Brooklyn Punk Duo Venus Twins Tell Us How They Ended Up in Olivia Rodrigo’s New Music Video

Olivia Rodrigo ’s new music video for her “Expectations” remix with Chappell Roan is full of fun cameos, including David Byrne as a game-show host and producer Dan Nigro as a guy with a robot voice. But for fans of New York ’s underground rock scene, there’s another surprise in store: Jake and Matt Derting, the identical siblings better known as the cool, scuzzy glam-punk/noise-pop duo Venus Twins , show up as part of Rodrigo’s team in a Family Feud -style contest about halfway through the video.

When we reach them over Zoom the day after the video’s premiere, both brothers are still buzzing with excitement, and they say their phones have been absolutely blowing up with notifications. “It’s really hard to reply to everybody, which is a good thing,” Matt says. “I want to reply to everybody, though. I want to be like, ‘Thank you!'”

Venus Twins , who have graced some of the city’s finest club stages as part of the live lineup of Fantasy of a Broken Heart in addition to releasing music on their own, first heard from a casting agent about a possible music-video gig about a month ago. “It was non-specific,” Jake says. “I think maybe it did say, ‘Grammy-winning artist,’ but they were hush-hush about it.”

“I think they were just looking for punks,” Matt says. “‘Interesting-looking people and punks,’ I think was the quote.”

“The casting person probably found us on Instagram and was like, ‘These twins are freaky,” Jake adds.

The two of them, who grew up in the Fort Worth, Texas, area before relocating to New York, have some prior on-screen experience, including a 2024 episode of MrBeast ‘s YouTube show in which the online prankster convened 100 identical twins to fight for a cash prize. “We fought to the death and then came out the other end,” Jake says. So they were ready for anything.

A couple of weeks after that first casting call in September, they heard that they’d gotten the music-video gig. “We didn’t even know who it was until literally the night before,” Matt says. “And then we saw it was Olivia Rodrigo and we’re like, ‘Oh, sick.’ Then they said something about Chappell Roan. And were like, ‘Oh, whoa, it’s a collab!'” Editor’s picks The 250 Greatest Albums of the 21st Century So Far The 100 Best TV Episodes of All Time The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time 100 Best Movies of the 21st Century

The next morning, they reported to a “big warehouse studio” in Astoria, Queens. “We pulled up into the place and we just parked in an illegal spot and then walked in,” Jake says.

They spent about an hour in hair and makeup getting ready for their big moment. “They were just going crazy, pulling our fucking hair into liberty spikes ,” Jake continues. “They literally took the whole hour to do Chappell’s makeup on us. And I would do that again.”

They were impressed by the scale of the shoot, which featured something like 100 people running around the set, compared to the “two plus maybe a friend”-style operation that Venus Twins are more used to.

With their punk-rock look complete, they chatted very briefly with the video’s stars. Both of them tried to play it cool with Rodrigo. “She was so sweet,” Matt says.