‘Happy Endings’: Casey Wilson on the Penny-pony scene you didn’t get to see

Image Credit: Adam Taylor/ABC

Happy Endings isn’t afraid to embrace the weird and/or the wacky (see: the Halloween episode, any other minute of the show). But a scene that was shot for the season premiere apparently went a few steps too far into Bizarroville, as Casey Wilson played current-day Penny as well as a geriatric version of Penny and — well, maybe it’s for the best if you hear it from her:

“It was a real look into my future,” she told EW. “Frightening and sexy. And unsettling. I feel like I glimpsed my future and I accept it. I finally got to act with myself. It was a dream sequence where I thought of myself as a spinster, and at one point we brought in miniature ponies which we put sparkles on, and they were having a tea party. And Old Penny got down on the ground and ate off plates with them, with her mouth. Like, I was hunched over a table with ponies. As I was doing it, I was like, ‘I’ve been on Saturday Night Live, I’ve done a lot of sketch comedy, but this is the craziest thing I’ve ever done in my life.’ And those little ponies — their hoofs and mouths were right in my face and I’m in this old-lady makeup and I had a smoker’s voice — suddenly old Penny had started smoking and turned Long Island. It was craziness. I think it will be on the DVD. But it just felt like a lot to come back with for the first episode, if people hadn’t been with the show. As [creator] David Caspe said, ‘We took a swing. A swing and a miss.’”

A tea party? With sparkly mini-ponies? And two Pennys? There is only one thing left to do: Start counting the days until the Happy Endings season 2 DVD is released. “It’s not only the weirdest thing we ever shot that didn’t air,” sums up Caspe, “but definitely the weirdest thing we’ve ever shot, period.”

To read much more about Happy Endings, pick up the new issue of Entertainment Weekly, on stands now.

Read more:
EW’s ‘Happy Endings’ recaps