The ‘Set It Up’ Sexy Pizza Scene Is An All-Time Rom-Com Classic

Every romantic comedy has that one scene. You know the one. It’s “Bennie and the Jets” for 27 Dresses, and “I’m just a girl…” for Notting Hill, and joining the ranks is the pizza scene in Set It Up.

Set It Up stars Zoey Deutch and Glen Powell as Harper and Charlie, assistants to the very busy and very successful Kirsten (Lucy Liu) and Rick (Taye Diggs), who realize that setting up their bosses means they won’t have to live at the office anymore. Their brilliant plan goes…well it’s a rom-com, you know how it goes. And after a meet cute involving desperation for a late night take out dinner, and then collaborating on their scheming, the two become friends. And then….it’s a rom-com! You know what they become!

But the moment they realize how much fun they’re having conspiring together culminates in a scene involving the sexiest pizza sharing you’ve ever seen. Actually, I don’t know what you’ve seen, but this one is very nice.

After spending the evening together at an engagement party, and being banned from the living areas of his apartment due to his roommate’s hook up adventures, Charlie decides to take Harper and their sacred pizza to his room via the fire escape outside. He gets a lesson on how to properly carry the pizza up the ladder, she hoists herself up, and the two drunkenly go to town on that pizza. “I want to fuck this pizza,” he tells her, and she fully understands. It’s a love language in its own right.

As the two bite down on their slices, well, they realize they may have bitten off more than they can chew — not of the pizza, there’s never enough of that — but when it comes to their feelings for each other. Powell so wonderfully gazes at Deutch with admiration as he continues to slowly chew, complete with pizza grease shining around his mouth, and she looks back with that look that only says, “Oh shit, I like him.”

It’s the moment when the characters catch up to what we’ve known all along: these two are perfect for each other. That they’re realizing it over pizza is what makes the moment truly delicious. There haven’t been enough classic rom-coms lately, the kind that let you bask in the journey of two people falling for each other. That Set It Up dares to include a scene, awkward tension, chewing and all, where this all comes to light is sweet and refreshing. The silence between them says everything we need to know. This moment gives viewers that wonderful chance to wonder if they’ll kiss! It feels exciting and old school and also innocent yet sexy at the same time.

And now that you’ve savored all that scene has to offer, let Powell totally burst your pizza crust bubble. “If I tell you how much pizza we ate, it will definitely screw up the romance in that scene,” he admitted when Decider spoke with him last week. “Because the answer is lots of it. Almost probably two whole pies each. It was so much pizza.”

“We had a great time working together. That was very, very late at night, that whole fire escape stuff, on the bed. That was I think the last stuff we had to shoot for the night so that was at [about] five in the morning. We just looked at each other, and we had to figure out this charge and this chemistry, and we were both just wanting to barf. Neither of us were feeling very good after that day. So yeah, that’s the movie making magic.” So romantic!

But, ever the gentleman, Powell was sure to compliment his co-star — no, not the pizza. “With Zoey, even when you want to barf, you can find something lovely in her eyes because she is very easy to do that with.” Clearly they both managed to find it here — and even left us hungry for more.

Where to watch Set It Up