After putting on a Broadway show last season, “Only Murders in the Building” raised the creative bar in Season 4 with a love letter to Hollywood film—and with it came a star-studded ensemble.
The season finds Paramount Pictures filming a movie adaptation of the podcast featuring Steve Martin’s Charles-Haden Savage, Martin Short’s Oliver Putnam and Selena Gomez’s Mabel Mora, with that trio portrayed on screen by Eugene Levy, Zach Galifianakis and Eva Longoria.
“The first conversation was, what is the movie version going to be like? Where is the humor going to come from? And obviously casting those people was hugely important to set the joke up,” casting director Tiffany Little Canfield said. “There were a couple of iterations. Like, is it funny to have people in their 40s for the guys and then make Mabel a teenager or a child so that the age difference is a
joke? We moved off that pretty quickly and then it was just coming up with iconic comedy stars that we would love to have on the show.”
“It’s really cool for us to be involved early because the ideas that we send start to shape how the writers are writing,” casting director Destiny Lilly added. “As the casting evolves, the writing evolves as well.”
Canfield noted that Longoria was already in conversation with showrunner John Hoffman about appearing in Season 4, while Levy and Galifianakis’ involvement was pitched to their agents. Other notable appearances in Season 4 included Meryl Streep, Paul Rudd, Melissa McCarthy, Molly Shannon and more.
“We’re lucky to be in a position where so many people love the show and want to
be on it,” Lilly said. “Most of the time, people are excited about the opportunity when it comes their way. It’s really just a question of timing and scheduling with these roles.”
Season 4, being a bicoastal story, also sparked increased interest, especially when it came to finding extras while filming for a few days in Los Angeles.
“We shot for literally one weekend in Los Angeles,” Lilly said. “The whole backlot sequence at Paramount and the party in L.A. was filmed there, but
almost everything else was shot in New York.”
“Because we released a breakdown for those small roles, the rest of the season we had agents who (approached us and) said, ‘Now that it’s in L.A.…’” Canfield said. “And I’m like, ‘It’s not in L.A.’ Even towards the final episode, we were still getting pitches.”
Once casting decisions for the main cast of Season 4 were locked in, the real challenge began: scheduling.
Da’Vine Joy Randolph had to balance her return as Detective Donna Williams with Oscar season, in which she won Best Supporting Actress for The Holdovers; Rudd had four days to film all his appearances as Ben Glenroy’s Irish stunt double Glen Stubbins; and Kumail Nanjiani was shooting an independent film while making appearances as Rudy, one of the quirky residents of the Arconia’s West Tower.
The most challenging scenes to shoot were those with larger groups of the cast, such as the brawl between Streep and McCarthy in Episode 7, for example. “That was really hard,” Canfield said. “But I love it because we get to use any ammo we have in casting. When we got our dates for that episode, we were really clear with everybody about when we had Meryl. Everyone wanted to be there. Suddenly conflicts flew away. Everyone had seen Season 3. They saw the chemistry and what was happening on that set. So I think it really helped us.”
“They were like, ‘I want to be in the room with Steve and Marty and Meryl and Paul Rudd.’ Part of the appeal of being on the show is working in the room with those actors,” Lilly added.
Canfield and Lilly also have to adapt to changes made in the writers’ room, whether that be cameo appearances from big names like Ron Howard, John McEnroe and Scott Bakula or adding additional side characters at the last minute, such as Stubbins’ nurse, played by Erika Vetter, in Episode 9.
“That’s always fun for us to be like, ‘OK, we’ll figure it out,’” Lilly said. “Sometimes casting can get ahead of the writing. They don’t necessarily know what they’re going to need, so we have to be really flexible.”
As the Hulu comedy gears up for its fifth season and another new mystery, Canfield and Lilly said that conversations about casting have already started.
“Agents don’t know any of the roles for Season 5, but they’re like, ‘This actor loves the show. They’re dying to be on it. Please consider them’,” Lilly said. “We just add them to the list.”
This story first appeared in the Below-the-Line issue of TheWrap’s awards magazine. Read more from the Below-the-Line issue here.
