Hip-Hop

Warning: This story contains spoilers for the season 3 finale of Dave.
Dave Burd managed to wrap up the over-the-top third season of his series Dave with the most unexpected, how-did-he-pull-that-off stunt yet. After a two-episode will-they-or-won’t-they arc starring Rachel McAdams as a potential paramour for his rap alter ego Lil Dicky, the just-aired season finale opened with Dicky in bed with McAdams during the video shoot for his homage to The Notebook star, “Mr. McAdams.”

In another scene, Dicky raps, “Maybe I’m your Brad Pitt,” and in keeping with Dave‘s unpredictable, cameo-stuffed run, of course the real Brad Pitt then pops up. But Pitt doesn’t just do a drive-by, he hangs around playing a Brad Pitt type who is interested in getting into the music game only to get stuck in a hostage situation. There’s a shooting accident with a Looking for Love prop crossbow and an escape thanks to bear mace and Dave’s $7,000 set doll.

But the most important question is: How did they get Pitt? (And Drake, for that matter.)

Star Burd and co-star GaTa spoke to The Hollywood Reporter about the surprise superstar cameos and why they decided to keep Pitt’s fate a secret.

“There was a lot of debate about how to play it. We even shot several versions of that outcome with Drake with us talking about, ‘Oh, he’s dead’ and like, ‘No, he’s alive,’” said Burd. “We had every iteration at our fingertips, but I chose to keep it slightly ambiguous. For me, as a viewer, if you look closely as the paramedics are running in, you can kind of see Brad’s hand go up and start to give the thumbs up. So, I take that as an indication that Brad will live on.”

Even more surprising, after a season-long arc about Dave looking for love on the road, when it comes down to finally going with his heart and trying to make it work with on-and-off girlfriend Robyn — and after Pitt very clearly warned him about the pitfalls of being a star — Dicky decides to chase after Drake rather than settle down with Robyn.

“What a twist, huh? I wanted to do something that was kind of a surprise,” Burd explained. “Not to oversimplify it, but every season we build toward this big decision. Am I going to do the right thing or the wrong thing?… It’s not just throwing [away] love and not learning anything the whole episode. I’ve been looking for love this whole season and I learned through this experience, and through Brad Pitt, that as confident as my character in his own greatness there’s clearly a gaping void in his soul that needs this validation. Until you actually love yourself and remedy yourself of that void, how can you possibly take on the love of another person?”

Burd said as much as he wanted to find love, he looked at letting Robyn go as a sign that he wasn’t ready for it yet. “That awareness was at the core of that final decision. I think I learned the lessons and was aware enough to realize that’s not where I was yet. So, in the meantime, I’m going to go to Drake,” he said.

As for Pitt’s near-death crossbow incident, GaTa said he never expected to be in that situation. “I was like, ‘Wow, this is crazy. We got Brad Pitt on Pro Tools with auto-tune AND we ’bout to kill this man?,’” he said. “I still can’t believe it. It’s just surreal even talking about it, like we got Brad Pitt doing all this stuff. It’s crazy.”

Asked how he keeps pulling off such amazing cameos — this season also featured Usher, Don Cheadle, Killer Mike, Demi Lovato, Jack Harlow, Rick Ross and many more — while keeping the Pitt pop-in secret, it all comes down to Burd’s persuasive letter-writing according to showrunner Jeff Schaffer. Earlier this year he told THR that he and the show’s other producers thought it was a bridge too far at first.

“None of us thought it was going to work, except Dave,” Schffer said while giving props to Burd’s big ideas. It also helped that two-time Oscar winner Pitt was reportedly a fan of the show. “It really speaks to the greatness of the show that all three of them just independently are huge fans of the show. Everyone who works on the show should feel like they got Brad and Rachel and Drake,” Burd explained. “The reason we got them is because they loved the first two seasons of the show.”

The rapper had never met McAdams or Pitt before, but he’d heard through the grapevine that they were fans. “It was a little reckless to anchor an entire three episode arc with Rachel McAdams and an entire finale on Brad Pitt, but for the themes that we’re talking about there is no one better,” he said, admitting that Drizzy was an especially big swing, since the MC had not done TV since his early days as a teen actor on Degrassi: The Next Generation from 2001-2008 playing Jimmy Brooks.

“What better representation of like hopeless romanticism and love is there than Rachel McAdams, who was like my generation’s dream woman and who has been in films that have totally defined my interpretation of what love is supposed to be? Same with Brad Pitt. What better person to teach you a lesson about fame and validation than like the star of all stars, Brad Pitt? Drake is like the top of the mountain top musically and as a rapper. I had met Drake and he pulled me aside and told me the show is one of the more important shows of our generation and I knew he was a fan.”