Drake’s “Childs Play” Director Talks Tyra, Cheesecake, and Making the Video

Over the weekend, Drake released the music video for his VIEWS cut “Childs Play.” The 12-minute film is in two parts: in the first, supermodel/TV show host Tyra Banks plays a woman who, during a romantic dinner at a Cheesecake Factory-esque restaurant, discovers that Drake is cheating on her. The second part, filmed at the Houston strip club V Live, features OVO member OB O’Brien playing a boorish club manager nicknamed “Texas Hammer Jr.”

“Childs Play” was co-directed by Drake and Carlos “Spiff TV” Suarez, the music industry multi-hyphenate best known for his work with Maybach Music Group, who also helmed French Montana and Drake’s “No Shopping” video. Pitchfork spoke with Suarez about getting Drake smashed in the face with a piece of cake, the birth of Texas Hammer Jr., and filming in Houston.

Pitchfork: How did you and Drake initially link up? 

Spiff: We shot the video for “No Shopping” and in between it was like a vacation before his tour. That’s when we just came back and shot the video… He had a concept and an idea that he wanted to do, and he sent that over and then we got to it.

Pitchfork: Drake is listed as a co-director—was it his idea to set the video up in the restaurant and then move it to the strip club? 

Spiff: Yeah, we just came together—you know, he had the basic idea of it being in the Cheesecake Factory and performing and getting caked in the face and we just added everything else: the wine being poured on him and him performing at the table. 

Pitchfork: Whose idea was it to cast Tyra Banks in the video? 

Spiff: It was Drake’s. 

Did you guys have to do a lot of takes of the cake scene?

Spiff: I wanted to try to do it two times, but we ended up doing it in one take. The first take was the money shot. We were prepared with the extra wardrobe and everything if we had to do it again. But I saw that once we had it, we had it, you know?

Pitchfork: Did you guys film it in an actual Cheesecake Factory? 

Spiff: That was shot in Los Angeles in a restaurant that we scouted. I had the art department make the menus and have the kind of Cheesecake Factory type of print, but if you look closely it has the 6 hands or the prayer hands in the middle. It was dope.

Pitchfork: Whose idea was the Texas Hammer Jr. character? 

Spiff: OB’s just a natural, man. OB, he’s a dope rapper and like a comedian. So, there’s a guy in Houston whose name is Texas Hammer and he’s like a lawyer. He’s like, “If you get hurt in a car accident, I will get you money,” you know? He has these informercials that are hilarious if you pull them up on YouTube. Funny as shit. So, that’s where the idea came from, and [OB] became the Texas Hammer Jr., his son.

Pitchfork: So it was just like a running joke between you guys and then it materialized?

Spiff: Yeah, it was a running joke. And you know Drake always has OB doing his thing.

Pitchfork: How much of the scene in the locker room was scripted? 

Spiff: We had a basic of what we wanted, but a lot of it was on the fly. We would come up and do something or say something and put it on. There’s a lot of stuff that we edited out that was funny that we just had to edit for time. OB was making it up as he went and we were building it as he was making it up. He kept on making it up and Drake would throw an idea in—boom, add that on, and keep going.

It’s just like “No Shopping”: “No Shopping” wasn’t supposed to be shot on the golf course. We were just supposed to shoot in the main villa that we were at, and the people from the villa were like, ‘You guys can’t film here,’ and they made a big ruckus and they were like, ‘You guys gotta get the camera crew out here,’ but we somehow—the people were like, ‘We’ll give you a different villa that you can shoot,’ and this villa happened to have the golf course in the backyard. So that whole golf skit came out of luck.

Pitchfork: Why did you choose to shoot at V Live in Houston?

If you listen to the song, it’s that vibe of that Houston strip club. It’s different. You go to different strip clubs all over the world, but that’s just the spot. Everything lined up perfectly because he was rehearsing for the tour about an hour away from Houston so that’s how I was able to piggyback and shoot the video. We shot the video in Houston as he was getting ready for the tour. 

And is that why it dropped this weekend? Because Drake is in the city doing his Houston Appreciation Weekend?

Yeah, he dropped it while he was in Houston. It was perfect. Because the video’s been ready. The video was ready to go. 

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