The Making of Gigi - Pt. 5 - "We Need a Hooker"

When we looked into casting the hooker for this episode, we thought about several types - large ones, ethnic ones, disgusting ones - but in the weeks leading up to the shoot Josh had been on location with an actress who he thought would work perfectly. Her name was Brit Morgan, and damn was he right.

She had all the elements we needed for this character. She was gorgeous, yes, but after we got her through wardrobe and hair & makeup she was the perfect definition of hot mess. Disheveled and grubby, yet you still might pony up some change to "scare all over her tits."

Brit and I sat down to discuss her character and I could tell right away she was the right woman for the job. We thought up three distinct voices for the hooker - one was her "selling voice," the breathy, sexy tone she uses to lure in her johns; second was her "normal voice," the voice she falls back on when Gigi's antics catch her off-guard; and third was her "coked-up voice," the amped up, crazy bitch she turns into after blowing lines of coke in the bathroom to get ready to do her duty. Brit moved between these voices flawlessly and brought new things to the table that we had never dreamed of, including the "strange rubber ducky" Gigi finds in her purse…

Approaching the element of drug use for Gigi has always been fascinating for us. He's already so confused without the drugs that putting any in his system just ramps up the ridiculous. And ecstasy is a tricky one, because we didn't want Gigi to start petting the hooker and actually enjoy the experience. So we went with the bad trip. And although I'm still waiting for the first YouTube comment to declare, "Ecstasy doesn't give you those type of visuals," I'm happy with how the double exposure came out and feel it accurately portrays what must be going through that poor foreigner's mind.

It was our last day of shooting so we had to hurry through much of the pickup shots of Gigi stepping on the ketchup. I kept muttering to myself, "Goddamn these writers giving me more f*cking fake blood to work with." It was the only episode where re-shoots were genuinely needed after the fact and luckily our prop master Jason came through for us weeks later with matching carpet to recreate the motel room floor in my garage.

Oh I almost forgot - Gigi throwing the vase at the wall almost took out our co-star. Watch the take that made it into the final cut. Kudos to Josh for doing his best Tim Lincecum impression...