Sadie McCarthy (Melissa Benoist) may have been dreaming a bit on this week’s episode of “The Girls on the Bus,” but you certainly were not — Scott Foley really did do a strip tease to Ginuwine’s hit “Pony.” And honestly, he might be a little traumatized by it.
In the episode, now streaming on Max, Sadie heads over to one of Hot White Guy’s (Foley) events, after she can’t seem to get access to rival candidate Felicity Walker (Hettienne Park). As she watches him speak to voters, music suddenly kicks in, “Pony” begins, and Hot White Guy and his staff do a whole performance — complete with choreography, stripping and more.
Obviously, it’s not something the presidential candidate is actually doing to earn votes. It’s just a fantasy in Sadie’s head. But, it did require a very real performance, and Foley committed hard.
“You know, I would like to know how this came up too,” Foley joked with TheWrap. “And I’d like to — I have a bone to pick with whoever decided to write it in there.”
That person, it turns out, was actually a few people: showrunners Amy Chozick, Julie Plec and Rina Mimoun. But the women mostly pin it on Chozick.
“I would love to take credit for Amy’s smutty little brain,” Mimoun said with a laugh. “I will take credit for being the person that called Mr. Scott Foley, because we have a long previous friendship, and me going, ‘So hey, if we were going to maybe say, ‘Would you take your shirt off?’ And he’s like, ‘I’ll take my pants off!’”
But Foley admitted that his willingness to do it was a little bit of acting in and of itself. And his scene partner Melissa Benoist could feel it.
“I could sense that maybe he was a little nervous, and he didn’t want to do it,” Benoist explained to TheWrap. She added, laughing, “And I know he was like, starving himself.”
Indeed, Foley openly admits to putting himself on a temporary diet to get in shape for the moment. Though it ended up being a bit ridiculous, he was glad to have done it — mostly.
“It was at once the most terrifying and probably the most rewarding scene that I shot in this, in the show,” Foley explained. “And I say that, because I think it works. If they hadn’t set up the sort of machinations of Sadie’s fantasy life, you know, sort of coming to life on screen, it just wouldn’t have made any sense at all.”
He continued, “But since that was well established in the first couple episodes — not that that made me any happier to do it — but it worked in the script. Maybe not so much in my 51-year-old mind or body.”
You can watch Scott Foley, Melissa Benoist and the creators of “The Girls on the Bus” break down the “Pony” sequence in its entirety in the video above.
“The Girls on the Bus” is now streaming on Max.