Trips to Chicago pay off in ‘Pitch Perfect 3’ scene for Brittany Snow

In an early scene in “Pitch Perfect 3” (opening Friday), Brittany Snow’s Chloe character flirts with Matt Lanter’s Army sergeant character, assigned to escort the revived Bellas girls a cappella singing group on a USO tour. When Chloe thinks the soldier’s first name is “Chicago,” she schmoozes him by dropping all kinds of Windy City references. The irony is the guy has no connection to Our Town, beside his name — he’s from Atlanta. However, that revelation comes after Chloe riffs on the Cubs, Bears, Bulls, Wrigley Field, deep dish pizza and other iconic local things, in rapid-fire fashion.

Snow laughed remembering filming with Lanter, who happens to be a friend in real life. “It was such a treat for us to work together for the first time,” said Snow, who explained she relied on her many visits with her Chicago-based grandparents to come up with all those comments.

“That was totally improvised,” the actress noted. “I just wanted to come up with a logical pickup line for how Chloe would approach that cute guy! I went on and on. Plus there were 20 other Chicago things I said that didn’t make it into the final cut of the movie.”

• For Hana Mae Lee, who again plays Lilly in this third “Pitch Perfect” film, a recent Chicago visit to film the “Patriot” TV series led to a futile search. “One of my favorite, guilty pleasure movies is ‘Never Been Kissed’ with Drew Barrymore. I wanted to find the location of the Chicago Sun-Times building from that film, and kept walking up and down Wacker Drive looking for that funny-looking building, but I never found it.”

Lee then learned that the newspaper’s headquarters from that 1999 film had been torn down and replaced with the current Trump Tower. “Not exactly what I was expecting,” said the actress.

• As star Anna Kendrick sees it, audiences don’t have to have seen the first two films to understand this third one. “If you try to go see ‘Star Wars,’ and it’s sold out, come see our movie! Here’s all you need to know: We’re girls. We were in a college singing group. We get the group together again. Now — you’re all caught up!”