on the other hand . . .
You said it, J Law.
