“Only Murders in the Building” Season 4 kicked off a bicoastal adventure, as the Arconia’s true crime podcasting trio took on Los Angeles to mull a film adaptation deal, while also looking for answers about who murdered Charles Haden-Savage’s (Steve Martin) stunt double Sazz Pataki (Jane Lynch).
“One of the biggest challenges we’ve ever had was coming to Los Angeles with our very deeply New York show, both in terms of executing the production with crew and everything else but also (maintaining) the spirit of it,” showrunner John Hoffman told TheWrap. “I loved the juxtaposition of our trio in Los Angeles. Some have experience with it, some don’t. The tropes about what modern Los Angeles looks like now, what kind of things are getting made and how do you manage trying to make a movie in the midst of a murder investigation, all that felt great.
He added: “I loved the idea of establishing the Hollywood world in Episode 1 and letting the Hollywood world infect the New York world and the Arconia.”
After paying tribute to Broadway in Season 3, the upcoming season of the Hulu comedy and murder mystery is a love letter to Hollywood.
“I love a good thematic umbrella across a season, and when we realized the victim this season is a Hollywood stunt double and our podcast having solved so many murders has been taking off in so many ways, how do we mark that?,” Hoffman said. “So it felt like a perfect marriage of the podcast being pursued as an IP for a Hollywood treatment matched with our Hollywood stunt double victim in a whole season that really points to these reflections for our central trio of themselves.”
The trio was joined by a star-studded lineup of both returning and new guest stars, from Meryl Streep, who reprises her role as Oliver Putnam’s (Martin Short) love interest Loretta Durkin to Eva Longoria, Eugene Levy and Zach Galifiankis, who will play themselves as the group of actors set to portray Mabel (Selena Gomez), Charles and Oliver in a Hollywood film adaptation of the show’s podcast.
Other guest stars include Molly Shannon, who portrays a high-powered L.A. businesswoman drawn into the investigation in New York; Melissa McCarthy, who is set to portray Charles’ sister from Long Island; and Kumail Nanjiani and Richard Kind, whose characters have yet to be revealed in detail.
“What’s phenomenal about this season is the twists and turns of the mystery,” Short told TheWrap. “There’s so many characters that could be the killer and it’s very well constructed.”
When it came to assembling this season’s group of stars, Hoffman admitted it was a mix of reaching out to people the creative team was interested in having on the show, as well as celebrities who were fans and wanted to join the cast.
“You hear things all the time. Agents will reach out and say, ‘My God, my client loves this show and would love anything’… But this season just felt ridiculous, everyone who I wished for said yes,” Hoffman said. “And it was a dream for me to walk in and get to know people who I just love and have worshiped for their performances over the years.”
One example of a star that the production team reached out to was Shannon, whom Hoffman previously worked with on the 2003 film “Good Boy.”
“I’ve always wanted to work with her again,” Hoffman said. ‘So I was like, ‘Oh, it’s time, if we can find something, she makes perfect sense.’ And Steve and Marty and Selena all loved her.”
Meanwhile, Streep returning as Loretta and allowing the show to continue to explore her relationship with Oliver after heading off to LA to star in a television series at the end of Season 3 was “the greatest gift ever,” Hoffman said.
And Levy, Longoria and Galifiankis as the “dream trio” of doppelgangers for the show’s core podcasters was “beyond anything I could have ever hoped for,” he added.
“They were all fantastic as their individual genuine selves, but in pairing with each one of the trio members, I loved the way they sparked in ways that none of us could have really predicted or understood and I like the way they’re all very different in the setups of how they’re relating to each other,” Hoffman said.
When asked about working with this season’s guest stars, Gomez told TheWrap she was “overjoyed.” She praised Longoria as “fantastic,” noting that the actress “nailed the part.”
“I couldn’t keep a straight face sometimes,” she added.
Short had similar praise for Galifianikis, whom he didn’t know very well prior to working together on the season.
“I just met him briefly once,” he said. “I was such a huge fan. He is so funny and so sweet and so loose and friendly to everyone. That was kind of spectacular for me.”
Martin praised the entire ensemble for their talent and professionalism.
“They fit in with our work ethic and everybody’s easy to get along with. They’re humorous, they’re comedian’s and we really, really like that,” he told TheWrap. “Nobody’s too full of angst, so it just makes the set more fun.”
Michael Cyril Creighton, who returns as Howard Morris, told TheWrap that working on the “Only Murders” set always involves “a lot of pinch me moments.”
“This season, I was extremely bruised,” he joked. “I’d be working with Eva Longoria, who I’m a giant fan of, and I’d be watching Eugene Levy do a scene, and it’s a dream come true. And then to get to spar with Zach Galifianakis — that wasn’t on my bingo card, I didn’t know that was going to happen and it is one of my favorite things I’ve done on screen. It’s always surprising and exciting to walk on that set, because you just don’t know what legend you’re going to be acting with that day.”
While Hoffman had initial concerns about the logistics of having a stacked cast of guest stars for Season 4, he ultimately believes every actor involved was justified for the story the season is telling.
“I like a little wink of meta and then you rely on the writing and the actors and the directing to ground it all,” he said. “But I also took great care with the writers and Dan [Fogelman] and Jess [Rosenthal] to balance across the season the doppelgangers and the world of Hollywood and the characters and really integrate them and not just make them pops of stars coming in for playing a character that they run through, that they have a real effect to the storyline. That’s really the balancing act that we had.”
And if you think the guest stars who were announced are a lot to take in, Hoffman teased that there will be plenty of tricks up the show’s sleeve throughout the season.
“There are surprises that we thought, ‘OK, this feels like a lovely payoff’ to ‘we’re ready to do this now’ and then surprise castings and things like that,” he said. “So it’s crazy. I’m a lucky, lucky man.”
“Only Murders in the Building” Season 4 releases new episodes Tuesdays on Hulu.
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