Kim Petras is one highly effective pop star. On tonight’s episode of Los Espookys, the blonde, Barbiecore US Ambassador Melanie Gibbons (performed by Greta Titelman) has lastly met her match in Secretary of State Kimberly Reynolds—her even blonder and Barbie-r boss—performed by Petras, making her appearing debut. “I used to be tremendous nervous,” Petras admits to Self-importance Truthful between intermittent pulls from her vape pen in a joint Zoom interview with Titelman. “I obtained an appearing coach to clarify to me how appearing works and did all this analysis.”
The arduous work paid off, as Petras is pleasant on the present as a politician with a Paris Hilton vibe, in a job that Los Espookys creators Julio Torres and Ana Fabrega wrote particularly for her. “After I obtained the scripts for season two, Julio talked about to me, ‘I feel we’re getting Kim Petras to be your boss,’” Titelman says. “I used to be like, ‘Are you kidding me?’ And he was like, ‘Yeah, we wrote the half for her. We predict she’s all the way down to do it.’” However then, in fact, a world pandemic occurred, making a three-plus yr hole between season one and season two of the HBO comedy, forcing Titelman to maintain Petras’s involvement on the present secret from even her closest confidants, like Hearth Island and I Love That for You’s Matt Rogers, an in depth good friend and frequent collaborator. “I didn’t inform Matt. I didn’t inform any of our different pals,” says Titelman. “I used to be like, ‘It’s so main, I can’t spoil it.’”
All of it started, as so many shock collaborations do, backstage at a live performance. “In 2019, Julio got here to my present at Terminal 5 in New York—Julio and [Saturday Night Live’s] Bowen Yang,” Petras recollects. “We talked backstage. I’m a giant fan of Julio and of Bowen, and we simply had fun and linked up.” Naturally, that backstage kiki led to a correspondence that set all the pieces in movement. “A pair weeks later I obtained an Instagram DM like, ‘Would you ever be all the way down to be in Los Espookys? As a result of we’ve got been listening to ‘Flip Off the Gentle’ nonstop writing it.’”
Despite the fact that her visitor spot was placed on maintain by the pandemic, Petras was at all times decided to make it occur. “[During] these two years. I used to be like, ‘Nicely, as soon as that is over, I’m going to shoot Los Espookys. Fuck everybody.’” A fan of the present and all issues Halloween-related, Petras says that she and her pals watched season one “3 times over” and “are all hooked on it.” “I’m a spooky lady. I like to be spooked,” she says. “So it was sort of a no brainer. I used to be like, ‘Sure, completely.’”
“I didn’t wish to act in the future,” Petras tells VF. “I used to be a songwriter, studio rat my entire life.” However as soon as she arrived on the Los Espookys set in Santiago, Chile, it clicked that the blonde and highly effective political determine Torres and Fabrega wrote for her was an extension of the pop star persona she had already completely crafted. “As soon as I obtained there, it was like, ‘We wrote this for you,’” Petras says. “It’s sort of your stage character, simply in politics. Transfer the stage character to politics.”
On condition that one in every of Petras’s most beloved refrains goes, “I need all my garments designer / I need another person to purchase ’em / If I can not get it proper now / I don’t need it, I don’t need it, I don’t need it in any respect,” it wasn’t all that difficult to get into character. “I generally is a bitch who will get what she desires onstage—that’s the persona I’ve created,” says Petras. “It was simple bringing that into Melanie Gibbons’s workplace and being Secretary of State.”
Titelman maintains that Petras felt like a professional on set. “Kim was really easy,” Titelman says. “I used to be intimidated, clearly, as a result of I’m an enormous Kim fan. I used to be singing Kim’s songs to her on set.” (“I cherished it,” chimed in Petras.) “It didn’t really feel like Kim was appearing for the primary time,” Titelman continued. “She simply instantly match into the Los Espookys universe as a result of she has the identical sensibility, is aware of the identical references. We’re all part of the identical sort of tradition. She simply obtained it.”
