'Lip Sync Battle' has Spike winning clicks

Stephen Merchant isn't afraid to get Dirrty.

Facing off against actress Malin Akerman in this week's episode of Spike TV's hit Lip Sync Battle (Thursdays, 10 p.m. ET/PT), the lanky, awkward British comedian sports a crop top and leather chaps performing Christina Aguilera's modern classic.

"The whole thing was a blur," says Merchant, co-creator of the original version of The Office, who produces the celebrity lip-syncing competition with actor John Krasinksi and Jimmy Fallon. "I wanted something nice and uptempo, and to me, the funniest things are the ones that are so against your own image. So me, in any attempt to be sexy and slutty, seems automatically funny."

Until now, Spike has been known mostly for movies and reruns, as well as original reality shows such as Bar Rescue and Ink Master. But with Lip Sync Battle's debut in April, the network has scored its most-watched original series (averaging 3 million viewers a week) — and succeeded in attracting more women to a channel that has been predominantly male.

And like the segments introduced on Late Night With Jimmy Fallon, and now on The Tonight Show, Battle's performances have become viral phenomena, racking up more than 125 million streams. Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson mouthing Taylor Swift's Shake it Off has been a particular smash (10 million views on YouTube), as is Anne Hathaway's spot-on re-creation of Miley Cyrus' Wrecking Ball video (9 million) and Anna Kendrick's Booty shake with Jennifer Lopez (4 million).

"The goal for any network is audience engagement, and that your content can travel in these shareable bites," executive producer Casey Patterson says. "The risk was, could we allow those performances to live online as fully as they are and release as much as we did, and still draw people to the television show? That was really the only question mark, and we're just so thrilled that (this) is a show that cracks the code."

Merchant had his first lip-sync showdown with Fallon and Joseph Gordon-Levitt on Late Night in fall 2013, but didn't see it as anything more than just another comedy bit. "I was listening to (Beyoncé's) Single Ladies on the plane and trying to memorize it, but it wasn't a carefully rehearsed performance," he says.

Within days, the nearly 10-minute clip blew up online (45 million views to date), much to his surprise. Not long after, he started bouncing around ideas with Krasinski (who had also done a Late Night lip-sync segment) for a half-hour series, and the two hopped on conference calls with Fallon to discuss what that might look like.

"I liked the idea of taking something that feels so silly in a sense, almost like a parlor game you'd play with your drunk pals, and giving that the production value that TV can," Merchant says.

But it wasn't until NBC passed on the show and they brought it to Patterson at Spike last year that they landed on Battle's format. Hosted by LL Cool J and model Chrissy Teigen, each half-hour episode pits two celebrities, who perform a pair of lip-synced songs. The "winner" is determined by the studio audience's applause at the end of each episode.

Picking which celebrities would appear on the series (18 episodes were shot in New York and Los Angeles, with a 20-episode second season due next year), they looked for stars with comedic sensibilities such as Emily Blunt, Hoda Kotb, Mike Tyson,and Michael Strahan, who didn't necessarily have to be singers, but could "commit to a joke," Patterson says. Each star is asked to dedicate at least 30 minutes for rehearsal, and is not given any limitation on their song choices.

"It's an expensive show because of the music (rights)," says Patterson. But "they didn't learn those songs for the show; they're singing them because they love them. That's what I think audiences are responding to. It's another way to relate to the celebrities, because you're learning about their music tastes."

With Season 2 plans underway, they've been flooded with calls from stars clamoring to head into Battle, Patterson says. And although they're still musing over the next round of guests, Merchant says "the more sincere a performer is in their public image, the more fun" their appearance. "The dream booking for me is to see (Robert) De Niro and (Al) Pacino re-teamed again, just to take a little bit of that chemistry we saw in Heat and see those two go head-to-head."