Did they, didn’t they?

In a strange new twist on the classic “will they, won’t they” trope, the latest mystery swirling around Hollywood involves a kiss between the two leads of Netflix’s recently released You People, Jonah Hill and Lauren London.

The 2023 Netflix rom-com explores how the couple of Hill, whose character is white and Jewish, and London, whose character is Black and Muslim, handle the cultural and racial differences between their families.

💋 But wait – the kiss. If you saw the movie, you’d definitely say it happened – it was right there on the screen. But according to co-star Andrew Schulz, it wasn’t actually Hill and London kissing, but rather a fake kiss created using CGI.

• Explaining it on his podcast The Brilliant Idiots, Schulz said he saw Hill and London’s faces stop about six inches apart, which Schulz thought meant the film would cut away to a new scene. Instead, the film shows the two characters’ faces slowly blend together into a blurry kiss.

🎥 The bottom line: Much like every hacker in a movie saying “I’m in,” the use of CGI to change an actor’s appearance is common in Hollywood. According to visual effects executive Matt Panousis, de-aging CGI is used in 80-85% of current films to erase wrinkles, clean up pimples, and in some cases even stretch an actor’s body so they appear thinner and taller.

But faking a kiss with CGI is something that’s rarely done. Though as Christie D'zurilla of the LA Times points out, You People was shot in 2021 at the height of the COVID pandemic, so the decision not to kiss may have been for health reasons.