Lyric Ross and Asante Blackk told Shadow And Act all about what it was like to film Deja and Malik’s first date as shown in episode 7 of the fourth season of This Is Us, “The Dinner and The Date.”
In this installment of our Rewind The Scene series, Blackk and Ross talked about some of the high points of filming the episode, such as taking in the sights of Philadelphia, as well as some of the challenges.
One big moment of the episode is when Malik finally pours his heart out to Deja after Deja gets scared of where their courtship might be going.
“That was a tough scene to film,” said Blackk. “The only reason I was able to give what I gave was because of Lyric because Lyric is such a giving actor and there’s nobody I’d rather do these scenes with. Lyric is absolutely amazing and I tell her that all the time.”
“Asante, he was pretty much like, just talking throughout the whole thing,” said Ross of Blackk’s speech as Malik. “Like, he was just ad-libbing everything. And I was like, ‘How do you do [that]?’ It was just so genius.”
The other hurdle of the episode was filming Malik and Deja’s first kiss, which was also Ross and Blackk’s first on-screen kisses as well.
“We had to tape that scene 18 times,” said Ross, who also called the scene awkward at first, until they understood what to do. Blackk also called the initial take awkward because of the amount of choreographing involved.
“I’m pretty sure a lot of people might know this, but a choreographed kiss is pretty, pretty awkward,” said Blackk. “When we first started out, it was literally like we just gave each other a quick peck and we’re like, ‘Okay, that’s it.’ And then the director was like, ‘No, this is the moment when you guys realize you guys really like each other.”
Check the full Rewind the Scene episode below:
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