Turns out Emma was lying when she told Anna her chicken casserole wasn't good.
Tom Riley said the 9-year-old Woman in the House Across the Street From the Girl in the Window actress was actually pretty keen on the stuff, joking to E! News, "In the first episode where we're having dinner at Anna's house, Samsara [Yett], who plays Emma my daughter, ate bowl upon bowl upon bowl of it."
According to Tom, Samsara was eating the dish whenever she could get her hands on it, even after the director yelled cut. "She had it in her pockets for the ride home. Like, she loved it."
Kristen Bell's character Anna was more into the vino, but those glasses weren't filled with actual alcohol and for good reason. "I didn't slip in anything real," Kristen said with a straight face, "because I was already coming to work pretty drunk."
In reality, the actress was sipping hibiscus tea, having decided that grape juice was not ideal for working long hours on the set. "It was grape juice the first day," she said, "and I put the kibosh on that right quick because I was just having a complete sugar crash after the first scene."
The only downside to drinking so much of the "tangy and tart" beverage, Kristen said, was having to "pee all day every day." Otherwise, it was a "quite lovely" alternative.
Like Kristen's copious glasses of wine, The Woman in the House isn't what it appears to be. The series is simultaneously a romantic thriller and a comedic sendup of the genre.
In fact, Kristen thinks it can't even be categorized as one specific genre. "I think that the writers and our director kind of invented a tone here," she said. "Nothing like this—that I've seen—has ever been done before."
Of course, with any new idea there are some kinks to work out and Kristen shared that she felt "insecure" about what the end result would look like. "When you read [the script] it was funny but when we were executing the scenes it didn't necessarily feel funny," she recalled. "And the people behind the cameras were like, 'Trust me, it's coming across hilarious.'"
Eventually, Kristen realized, "Maybe I've been waiting my whole life to do this level of good bad acting."
Co-star Michael Ealy said that his goal was just to enjoy himself on this project after starring in thrillers like The Intruder. "For me, it was nice to kind of poke fun at some of the things that I've already done with such vigor and integrity," he shared. "You know what I mean? It's kind of nice to kind of poke fun at that."
The Woman in the House Across the Street From the Girl in the Window is streaming now on Netflix.