The upcoming Comedy Central show The Other Two made its world premiere at Vulture Festival Los Angeles last night, and Fred Armisen was on hand to moderate a conversation with co-creators Chris Kelly and Sarah Schneider, along with stars Heléne Yorke and Drew Tarver. The show focuses on a pair of siblings hustling their way through life in New York. Meanwhile, their youngest brother has just become a pop music sensation. And he goes by the name Chase Dreams. (Picture an aggressively Musical.ly-type of boy, which is exactly where Kelly and Schneider found their Chase actor, Case Walker.)
In the conversation following the screening, Armisen asked the showrunners if there was a particular era of pop music or even specific pop stars they drew inspiration from for their new series, to which Kelly said, “We just wanted pop culture combined with grounded storytelling. But, I guess Justin Bieber was sort of like a jumping-off point for us.†Before getting The Other Two off the ground, Kelly and Schneider spent six years writing for Saturday Night Live, which included a one year-stint as co-head writers before departing in 2017. Bieber hosted the show in 2013, and was apparently on a get-swole diet that included a lot of eggs. So many eggs, in fact, that the singer was not able to make the customary rounds with the writing staff during the week of his show. Kelly shared the Bieber SNL anecdote with the Vulture Fest crowd:
“On Tuesday, our writing nights, the hosts go around from office to office and meet all the writers, and the writers tell the hosts that week, ‘Here’s some ideas we’re thinking of.’ That’s usually when the host is like ‘I can really do an Australian accent, so you should write me one,’ and then they can’t. That week, Justin Bieber didn’t go around, but his manager, Scooter Braun, went around in his stead. And he was very nice, but we were like, ‘Where’s Justin?’ And they were like, ‘Oh, bad news on that front. We’re trying to get his body jacked so I fed him a bunch of raw eggs and he is puking his guts out.’ So Justin was on an all-egg or all egg-white or something diet, and was, like, so sick. And I was like, ‘I will take that, and make fun of it.’ â€
In The Other Two pilot, Yorke and Tarver’s characters meet their mom for dinner, and their brother’s new manager (Ken Marino) explains that Chase couldn’t make it out because he’s at home lying on a tarp thanks to his egg-heavy bulk-up diet in advance of the Teen Choice Awards. Bieber may have been a notably poor guest on the SNL set, but he gave us the gift of moments like this. The Other Two premieres on Comedy Central in January.