‘The Other Two’ Moment Inspired by Justin Bieber and Scooter Braun
The premise of HBO’s The Other Two will seem familiar to fans of Justin Bieber. As with Bieber’s own story, the show features a young singer who blows up to international fame after posting a music video online. While The Other Two is not based entirely on Beiber, there’s one moment in the first season that the singer directly inspired.
ChaseDreams is the young pop star in ‘The Other Two’
The Other Two’s young star is Chase Dubek (Case Walker), known as ChaseDreams. The thirteen-year-old posts a viral Youtube video that launches him to fame practically overnight. His mom (Molly Shannon) is eager to promote his career and hires a manager, Streeter (Ken Marino).
The roots in Bieber’s story are there — the name Streeter is a close approximation of Scooter, after all — but Chase is not the primary character. Instead, the show focuses on his adult siblings, Cary (Drew Tarver) and Brooke (Heléne Yorke). Cary, a struggling actor, and Brooke, a former dancer, grapple with their younger brother’s explosive artistic success.
Justin Bieber inspired a specific moment in the show
The creators of The Other Two, Chris Kelly and Sara Schneider, explain that while Bieber was a “jumping-off point” for their writing, they lifted one anecdote directly from his life. Before their work on this show, Kelly and Schneider were co-head writers on SNL. Typically, the show’s hosts meet with writers on Tuesdays to discuss sketches.
In a conversation with Fred Armisen at Vulture Fest, Kelly explained that this did not happen when Bieber hosted:
That week, Justin Bieber didn’t go around, but his manager, Scooter Braun, went around in his stead. And he was very nice, but we were like, ‘Where’s Justin?’ And they were like, ‘Oh, bad news on that front. We’re trying to get his body jacked so I fed him a bunch of raw eggs and he is puking his guts out.’ So Justin was on an all-egg or all egg-white or something diet, and was, like, so sick. And I was like, ‘I will take that, and make fun of it.
And he did. In the show’s pilot episode, Chase is unable to join his family and Streeter for dinner due to violent sickness. To get him “jacked up” to present at the Kid’s Choice Awards, Streeter fed Chase a dozen raw eggs for lunch, resulting in the teen “lying on the floor back at the hotel room on a tarp.”
Schneider explained that the moment with Bieber was important in developing the show.
“Our main takeaway, besides the eggs joke, was just that interesting dynamic of a young kid and the people making the decisions for him,” she told Vulture. “We got an idea that someone is being told exactly what type of person they should be to succeed.”
‘The Other Two’ Season 2 is coming to HBO
While the first season aired on Comedy Central, The Other Two has a new home on HBO. The second season will address the future of ChaseDreams’s career, as well as his family member’s grasps at fame. Fans can watch the first two episodes of the new season on Aug. 26.
