But, it was for a good reason, with the pair surprising the People’s Choice Awards audience with the 2004 hit’s singer, Natasha Bedingfield, who helped announce the award for Female Country Artist.
It’s hard to imagine Sydney Sweeney and Glen Powell having an awkward moment.
The pair were on hand Sunday at the 2024 People’s Choice Awards where they introduced the nominees for The Female Country Artist when Sweeney attempted to quell Powell’s nerves by singing his serenity song, “Unwritten,” by Natasha Bedingfield.
Urging Powell along, Sweeney launched into the song’s chorus — a callback to the pair’s hit romantic comedy, Anyone But You.
She even got the PCAs audience in on the bit as she sang, “staring at the blank page before you, open up the dirty window…”
But that didn’t seem to do the trick for the Top Gun: Maverick star, who told Sweeney, that he was still feeling pretty anxious about being on stage.
“Come on Glen, you have to trust me,” Sweeney said, jumping right back into the 2004 track, with Powell begrudgingly singing along.
It was then Sweeney pulled out the big guns and brought Bedingfield to the stage!
Stepping out in a red, flowing gown, the British-born singer belted out the well-known chorus, and joined Powell, Sweeney — and pretty much everyone in the crowed — in the festive singalong.
Bedingfield stayed on stage, where she helped the co-stars announce the nominees for The Female Country Star category before crowning Lainey Wilson as the winner in the category.
While the moment started off a bit cringe, it turned into a cute, and nostalgic reunion.
Fans of the rom-com will recall that “Unwritten” was used to calm down Powell’s character in the film and become a vital part of Anyone But You‘s soundtrack, with the entire cast singing along to uplifting tune by the film’s end.
The movie helped bring the early aughts song to a Gen Z audience, with Billboard reporting that “Unwritten” earned over 1.3 million official on-demand streams, following the film’s December release.
The track has also been used in countless TikTok videos since the film’s release, with Bedingfield herself posting a pair of videos celebrating the song’s resurgence.
“A rom com has got girls falling out of cinemas singing my song — and now it’s trending!!!” she wrote in an intro to a compilation of post-Anyone But You “Unwritten” TikToks.
