The perfect couple is on everyone’s lips – and the crime mystery that is at the center of the miniseries is actually not what concerns fans.

The Netflix series, which premiered on September 5 and is based on the 2018 book by Elin Hilderbrand, begins each episode with a somewhat bizarre sequence in which the entire main cast dances—in character!—to Meghan Trainor’s song “Criminals.”

This decision not only gives fans cause for concern, but also caused controversy among the actors themselves after showrunner Susanne Bier announced the news.

“We got a mysterious email from Susanne saying, ‘Guys, you have to learn this dance over the Christmas holidays.’ Everyone had a nervous breakdown and called their agents,” said star Eve Hewson, who plays Amelia Sacks in the series, in a video shared by the streamer.

“The group chat was exploding with voices like, ‘I’ll never do that, I’m not doing that, I’m not dancing, I’m not doing that.’ Personally, I was absolutely thrilled. I thought to myself, ‘This is going to be the best thing I’ve ever done.'”

“We were all a little nervous about it. Maybe not Eve – Eve got it pretty quickly,” said Meghann Fahy, who plays Hewson’s on-screen best friend Merritt Monaco.

Dakota Fanning, who plays Hewson’s future sister-in-law Abby, explained in the video that Bier’s “intention” behind opening each episode with the dance number was to “establish this surreal world that we’ve kind of created on the show.”

“And I think it prepares the audience to see something different than they might expect,” she said of the number.

Fanning was right. Bier told Netflix’s Tudum that the dance, choreographed by Charm La’Donna (who has worked with Trainor for 10 years), “put the show in a very specific atmosphere where it’s like, ‘This is a slightly heightened reality and as an audience you can allow yourself to have fun and enjoy it.’ It was something very joyful that everyone went along with.”

Aside from concerns about not wanting to dance in general, some stars wondered how the number would fit into the overall story they were telling.

Ishaan Khatter, who plays Benji’s best friend Scooter, said diversity that none of the stars “saw any point in doing this choreography with these characters. We thought: ‘Wait a minute, where does this fit into the overall context? That wasn’t part of the brief!'”

This is where star Nicole Kidman’s reticence came into play. “I didn’t feel like Greer was dancing! I felt like Greer was watching,” said the actress, who plays the ruthless matriarch, diversity. “But I danced as Greer. I think it’s great and I’m so glad they got us all to join in because it’s fun.”

She also told the outlet that the entire cast spoke in the group chat about their concerns about the dance — everyone except Liev Schrieber.

Schrieber, 56, who plays patriarch Tag Winbury, knows he was the only one who agreed with the number. “The entire cast was muttering against the idea, except me. I was already in my trailer practicing the dance steps,” he told the outlet.

During an appearance on SiriusXMs The Jess Cagle Show with Julia CunninghamSchreiber revealed more secrets about the dance scene, adding that it wasn’t always in the script. He said the dance wasn’t filmed until late in production and the younger cast members “went up in arms” in a WhatsApp chat after the director suggested it. Schreiber loved the idea, though.

“I guess because I wasn’t on the WhatsApp team, I was the only one who was really excited that we got to do a dance number,” Schreiber said. “My kids don’t watch any of my work. They don’t watch much except TikTok videos and stuff, so I thought this was my chance to get their attention. They had given me the choreography so early that I felt like I could pull it off, and I was really excited to do something they would see and appreciate.”

Sam Nivola, who plays the Winburys’ youngest son, told Tudum that the entire cast was “so intimidated” by the dance, but “mutually agreed to just say, ‘We’ll figure it out on the day.’ And then we did it, and it was so much harder than we thought it would be!”

Jack Reynor joined the chorus of his fellow actors who initially expressed their opposition to the dance, telling British radio station Radio Times: “I was a big naysayer about it.”

But like Nivola, 32-year-old Reynor, who played troublemaker Thomas Winbury, admitted that “in the end, everyone actually had some fun.”

Dancing aside, The perfect couple In “The Movie,” Amelia (Hewson) and the Winbury family – “one of the richest families on Nantucket” – are thrown into chaos after a body turns up on the beach on the morning of Amelia and Benji’s (Billy Howle) wedding.

“As secrets come to light, the stage is set for a real investigation that feels like it came straight from the pages of one of Greer’s novels,” the official synopsis reads. “Suddenly, everyone is a suspect.”

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The perfect couple is now streaming on Netflix.