Tonight NBC airs Peter Pan Live!, its now-annual Orwellian purging of hatred against entertainment in all its cursed forms, packaged as a live staging of the classic musical with Girls’ Allison Williams and Christopher Walken as its easy moving targets. But before our citizenry can unleash all its pent-up frustration over the oppression it’s seen in recent weeks—releasing it in a series of snarky tweets, until the last Lena Dunham collateral swipe and “More cowbell” gag sputters forth from a mentally exhausted Twitter—Williams has one request: Don’t, maybe?
Indeed, despite Peter Pan Live! only existing thanks to the social media success of last year’s Sound Of Music Live—when America channeled its anger over the NSA leaks and the Boston Marathon bombing into telling Carrie Underwood she fucking suuuuuucks—Williams believes that tonight’s viewers should watch her musical with more of an open heart. It’s a wish she shared in a recent interview with The Daily Beast that should get everyone nice and riled up, ready to vent.
“I will say this about last year: today’s audiences like to watch things cynically. And I’m on a show that’s cynical in tone so I’m no stranger to that,” Williams said of her regular show, which provides a smaller outlet of rage for a few months per year. “Hate-watching is a thing. It’s a whole way of watching something, and it’s not an audience that’s natural to a non-cynical performance. Peter Pan, you cannot watch cynically. If you do, you’re going to hate it, no question. It falls apart instantly.”
After this bragging that a show created for the express purpose of garnering hate will do just that, Williams continued her role as the spectacle’s designated heel by openly daring the audience to bring it on—that surely you can’t hate on Peter Pan. Not you. You’re not big or bad enough to hate on Peter Pan. You’re weak. Why, you’ll fold like a little child:
“I have full faith that this will happen,” Williams says, prepping her fairy dust for a flurry of happy thoughts. “People will hear the opening strings of music that they know deep, deep down in their heart, and it will make them nostalgic again. And they’ll crumble. And they might get one hate-tweet out really quickly, and then we won’t hear from them for a while—because they’ll have been sucked into the sense memory that hopefully will be Peter Pan.”
After reading Williams’ words, a frothing, chair-smashing populace expressed their gratitude, saying that this is exactly what they need after all this Mike Brown/Eric Garner bullshit, thank you.