For “Only murder in the building” showrunner John Hoffman and “Die for sex” Boss Liz Meriwether, the fun of writing comedy lies in the unexpected, with both creators strongly adapted to the cathartic way comedy can interact with tragedy in their show.
“I like the laughter that happens when you are vulnerable and when you are real and human and during the most sad situations,” Hoffman told Meriwether during a new part of Thewrap’s long -shaped video series Visionary. “Finding the binding laugh there will make me laugh in a way that is the only way I want to laugh.”
“It feels like another kind of thing when you laugh in the middle of grief, it feels like … therapy, it’s like a catharsis, it’s a big laugh for me … An important laugh,” Meriwether said. “Being able to pull out a laugh from real tragedy is great.”
There could be no more moments of tragic laughter in Meriwether’s “Dying for Sex”, who plays Michelle Williams as a woman whose terminal cancer diagnosis urges her to leave her husband and explore her sexuality, with the support of her best friend (Jenny Slate). After writing within the typical boundaries of comedy as a showrunner for network sitcom “New Girl” and then controlled “The Dropout” with an emotionally avoidant protagonist, it was the great feelings that came to show Molly’s journey – drawn from the real story of a woman named Molly Kochan – who attracted her to FX – FX – who attracted her.
While “only murder in the building” encompasses a more optimistic tone in every whodennation during the course of the Hulu series, the fourth season saw the trio confront a murder near their hearts as they examined the death of Jane Lynch’s Sazz Pataki, the close friend of Steve Martins Charles after serving as his stunt.
Meriwether points to Season 4 moments when Charles finds her hands covered by Sazz’s ashes, which urges some creative answers from Martin Shorts Oliver and Selena Gomez’s Mabel about what to do the next, as a scene that successfully mixed tones of humor and grief. “It does so many things … you play with the shape, it’s meta,” Meriwether said. “It manages to pull off a wink to the camera but just complete feeling and take on loneliness and old age and love and find yourself late in life … and it’s so stupid and stupid in a fantastic way.”
Touched that she picked up the stage and said “That description makes me proud, Hoffman revealed that it was the moment in the fourth part that affected him the most, which he also happened to direct, and write.
“The idea that a friend had his hands in the box on his friend was the sweet place in my mind,” said Hoffman, making it clear that “it’s a horrible scene” but he was drawn to the “condition” What do I do? I loved my friend. “
“In a joke you have a set and a punchline – it’s comfortable because you know where to laugh,” Meriwether said. “But that sequence, it’s this beautiful thing … I don’t know where to laugh … I laugh and I’m when I’m uncomfortable and then I’m very sad and then I laugh again.”
When Meriwether and Hoffman fought over the fight to keep things fresh in long -standing shows (“New Girl” and “Only Murders in the Building”), Meriwether Hoffman applauded to never play it safely when the Hulu series took big oscillations that brought Murder 3 to season in season to season in season.
Meriwether also told Hoffman that she looked to “just murder in the building” as she writes her next series, which turns her attention to a female serial killer and asks him if he has any tips to thread a case with an emotional review. “I’ve made myself a hell,” he joked.
“What a pivot,” said Hoffman, leaving “that’s not where I thought you would go and I love it.”
“I’m in my Pivot -era,” Meriwether said.
To hear the show runners share stories about directing Meryl Streep and working with Natalie Portman and how their Midwestern backgrounds affected their Hollywood track, watch the entire video above.
Visionaries are produced by Jennifer Laski, director of video and photography for Thewrap.
