Joy Ride writers explain how the movie’s K-pop Cardi B cover happened
Joy Ride screenwriters Cherry Chevapravatdumrong and Teresa Hsiao have explained how the K-pop Cardi B song came about.
The road-trip comedy sees Ashley Park, Sherry Cola, Stephanie Hsu and Sabrina Wu star as four Asian-American friends who travel across Asia in the hope of helping Park's Audrey find her birth mother.
One of the scenes, which can be seen in the trailer, includes the group impersonating a K-pop band in order to get past border control, with the fake group Brownie Tuesday mixing a K-pop song with Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion’s smash hit ‘WAP’.
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In an interview with Variety, Chevapravatdumrong and Hsiao explained how the comedic set-piece came about, with the pair revealing that the scene originally centred around another song.
“It was a process because we had a placeholder song for a very long time, and it didn’t come together until the last minute. But we did have a backup,” revealed Chevapravatdumrong. “[Director] Adele [Lim] had written a letter to Cardi and Megan Thee Stallion asking for permission on behalf of us [and] the actors.
“[It outlined] what the song meant to the movie, the message of the song, and what the characters were going through. She was explaining it to make sure we had their blessing whether we could use the song. Luckily they read that and said go for it,” she added.
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“I remember writing lyrics for a different song,” recalled Hsiao. “But we were trying to find this perfect song that really encapsulated the movie at this pivotal moment. We thought ‘WAP’ was a great song, but there was no way we were going to be able to get it.
“On a lark, and for fun, we wrote some lyrics for this song because maybe we can get it. It was an afternoon and we threw some lyrics together. Then we were told, ‘Okay, that’s been sent to Cardi B.’ It was quite a tribute to them in that sense that we could write these lyrics in an afternoon to their song because it’s already so perfect,” she added.
Joy Ride is in US cinemas now, and will be released in the UK on August 4.
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