We drank three rounds with the cast of Girls5eva

Paula Pell is issuing a warning: "The bra's coming through the armholes in a minute."

Sitting at Turntable LP, a karaoke bar in New York City, Pell has been reunited with her Girls5eva co-stars Sara Bareilles, Busy Philipps, and Renée Elise Goldsberry. Together — sorry, 3gether — they're chatting about their insanely funny Peacock series, which debuts its second season May 5.

From creator Meredith Scardino (and executive produced by Tina Fey), Girls5eva follows Dawn (Bareilles), Summer (Philipps), Wickie (Goldsberry), and Gloria (Pell) as they're handed a second chance at stardom. Once a one-hit-wonder girl group in the '90s, they're now returning to the music industry, all thanks to a young rapper who sampled one of their songs. But if things weren't hard enough in the '90s, now the women also have to think about their families, careers, and even their bad knees.

A couple drinks into EW's Three Rounds, things are getting interesting. Philipps is wiping sugar off of Goldsberry's nose, and Louie — Bareillies' Cavapoo — is being passed around for snuggles. Shortly after Pell issues her warning, Bareilles has an announcement of her own, albeit a very different one: "I would lay down in traffic for anyone in this room," the Grammy winner says.

And with everyone in the room feeling just a little bit more loved, the next drink is served.

ROUND 1: THE LP

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: This show does not work if you all don't have chemistry. This was Zoom casting right? So was there any type of chemistry read?

BUSY PHILIPPS AND PAULA PELL: No.

RENÉE ELISE GOLDSBERRY: We discovered each other on the first table read. We knew Sara was doing it. She was like the calling card.

PHILIPPS: I knew Sara and you [Goldsberry] were doing it and after I read the script I said, "If Gloria's not Paula Pell, I'll be shocked."

PELL: And that's when they thought of me because they had tried seven people.

PHILIPPS: No that's not true. I had nothing to do with the casting!

PELL: I knew all three of you were gonna be in it, and that was why I said yes. I would've said yes anyway, but I really said an enthusiastic yes.

GOLDSBERRY: [Gestures to Pell and Philipps] They were so good on the first table read — that's when I discovered you two — that I actually thought they were just like ringers to, like, help us out at the table read and that they weren't actually going to do the show.

PHILIPPS: Oh my god.

GOLDSBERRY: Because they're both personal friends of Tina Fey so I thought she was like, "Hey, can you guys just read this for us?"

PELL: Wait, before the table read you didn't know that we were in the show? I mean, at the table read?

PHILIPPS: No one told you?

GOLDSBERRY: I literally turned on the Zoom and I'm like, "Oh my god."

PHILIPPS: [To Bareilles] You didn't know?!

SARA BAREILLES: Not until like the night before.

GOLDSBERRY: Not until I turned on my computer.

PHILIPPS: See look, guys, we're learning new things.

GOLDSBERRY: Cheers!

PHILIPPS: Cheers to that!

BAREILLES: To new information!

PELL: Alcohol is truth juice.

3 rounds with Girls5Eva — Jutharat Pinyodoonyachet for EW

In terms of meeting in person, that was on set?

PELL: [Renée and I had] worked together before and I met Busy on the Busy Philipps Show.

PHILIPPS: Busy Tonight.

PELL: I'm sorry.

PHILIPPS: It's fine. It was canceled, it's fine. I'm not bitter about it still all these years later.

PELL: I met [her] on Busy Mornings.

PHILIPPS: Busy All Day!

PELL: Sara, I had never met, and then on the first day of work she had just shot a flashback scene and had these little like Spice Girls pigtails and her mask and everything. She came bopping by looking like she was 13 and she goes, "Hi, I'm so glad you're here!" And I was like, "Hi!" And it was just that generic meeting someone on set where I was like, "And nice to meet you also."

BAREILLES: "I'll take an orange juice."

PELL: And I was kind of waiting for her to say who she was or anything. And then we go out there and I look at her pigtails and I'm like, that's Sara Bareilles.

What's your favorite flashback that you've gotten to film?

PHILIPPS: I have one in season 2 that I think maybe is my new favorite flashback. It's with Kev, played by the amazing Andrew Rannells.

GOLDSBERRY: Cheers to Andrew!

PHILIPPS: He was also, in the '90s, in a boy group and we have a number together that we released, a song. It's insane.

PELL: It's insane. It involves virginity.

PHILIPPS: Yeah, keeping it chaste below the waist.

GOLDSBERRY: I have to say I love the opening of the show. I love the music video, [music composer] Jeff Richmond directed it, and it feels like a little montage that leads to the present moment and by the time we're sitting in the diner at the end I have chills. It makes me happy.

BAREILLES: This season's flashbacks my hair stylist put bangs on me and I feel like I really went into another dimension.

GOLDSBERRY: Cheers to the stylists!

When you're filming these quick flashbacks are you, on the flashback end of that, filming entire scenes?

GOLDSBERRY: No.

BAREILLES: But they will go to the nth degree for a three-second pop. Truly the whole system is organized around this ambition, these big swings, it's why it's so much fun to make the show. They will go all out and you're like, "How long is this going to be on the episode?" And it will be like three seconds.

PELL: It's the joke value. Spare nothing to get that hard laugh.

How long did it take you all to stop singing the theme song after you recorded it?

PELL: I still randomly sing different songs from it.

PHILIPPS: Me too, me too. There's one from this year that has been in my head on a loop.

GOLDSBERRY: Which one?

PHILIPPS: [Sings] "When I cry at a movie..." [Goldsberry and Pell join] "I'm really crying about myself."

GOLDSBERRY: They write these really small snippets of a song and they'll go back later and try to fill them in.

BAREILLES: It's so good. It's so hard to do. The music team is bonkers, to make something catchy and funny at the same time is just really hard to do.

ROUND 2: CHILI MARGARITA

GOLDSBERRY: I would just like to say that I drank the entire first drink and you guys sipped and I feel very much alone and judged.

PELL: What's your PIN number?! [Laughs]

BAREILLES: I'm just excited to see where this goes, you know what I'm saying?!

GOLDSBERRY: I just need one person at this bar to catch up with me, please.

Talking about the music, let's get into the actual process of the music in the show. I would imagine the vast majority of it, you're singing in a studio. What's live, how does it work?

PELL: This year there's a lot that's live.

BAREILLES: This was the great discovery, was I didn't know these [Pell and Philipps] were singers. I knew she [Goldsberry] was a singer, obviously. I didn't know Busy could sing. Busy's gonna be on Broadway someday.

PHILIPPS: Someday. There's no announcement.

BAREILLES: Just putting it out there. It's ripe. As well Paula Pell.

PELL: No, it's too late now, but go ahead.

GOLDSBERRY: I knew that Paula Pell could sing too.

BAREILLES: I did not know that, so you capture it in the moment. Sometimes we go back if there's continuity issues or you have to sweeten something but a lot of it is just happening in the moment. It's amazing.

PELL: I think more so this year, we've had more moments because we're recording an album in the show, so we do a lot of vocal things in the booth and harmonizing. It's just my favorite thing to do ever. I'm definitely an apprentice around these pros with it so I'm always very approval seeking of like, "I'll do anything they tell me." You can see me smiling really big if I thought something was flat.

PHILIPPS: I just know that I get really excited and I sing too loud sometimes and then Jeff will come in and in his very sweet way be like, "I think what would be great just in this one, if you just, as an option, if you just took it down about 25, 30 percent. 40. 40 percent. 40 percent take it down. And maybe just follow what Sara's doing." [Laughs] But I do love it because I know that's when I'm getting really excited.

PELL: Also we're very emotional, all of us, about singing, and obviously those two [Bareilles and Goldsberry] have done incredible emotional connective things with their music —

[Goldsberry laughs]

PELL: Well, I was trying to be serious for a minute. For a mothereffing minute.

PHILIPPS: She drank a whole cocktail.

BAREILLES: She hasn't eaten and she had a gin cocktail.

PELL: But I feel like that the music, especially in this season, there are some songs where we're like, "Oh no, oh no, we're going to cry in this." I feel like when people watch it they feel that.

GOLDSBERRY: We've had crew members that are extremely emotional. I think we might take it for granted that we're hearing live music, but they don't. One of the most beautiful things about this show in general is that it's been such a balm in COVID, it just feels good. It's really been a blessing to be able to come together doing something that's seemingly silly but really beautiful and the music elevates it. Even though it's absolutely ridiculous I think it elevates it and I only learn that when I look at the crew's faces.

BAREILLES: That's why this season is so fun, because we just went deeper, we went into deeper waters with every character. It was already so funny but it's just so nice, the roots are growing, we're understanding the characters differently and more intimately.

PELL: Last season we are in shock, our characters. This season is extra vulnerable because we decide to do it on our own terms, we decide to sing the songs that we want, about what we want.

BAREILLES: You're getting to watch our characters dream. You're getting to watch our characters —

PELL: Telling the truth about what their dream is.

BAREILLES: Yes, like get real about the vulnerability of that. You're reaching for something. It's beautiful.

PELL: Because there's a lot of imposter syndrome anyway with all of us in real life and our characters of like, "Wait, am I even good enough to be doing this?"

GOLDSBERRY: Cheers ladies! And I have a request for some bread.

ROUND 3: ROSEMARY'S DREAM

Let's dig into some season 2 moments. There's an amazing reference to Kevin Sorbo's "disappointed" mixup. Renée, did you know the reference?

GOLDSBERRY: So there's a moment I think it's in episode 3 or 2 and I say, "Disappointed!" because I can't fool the world that my feet are both perfect. I did a couple of takes and Meredith [Scardino] came in and she was like, "Do you know the reference, Renée?" And she told me the reference, I had no idea.

PELL: I still don't know the reference.

PHILIPPS: I don't either.

GOLDSBERRY: I didn't know the reference and she told me and I just did it exactly like she said and I was a little worried about it when I saw the first three episodes because I don't really get it.

It is a famous Kevin Sorbo moment when he was filming Hercules. It is not supposed to be dialogue. His character is supposed to be disappointed.

GOLDSBERRY: It literally is a parenthetical like, this is what the actor should be feeling and he just yells it really loud: "DISAPPOINTED!"

PELL: I just laughed because it was such a funny Wickie-ism to scream out your emotion.

GOLDSBERRY: I just love this writing team. Even the moments I don't get are so seeped in comic genius.

Summer has a tattoo dedicated to Kevin Bacon's filmography in season 2, which made me think: If you had to get a tattoo dedicated to an actor's filmography, whose would it be?

PHILIPPS: Wait, did I tell you guys about getting the massage? I had forgotten that we had done that bit and they had put this giant fake tattoo on me and I went to get a massage and all of a sudden the lady — first of all, she pulls the towel back and gasps and I was like, "That's weird." And then she's like massaging me and [says] something and it's muffled because she's obviously wearing a mask and I'm wearing a mask and I'm like, "I'm sorry what?" And she's like, "I'm ruining it all." I was like, "You're ruining what?" She was like, "I don't know I think you got a bad tattoo." She thought she had rubbed my tattoo off. Bless her heart. She was genuinely concerned.

PELL: Oh that's so sweet.

What's been the scene or moment that's been the hardest to get through without laughing?

PHILIPPS: Guys! Obviously!

PELL: We know it. We know it. However, it's not in the show, right?

PHILIPPS: No, it got cut from the show.

PELL: Which is even more fun that you get to hear this!

BAREILLES: Honestly we need a groundswell from the public to ask for this moment to be released —

PELL: Online.

BAREILLES: On the line.

PELL: Tell them what we're talking about so they don't feel left out.

GOLDSBERRY: We do a big production number at the end of the season and then we're sitting in the diner afterwards and my skirt was so short. However you equate it out, I was sitting on my vagina.

BAREILLES: Well we all sit on our vaginas.

GOLDSBERRY: Because my skirt was so short and Paula Pell was sitting next to me in the booth when we were shooting the scene, and she's maybe the nicest person I've ever met in my life, which made it so funny that every time she looked over at me in the scene she had such a look of disgust on her face. Anyway so we were shooting Sara and Busy's closeup shots and Paula and I were really just there to feed them lines and we did not do a very good job because I was crying so hard laughing because I was so uncomfortable.

PELL: We have photos of it, she's singing a Bruce Springsteen ditty ...It was so insane and she was crying through it so hard that her tears were going down through her cleavage and down to her —

BAREILLES: Into her vagina.

GOLDSBERRY: Basically they had written a great opportunity to sing a song that would be in the style of Bruce Springsteen: The Musical. And I had to, on the spot, come up with the music for Bruce Springsteen: The Musical. And I had to do that while I was sitting on my vagina in a very interesting booth with Paula Pell, the nicest person in the world, staring at me with utter disgust on her face.

PELL: You know why I was looking at you with disgust. It was at the end of the night, end of the season, they were like, "We have to finish this." I was so terrified that I was going to be the reason that I was going to go down hard and never be able to do the scene because I was laughing so hard then I get this look like I'm really holding on.

GOLDSBERRY: It was so funny. I posted it on Instagram: Renée Elise Goldsberry, blue check. [Laughs]

PELL: Oh Jesus. It's always a f---ing agenda.

BAREILLES: Renée is my new, I mean not new, obsession.

PHILIPPS: I'm obsessed.

GOLDSBERRY: Please, Sam, ask us another question.

What 90's song would you like Girls5eva to cover?

BAREILLES: [Sings] "I get so weak at the knees I can hardly speak."

[Goldsberry and Pell join]

GOLDSBERRY: Oh my god Paula is giving us a pedal note! [Laughs] Oh my god I love you so much right now. That's SWV everybody.

PELL: My song would be "Don't Let Go."

GOLDSBERRY: Can we just talk about girl groups? Can we talk about the legacy that is before us? Sara, can you talk a little bit as a very successful solo artist about this opportunity in your life to double back on something that you had never planned to do?

BAREILLES: So I ventured into the music industry with a tremendous amount of insecurity. I never had the confidence to be playful and so getting to be in my 40s, I'm 42.

GOLDSBERRY: So young!

BAREILLES: So young. But [I] have a beautiful amount of experience at this point and I get to practice being playful.

PELL: I love that.

BAREILLES: I took myself too seriously and I was always so afraid of doing it "wrong" that I didn't allow myself to have fun and make mistakes. I was very tight.

PELL: Well you, my dear, have done it right.

GOLDSBERRY: I was going to say that Paula! Not only did you do it right, but you're doing it even better.

BAREILLES: Aw, thank you. But this is so beautiful to get to do and with friends. I know you can see we're genuinely in love with each other.

PELL: So it will last about six years.

[Everyone laughs]

PELL: It's the statistics of America!

PHILIPPS: I do know the preciousness of this moment. Oh god jesus I'm gonna cry. I know that everything is constantly changing but I also know that at a certain point when we're not Girls5eva, even though we'll always be foreva in each other's hearts, we won't, like, see each other. Guys, I don't know where [Freaks and Geeks costar] Linda Cardellini is! We talk to each other once every year on their birthdays, that's just how TV works Renée! You are in love with the people if it's good!

PELL: So it's on you, Peacock!

PHILIPPS: So Peacock, you want this?!

BAREILLES: [chanting] Season 2! Season 2!

GOLDSBERRY: Season 3!

BAREILLES: Season 3!

Girls5eva season 2 is now streaming on Peacock.

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