(Spoiler alert: Please do not read on if you don’t want spoilers for “Love” Season 3)
The final Season of Netflix’s romantic comedy series “Love” has a great ending (don’t worry, we won’t give it away), but not before Mickey (Gillian Jacobs) and Gus (Paul Rust) have a “pivotal” argument that will define the future of their relationship.
In that scene, the couple is visiting Gus’ parents in South Dakota for their 40th wedding anniversary, and things take a turn for the worse when Gus tells Mickey he doesn’t think she’s ready to start a family — and takes shots at her sobriety.
In an interview before the third and final season dropped on Netflix, creator and star Rust told TheWrap that Jacobs’ performance in that argument scene was ad-libbed.
“The shot that actually goes on for a long time — where she’s telling Gus her side of how she feels about things — that was purely Gillian in character after four months of shooting, and just being fully in touch with how she felt about things,” Rust said.
“I’m so glad [we got] the stuff she riffed,” he continued, saying she ad-libbed the portion “when she was saying like, ‘hey, I could fall off the wagon five years from now, 10 years from now, 40 years from now, what are you gonna do about that?’
“To me, that was Gillian, and it was also her speaking the truth she felt about the character and also people who are in the program, which is like, you expect them to be perfect for the rest of their lives and it’s a really high bar to expect from somebody,” Rust said.
The whole concept of a fight at Gus’ parents house came out of one comedic element, Rust said: “What if you were fighting at your parents house with your loved one and you had to keep it quiet so nobody hears, and then the moment you want to scream you just bury your face into a blanket and scream?”
Rust added that “having the pivotal argument” at Gus’ parents house “felt right” because “probably, most of our things we’re working out in our romantic relationships are things that came about because of how we were raised in our families and what we saw there.”
The scene, and several that follow, definitely get intense, but Mickey and Gus find a way to reconcile, which we won’t give away — you’ll have to watch the season for yourself.
“Love” Season 3 is now streaming on Netflix.