MATE WATCH
I HATE YOU From Friday Night Dinner to besties behaving badly…
1 MESSY PLAY
I Hate You is a predictably bizarre and hilarious new sitcom from the dream-team pairing of writer Robert Popper (Friday Night Dinner) and director Damon Beesley (The Inbetweeners). Newcomer Melissa Saint and Tanya Reynolds (Sex Education) star as Becca and Charlie, flatmates and best friends who get into scrapes involving septuagenarian boyfriends, jogging to jazz and a toff with a pet fly. “Becca is completely filterless,” says Saint. “Charlie is probably more sensible, but still a mess,” adds Reynolds. “She’s stuck in a stupid job and not using her potential, so she finds joy in messing around with Becca.”
2 TRASH TALK
“I always wanted to do something about a really intense friendship, because even though I love my friends, I sort of hate them too, because they’re all just dicks,” confesses Popper. “Women ultimately talk crap like blokes do.’” Reynolds agrees. “It depicts really well the ease you can have with someone, where you’re being your shameless self with them all the time. They aren’t brushing each other’s hair and telling each other how beautiful they are; they’re pushing each other in bins and pouring wine over each other’s heads.”
3 TRAINING SPRAY
As with Friday Night Dinner, many of the seemingly far-fetched sequences have really happened. “I remember queuing for a bar and there was a bouncer who had a fly on her head,” recalls Popper. “I was thinking, ‘What would happen if I just slapped it?’ And I’m afraid to say that another friend actually shat themselves in front of their personal trainer [as happens in I Hate You]. Although in his case, the trainer followed him into the cubicle, apparently in case he had a heart attack.”
4 RICE TO MEET YOU
“I can usually tell within about 10 seconds if an actor is right,” says Popper. “And we knew more or less straight away with Tanya. But we couldn’t find our Becca – we saw 203 people, then our casting director scraped together another 17. The 13th was Melissa, shovelling Rice Krispies in her mouth, and she was brilliant!” Covid restrictions meant not only that auditions were self-taped, but that the leads had to generate chemistry through a screen. Despite this they clicked instantly and have, they all agree, been inseparable ever since.
5 ROCKING HORSE
The opening credits feature Becca and Charlie dancing, before a curtain parts to reveal a talking horse voiced by Peter Serafinowicz and played by Rusty, a steed in the past for Russell Crowe, Emma Watson and Kristen Stewart. “We were starstruck,” marvels Saint. “He was fine with the music,” adds Reynolds. “But he just didn’t like the sudden movement of the curtains opening so he’d back away. Eventually they had to film him separately. But he totally nailed his lines.”
I HATE YOU STARTS ON CHANNEL 4 IN SEPTEMBER.
‘They aren’t brushing each other’s hair and telling each other how beautiful they are’
ROBERT POPPER