Emily Blunt might be known as a lead actress and a bit of a prankster, but this week she showed some brand new skills on Spike’s Lip Sync Battle. Check out Blunt’s fun performance of Blackstreet’s “No Diggity,” below.
Blunt’s performance actually starts around the 2:51 mark, following Anne Hathaway’s also-cute version of Mary J. Blige’s “Love.” Hathaway’s still pretty good and worth a watch, but Blunt owns the performance, dancing around and lip sync-rapping like she’s performed on a stage in a musical capacity her whole life. (Maybe she has; she did put together a pretty sweet musical performance in Into The Woods, after all). At one point,she has fun with the crowd, getting everyone to wave in unison. At another, Blunt even gets Hathaway in on the action by giving her a lap dance on the stage. She’s really into the performance.
If you’ve been watching Lip Sync Battle, you may already know the basic format, but in case you don’t, it’s pretty simple. Two celebrity contestants appear in each episode and compete in two different rounds on the show. If you’ve caught the Anne Hathaway “Wrecking Ball” video rolling around the Internet, that’s from the second round, which ups the ante with costumes and props. In the first round, however, contestants have to show their prowess with simple swag and skill.
Part of Blunt’s big skill set here was simply in choosing “No Diggity,” a song that’s been a crowd pleaser since it was released all the way back in 1996. Blunt’s big lip syncing debut isn’t the first time the track has popped up in pop culture, either. Anna Kendrick and the rest of the Pitch Perfect gang memorably performed the song in the first flick in the franchise.
Speaking of Anna Kendrick, the Pitch Perfect actress has also filmed an episode of the freshman unscripted program, and is set to battle Blunt’s husband John Krasinski on an episode of the show that will pop up later this season. You can check out the preview for that episode, below.
Lip Sync Battle airs on Spike on Thursday nights at 10 p.m. ET.
