Chicken Shop Date

“Casting directors go their whole life trying to find chemistry like this.”

It’s not an interview show. It’s a date. “A real date,” Amelia Dimoldenberg clarified during a recent appearance on Late Night with Seth Meyers. What began as a column in a magazine started at her youth club in London over a decade ago has grown into a reliably entertaining must-stop for any celebrity looking to make waves on a press tour. Those celebrities include Cher, Jennifer Lawrence, Paul Mescal, Sabrina Carpenter and Keke Palmer. In a celebrity media ecosystem fed by “more, more, more,” Dimoldenberg shrewdly understands the science of appetite. “I’m very particular about who I have on and I’m a very picky date,” she recently told Seth Meyers.

“Also, I’m not bound to having to put an episode out every day or every week or every month. I literally put an episode out when I find someone I’d like to date.“

The premise was clearly-executed from the outset. “What would you say your type is in a girl?” Dimoldenberg asks her first-ever guest, British rapper Ghetts, in the pilot episode that went live in March 2014. “I like girls with a sense of humor,” he responds. “Okay, so, me,” she says, wryly. By Episode 6, in 2016, the familiar and still-used saxophone jingle was introduced. And though the subsequent videos have gotten longer, higher-resolution and more tightly edited, the bones of the show have remained the same: Amelia attempts to disarm her date through prying questions while never seeming to show too much interest in them. That, plus, as the New York Times described it:

“Deliberate, ungodly silences.”

And let’s not forget the Office-esque reaction shots which have made Dimoldenberg instantly memeable to the chronically online set that often drive cultural conversation. “So what’s your type?” she asked Jack Harlow in a 2021 episode — the first I ever saw. “Dark hair,” he responds after taking a sip from a juice box. She huffs and rolls her eyes in an exaggerated manner.

In a media landscape where stars are often forced to do status quo chatty banter on late night or wacky hijinks (see: BuzzFeed’s Puppy Interview series), Chicken Shop Date is leading the pack amongst a new wave that includes Sean Evans’s Hot Ones and Julian Shapiro-Barnum’s Recess Therapy in introducing premise-first interview series that stars seem to flock to, as opposed to other press tour stops which can often read as obligation fulfillment. And though it’s clear her trajectory has been on the up and up for some time (she was drafted by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences to serve as the official Oscars red carpet host earlier this year), her most recent episode of Chicken Shop Date, featuring actor Andrew Garfield, feels like an Ally Maine singing “Shallow” for the first time on stage-esque moment.

A bit of the lore. November 2022: “I’ve been trying to get a date with you for a while,” Dimoldenberg told Garfield while interviewing him on the red carpet of the GQ Men of the Year Awards. “I have not gotten the memo,” Garfield says with a smile and a laugh. 

Amelia: I’m asking you out right now.

Andrew: You do date a lot of people.

Amelia: And…?

Andrew: It’s wonderful, I just feel like… less special, I guess.

Amelia: No way. You are the most special!

Andrew: Right. You say that to every single person!

Amelia: No, I don’t! This is the first person I’ve called special tonight.

The banter escalates.

Amelia: You look hot! I’m giving you a compliment, you look really good. Just take the compliment.

Andrew: I’ll take the compliment. You look lovely as well. You look very beautiful. What is…?

Amelia: It’s a dress.

They reunited two months later, in January 2023, on the red carpet of the Golden Globes. Garfield approaches Dimoldenberg hesitantly, laughing before he’s even arrived for the interview proper.

Amelia: Why are you…? Just stand! Be normal.

Andrew: I just saw this… [Mimics her hesitant facial expression]

Amelia: No, I didn’t do that.

Andrew: Like a capybara in the wild!

Amelia: No, I was smiling! Like, happy to see you.

He goes on to tell her that he only ever wants to see her on a red carpet after she says that they must stop meeting like this. “Not interested,” he tells her when she asks about other situations. “I don’t think we should explore this,” he declares shortly thereafter. “Okay, well I’m not even asking you to. You’re the one that’s obsessed with me!” she exclaims. “That’s what I’m saying. I’m scared of what it could turn into. And I’m not ready for it,” comes his response.

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It took him nearly two years, but Garfield proved finally ready when he sat down for his much-anticipated date with Dimoldenberg. At a run-time of 11 minutes and 40 seconds, it’s Dimoldenberg’s longest date yet — no date has ever even surpassed the 9-minute mark. From the moment they sat down, the bubbling chemistry built up over their two subsequent run-ins felt ready to uncork. “Don’t do anything weird,” she warned.

“Like, bring out a ring or like, get down on one knee. Like, I’m not in the mood… today.”

We then cut to Garfield, who’s running his fingers through his beard.

“Alright. I hear you.”

His face can be described in no other way than lovestruck.

The subsequent 11-plus minutes serve as a master class in the art of the romantic comedy. 

Some stand-out moments:

And though studios might tell you we’re in a new heyday of the romantic comedy, the truth is we’re so lost, we don’t even know which direction “found” is in. I Googled “All The Rom-Coms You Can Stream in 2024” and came to a listicle that included Challengers, Twisters and The Idea of You. And while these films do contain romance, none of them are categorically comedies, let alone romantic-comedies, an increasingly impossible-to-come-by category of film that dominated so much formative cinema for the 30+ year-old set. But then there was this!

Twitter, for once, went appropriately ballistic.

One tweet that read simply “the people yearn for romance,” has amassed nearly a quarter of a million likes.

This one was great, too.

So what was it about the interview? I think it was Garfield seamlessly deconstructing the very premise of the show in disarming Dimoldenberg by what seemed like genuine flirtation. They had a developed lore which gave the interview both immediacy and tension and benefited from a willingness from both participants to lean in. “C’mon, we can own that, like, it’s been… vibey,” Garfield tells Dimoldenberg not even a minute in after cracking a beer. “Yeah, it’s been vibey… to the point where you’ve been avoiding me for two years because the vibes were too much for you to handle,” she counters.

And there we’ve laid out our premise: He’s hesitant but willing; she’s ensnared him, but still believes him to be unwittingly trapped. Are they acting? That it remains unanswerable is part of the fun.

Taking a look back at their encounters over the years: You have Interview 1 where she asks him out and he tells her she looks beautiful. This serves as establishment. Next, you have Interview 2 where he says they should not explore this, and thus acknowledged that there is a “this,” though what exactly “this” is remains uncertain. After she mocks him by accusing him of being obsessed with her, he concedes and thus the power dynamic feels up for grabs. Interview 3 plays on this perfectly by allowing it to feel like a first date while also feeling like a long time coming. They have a pre-established dynamic and banter despite still imbuing their time together with the nerves conjured by a first date. Garfield, for his part, masterfully blurs the line between being himself and matching the heightened version of Dimoldenberg that she plays on the show. That we don’t know if they’re actually flirting is what makes this interview so striking. Of course, they’re not. She’s at her workplace, doing her job, as is he. But the fact that I cannot state that with 100% certainty is the sweet spot that has so many, myself included, rapt.

Are we that starved for romantic-comedies? Well, yes. Though we have movies that imbue romance and comedy (see: No Hard Feelings or Anyone But You), these films are missing the kind of chemistry that we say leaps off the screen. It’s a kind of chemistry that has you, the viewer, believing not only in their love, but the possibility of their love being a kind of love that could exist for you. It makes you compare your love stories, whether current, past or future — to this template of great love before you.

So what happens next? If I were a studio, I’d commission Dimoldenberg to fully render this into a script.

“English comedian and presenter creates a show for her to go on dates, which leads her to meet a charming English actor on a press tour. Though initially resistant to their attraction, eventually they succumb to their flirtation and fall in love.”

It’s giving Notting Hill, isn’t it? Love that. And while I’ll hold out hope for that, I do think it’s worth acknowledging Dimoldenberg’s skills here, how keyed in she is to her instincts, both as a comedian but also as a creator. She built this show — incubated, developed and refined it over several years — and has enjoyed the fruit of her labor all the while keeping true to what audiences first fell in love with about her, which wouldn’t ya know it: is her! 

By remaining unbound, unmoored and unflinching, Amelia Dimoldenberg has created the new gold standard. May we all take a lesson.