A panda goes on a first date with a tin man, an alien and a bull. Who will be her perfect match?
This is how superficial dating is: Television producers have resorted to dressing human singles as animals and otherworldly creatures in hopes that they'll see one another for their personalities first, looks second. In "Sexy Beasts," a new Netflix reality dating show, singles meet one another while disguised in colorful costumes — drinking beers and trying to kiss without their horns, snouts and nose rings getting in the way.
New dating shows are ubiquitous on Netflix or network television, the vast majority of them showcasing the same kinds of people we've seen many times before: young, beautiful, heterosexual and clueless about how to pick a partner. This latest attempt doesn't actually take looks out of the equation; it just delays the big revelation. Underneath those sweaty beast costumes, everyone is hot. And their personalities are less compelling than their costumes. It's a similar premise to Netflix's 2020 hit, "Love Is Blind," in which contestants bonded while separated by walls and could see one another only after they proposed marriage.
We spoke to Simon Weston, the "Sexy Beasts" executive producer, about how he decided who's a baboon and who is best personified as a dinosaur — and whether there's freedom in wearing a mask.
Often we're not showing someone who we really are on a first date. People are performing and are somewhat disguised, even if they're showing up with their real face. Is there freedom in wearing a mask?
In the first episode, Emma, the demon, found herself being much more confident in the mask than she normally would be. I think every one of us has something about our face or our looks that we're not happy with. We're taking that anxiety away before you go on a date. Hopefully it's quite freeing.
It seems like all the show's daters are young, heterosexual, good-looking and never been married. Did you think about casting other types of people?
We cast the people who applied to the show. Nobody was rooted out of the process on account of their looks. But I would argue very strongly that beauty is in the eyes of the beholder. One person's highly attractive is another person's turnoff.
When we took the prosthetics off everybody ... it looks horrible, because their poor skin has been sweating away. Before a dater's true face is revealed, they have a couple of hours of being beautified by some of the best makeup artists out there. So everybody looks at their very best.
If we get to do the series again, we'd really like to broaden it out — age, sexuality, also celebrities. It would be quite good fun to hide a celebrity in there and the three people that are dating them are fans of theirs but have no idea that they're actually dating.
How did you decide who would be a wolf or a bull or a mouse or a dinosaur?
There was two-stage casting going on, really. We were casting the visuals in the show — the animal and alien masks — as well as casting the people. So we would look at the masks and ask ourselves: What are good combinations here? Let's say we have the beaver, James. That's a brown furry mask, so we need something that's got a different skin color there, so we have Amber the pixie, which is blue and very colorful against his brown. And then we have Tamiko, who's a zombie with a jaw hanging out and not very much hair, while Amber's got this beautiful wig. And then you've got Alexis the leopard, which has orange tones.
When we were casting the people, Sarah Clarke, the series producer, and I would watch everyone's videos. Once I pressed play, I would look away from the monitor and just listen to their voice and the things that they were saying, because that's really how it's going to be in the show. You're not going to see their face. You're going to hear their voice through a beaver mask.
If you were to be a cast member on the show, what kind of animal would you like to be?
I'm quite a sci-fi nerd, so I might like to be some sort of odd alien.
There are a lot of dating reality shows on Netflix right now. What sort of niche does "Sexy Beasts" fill that's different from the other shows?
What we wanted was escapist fun. One of the shows that was an influence in my thinking was "Buffy the Vampire Slayer." I used to really love it when you get a couple of vampires and they suddenly break off from a fight and have quite a mundane chat.
One of the best chats in the series — and it didn't make it into the cut in the end — these two guys talking in a waiting room. They were chatting to each other and one guy said to the other: "Guys, when I was working in IT, I wasn't very confident. But when I became a fitness trainer, I really got a lot of self-confidence." The other guy's going: "That's really great." They're having this really lovely conversation, but it's a Sasquatch talking to a parrot.
Also the voice-over is really key. We were thrilled to get comedian Rob Delaney to do the voice-over, who I just think is one of the funniest people.
Are any of the couples still together?
All I can tell you is that a lot of them are still in touch. I have these very lovely pictures on my phone of a lot of them watching it together, which is quite sweet.