Message: Is Shooby still tight with his Broey Joey? Add prayer hands emoji. Send!
Within seconds of The Circle's season one winner Joey Sasso getting on the phone with runner-up Shubham Goel, the answer was clear. "Shooby Shoobs! What are you doing buddy?" he exclaimed. "What's up Broey Joey?"
Yup, The Circle's unlikeliest, but most endearing, of buds remain every bit as tight as they were when the initial run of the utterly bingeable reality hit-slash-social media experience's U.S. version signed off the air last January. "It will never end," Sasso confirmed of their friendship in their joint chat with E! News. "Never ever," stressed Goel.
Coming off the Netflix series that had players working to charm other contestants through a social media messaging app in the hopes of being ranked popular enough to win the $100,000 prize, the power duo had big plans to parlay their new status as top influencers into a whole host of opportunities in the entertainment space.
"We had so many things that were literally lined up ready to go," noted Sasso. But then coronavirus entered the chat "and everything got squashed."
Suddenly there were no events to turn up at to delight reality fans with the fact that their on-air connection was real AF. "Dude, we were having so much fun," Sasso, 27, recalled. "I can't even tell you how many times people would come up to us and be like, 'You guys!' I'm like, 'Yeah!' 'But it's real!' And I'm like, 'Well, yeah. What the hell do you think? The show wasn't scripted.'"
The loud-mouthed, goofy actor from Rochester, N.Y., gets why people wouldn't initially pair him with the innocent-seeming 25-year-old software engineer from San Fran, but "I'm friends with every type of person," he explained. "And I said on the show, like, I'm not friends with a lot of people who are like me because a lot of people like me are really just annoying as hell. You can't put up with this."
One look at Goel's broad-grinned face and "I was just like, excuse my language, but this kid is the sweetest f--king kid in the world," Sasso said of the UCLA grad, who once ran for governor of California, vowing to ban social media for those under 18. "He just looks like a handsome guy and you could tell he has a heart of gold."
Adept at "feeling people's energy," Sasso continued, "As soon as I met Shoobs, I was like, 'Man, this is my dude, and we're going to go all the way together.' And we did." It was that assurance that solidified their bromance for Goel. Landing in eighth place out of eight after the players ranked each other on night one, "I was s--ting it," he admitted. "I was telling everyone, 'Guys, it was a pleasure, I think they're booting me.'"
Then Sasso chimed in "saying, 'Shoobs, bro, we're making this to the end. Don't worry,'" Goel reflected. "That was such a special moment. I think that was really the foundation for it all."
That bond continued post show as they lived it up in L.A. and even after the pandemic sent Goel back to the Bay Area, where he's finishing his master's in software engineering at Oxford, working at the software engineering company he cofounded and taking "super sick" sketch comedy and improv classes on the side to stay sharp for any film and TV opportunities that might come his way.
"Last weekend, me and Joey, we had a fire FaceTime—that was a really good one," Goel said of how they're keeping in touch COVID-style. "I think Joey called me at, like, 2 a.m. or something. We were just shooting the stuff like old days. I'll give that, like, a 12 out of 10."
Still, as fun as their chats and virtual game nights are, Sasso can't wait til his bud returns to the City of Angels and they can get some actual face time.
"We were kicking it all the time and we were going to do so much s--t together," he lamented of their few weeks together. Agreed Goel, "We went to the bars in L.A. and we went bowling and stuff. It was just the time of our lives." But as soon as the pandemic begins to wind down, he added, "I'll return back to L.A. and the duo will be reunited. For sure. Unstoppable."
And if they could find some way to work together again, Sasso, finally at a point in his decade-long career where "I don't have to, you know, sling drinks to survive," would be stoked. "I call Shoobs all the time with ideas for stuff we can do. I know people get a kick out of seeing us together," said Sasso. But even if none of that were to work out, "we can just hang out and do simple things: Watch movies and go to events."
Until then, they've always got the Internet and a whole new cast of personalities to dissect, with Netflix releasing its first batch of season two episodes April 14.
"Shooby and I were talking about it because I think with our season, what a lot of people gravitated toward that you don't see a lot, is that it wasn't really cutthroat," Sasso noted. "Everyone really became friends and were there for the experience. So I wonder if that's going to be a common theme now or if people are going to be like, 'Screw them, there's $100,000 on the line. Let's get cutthroat with it.'"
Goel expects to see the former. Where their season was "all about friendship and making those true connections," this time, "I think there will be a lot more drama," he said.
And no matter what goes down or who emerges on top, both he and Sasso are ready to welcome The Circle's newest alumni into the fold.
"I've had so many people ask me, like, straight up, 'Are you jealous that there's a whole new cast of people that are going to get all the attention?'" admitted Sasso. "And I'm always like, 'Dude, I'm literally not at all.' I always say that this show changed my life in every single way, it jump-started my career. I have nothing bad I could ever say in regards to my experience with the show."
And now to get the chance to sit back as a seasoned veteran with his bestie Shoobs "and watch it and welcome in a whole new group of people and see how their experience was," he continued, "like, that is so dope, man. I really can't wait."
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The Circle is currently available to stream on Netflix.