Throughout the beer pong scene in “Ticket to Paradise,” George Clooney and Julia Roberts’ David and Georgia Cotton don’t just get progressively drunker, but they also dance, laugh, and find every way imaginable to embarrass their daughter, Lily (Kaitlyn Dever). The scene is loose, chaotic, and one of the funniest that audiences will see in “Ticket to Paradise.” Taking that into account, those who go see the film may be surprised to learn that the sequence itself was largely improvised.
During a recent interview with Entertainment Weekly, Clooney and Roberts revealed that they ultimately chose not to rehearse what they were going to do in their standout “Ticket to Paradise” scene. “It was funny because when we got to the set, everyone was like, ‘Okay, we’re going to talk about the scene.’ Julia and I were like, ‘Let’s just shoot it, man. Don’t worry. We know what to do. We’ve been down this road a few times,'” Clooney said.
For her part, Roberts noted, “I think people thought we might warm up [before the scene]. They thought we’d start off a little slow, and we just came in going 100 percent from the beginning — and we left some people speechless.” The stars’ comments were supported by “Ticket to Paradise” director Ol Parker, who told EW, “There was a choreographer available to them if they wanted, but they didn’t.”
For what it’s worth, it seems safe to say that Roberts and Clooney made the right call in playing their unforgettable “Ticket to Paradise” scene the way they did. After all, while critical opinions about the film itself may be divided, the consensus surrounding Clooney and Roberts’ beer-pong antics seems to be overwhelmingly positive — and justifiably so.
