Note: This story contains spoilers from “Only Murders in the Building” Season 4, Episode 10.
As one mystery is solved in “Only Murders in the Building,” another begins.
The Season 4 finale saw Charles (Steve Martin), Oliver (Martin Short) and Mabel (Selena Gomez) take down Marshall Pope/Rex Bailey (Jin Ha) for the murder of Sazz Pataki (Jane Lynch), who committed the crime in under 12 minutes by himself. But in normal fashion for the Hulu comedy, there’s still a few loose ends — the biggest one being a new murder to solve in the already-ordered Season 5: the death of Arconia doorman Lester (Teddy Coluca).
In addition to Lester’s death, it’s also a mystery who’s been watching the trio since Season 1. Charles and Mabel also received an interesting offer from Sofia Caccimelio (Tea Leoni), who was looking to hire them to find her husband Nicky Caccimelio — who was mentioned on the TV in the hospital where Glen Stubbins was being held in a blink and you’ll miss it moment in episode 9.
“Only Murders in the Building” co-creator and showrunner John Hoffman unpacked the eventful finale, unanswered questions and teased what’s ahead in Season 5.
How far into the process did you decide that Marshall Pope/Rex Bailey would be Season 4’s killer and steal Sazz’s script for the “Only Murders in the Building” movie?
Day one. This wasn’t the case in Season 1. We had various possibilities for the killer in Season 1 when we started the writers’ room. But ever since then, we have to work backwards or just figure out the end and everything that really happens around the incident that caused the murder, so we can’t really go anywhere with writing until we have that and then twist our way to it. So that was all figured out right at the beginning.
When we were shooting Season 3, we very purposefully put in the moment in Episode 5 where Sazz is talking about her ham radio to Charles and saying there’s some chatter “I’m picking up that people say they wanted to be you,” so that when what happens at the end of Season 3, we would have made some connection.
At the end of Season 3, when she brings in her cold case, it felt like that was one of those lovely things that happen in the writers’ room when you realize, “What does she have in that cold case that they don’t know about that’s been sitting in Oliver’s refrigerator the entire season and holds really the key clue to everything Sazz started and what she was needing to talk to him about for months that now had to be rushed?” So all that felt exciting to me as a clue that could make you go “What the hell?” by the end of it all, and then also the dance of hiding it as best we could.
The emotional relationship that we explore and reveal in Episode 10 between Sazz and Rex is meaty and, in general, lines up with exactly all of the clues that we’ve laid out across the season as to how and why that all happened.
I knew that we had the second person going for us as an alternate possibility going into that finale, because we have clearly in Episode 5 established this had to be two people because of the timing. For Episode 9, I kept on wanting to create somebody else who could have been this stunt double. And the only other person we had was Rudy (Kumail Nanjiani) because he was fit. It’s just a case of scripts and shooting and who’s available when, but I wish I could’ve had one moment where we think for a second it’s Rudy, even though he’s not the person it was.
The finale reveals that Rex uses the ledge above the courtyard of the Arconia to get to Sazz after shooting her. How did you land on that idea?
It was a very expansive set piece for us, in a finale that is not small for a half-hour comedy show. And I was pushing in every way I could to get every last dime of our budget on the screen and everything else to make it happen. And God love everybody who made it happen and we came in under budget. But it’s a big ass finale for a show if you really know all that goes into it.
But critical to it to me was fulfilling the storyline of how did that killer get over there in 12 minutes? And that moment when Charles has that revelation right at the top of Episode 10 felt very satisfying, and then the beautiful way Jamie Babbitt shot the episode and all of what happens on that ledge, including the night of the killing.
Jin Ha is such a spectacular actor, and to see that transformation of that character through the whole season and to watch him play all of it was just a complete delight. But those moments of him on that ledge quickly moving around and then coming up and looking through are so upsetting and chilling in my feelings about Sazz and what happened to her.
The ledge is also used more comedically by Charles and Oliver to save Mabel.
It’s always about threading that needle, but ultimately we wanted a redemption story for Charles, who has to tap in. What felt really right to me is at the end of Episode 9 to see something we hadn’t seen before, which is Mabel in peril, and to know our guys know that as well and there’s limited time. To watch them go into action to save their girl and to watch Oliver tap in to help Charles really pull that off just felt very satisfying to me for a whole season long arc. So it just became about the logistics of making that happen, which was not a small request for production design, for budget on VFX, for Marty and Steve to manage that whole sequence.
They’re the most elegant physical comedians ever. It’s just the greatest time with the two of them. But ultimately, the core of it is this relationship between these two guys as well, and how much they care about this young woman they’ve just completely fallen head over heels for and who’s made such a difference in their lives. It all felt very emotional as a good, satisfying potential ending for that mystery we’ve been following. And then certainly, as they’re coming to understand what Sazz was up to at the end of Season 3, that what she wanted to come and talk to Charles about that night was this movie that she had done.
To watch all these moments come together is just the most satisfying thing to build, and then to watch them get executed with great people at the helm directing and shooting and choreographing, everything happening on there, and then all of the visual effects to make the ledge a real thing. It was exciting to see it all come together and I’m very proud of it.
What prompted the decision to make Sazz the real writer of the “Only Murders” movie?
You see at the very beginning of Episode 10 why she did it. She’s got osteoporosis and she’s watched this writer on “Brazzos” and thought, “Why am I not trying something else?” That all felt right to me in a season about the movies with a victim who worked in TV and film.
Jane Lynch has always been a huge MVP of this series for us and across this season for me, she’s just been exquisite in deepening that relationship with Charles and that character and how much we love her. But particularly in Episode 10, I just wanted to give her everything I knew she could do, but she just profoundly surprised me in ways I didn’t know that I would feel like for that character. It’s all due to how she played it.
The scene with her and Charles off set is one of my favorites in the series, and is just a tip of the hat to what they do together. That’s that heartbreak of him finally saying goodbye. It’s all very emotional because I went through the whole thing with it, but to me, I thought it’s got everything and the way they play it is perfect.
This is also the first time you’ve killed off the killer in the season. What prompted that departure?
It’s really important to me to humanize everyone’s story, as egregious and wrong as his is. He’s damaged goods in many ways. You understand a little bit of that when he talks about his origin story, and we talked in depth about that in the writers’ room. This wild card who she hits with her car one day and recognizes, “God that was a good flip” as a stunt person and is saying “Hey what are you doing? Because I could use someone like you.” But also she might be able to give him a helping hand. And then of course it all blows up on Project Ronkonkoma. But then it’s very Sazz to say, “Hey, maybe this isn’t what you should be doing. Let me encourage you in every way I can to do the thing you really want to be doing,” which is write, even despite all the mess. She could feel his dysfunction but she was trying.
What I found very moving is that Sazz has watched and known Charles for 30 years and he’s just reinvented himself as a podcaster who’s solving crimes. So she has a real moment that what he’s done is incredible and it’s inspired her to change her life. Ultimately, she thinks that script she’s written is a bit of a folly. She doesn’t know if it’s any good, but it’s informed by her love of him and what she’s seen him do. So there’s way more depth to that script and more accuracy and that’s what Rex sees when he’s reading it. He makes that decision in that moment to side with himself in the moment he’s reading it. He sees “I can’t do anything like this” and he’s under pressure with his father, so he makes an awful, awful decision in that moment to steal that script.
To watch him click into that thing that his father raised him to be the marksman and “I’m a writer, not a killer,” that thing he’s tortured by, is brutal. But Jin is beautiful in that whole trajectory. What an actor. There was one take where he was at the window and I was going to give a note on something. But I was like “God, he’s f—ng good,” and I just said it out loud and was like, “Oh, I’m sorry, did you hear that?” And he said, “I did hear that.” I mean, he’s just so good.
Despite the understanding of all of the backstory and everything else, to me Jan is insane and deluded and all of those things as we’ve proven in a previous season, Poppy is a tortured soul, for sure, and messed up, and there are certainly similarly tortured storylines last year with our producers and Ben Glenroy. But if we’re going to kill any of them, Rex earned it. And who could do it other than the woman who’s been hiding in the passageways the entire season waiting for her moment to avenge the woman she loved?
It’s sad because I love Jin Ha and I would love to bring him back in some way. And you never know, someone can be a ghost in our show pretty easily. But character-wise it was like, “No, he’s too egregious in this way for me.”
It’s not explicitly stated that Rex was the person watching the trio since Season 1. Was he the one watching them this entire time?
There’s still loose ends, as we like to have in our show. Can’t answer everything. It’s only Season 4.
I noticed you make an on-screen cameo in the finale as Oliver and Loretta’s wedding officiant. Congratulations!
Oh gosh. I am an actor. People have said, what about this part? Could you do this part? And I’m like, “Shut up. I will ruin the television show if I put myself in the television show. No, that’s not happening.”
Jamie Babbitt just got me at a weak moment and said, “I need someone to be the officiant and you don’t have any lines and you marry Meryl Streep and Martin Short.” And I’m like, “Well, I don’t mind having that out in the world that I’m there and between those two people.” But then I saw the problems of the editor putting me in too much in the first cut. So I’m like “Out, out, out, get my part down to nothing.” I couldn’t look at myself. I look like Sazz’s cousin.
But it was fine. I felt happy to be there on the day and it is fun for posterity to have a presence in that way. The only way I worked it out in my head was if you know me, you’ll get the enjoyment of that for a moment. And if not, hopefully I’m just like a thing over there.
We see Loretta headed to New Zealand at the end of the finale. Is this the last we’ll see of Meryl Streep for a while or will she be back for Season 5?
I find it very hard to imagine Loretta not being a part of this television show now, and I’ve told Meryl this and I think she feels similarly. It’s all in giving something worth enough. This season, being able to do what we did with her in Hollywood, and carry a storyline for Oliver where he starts getting neurotic and paranoid about what’s going on in Hollywood, and then lettering her arrival to have a wild ride brawl with Melissa McCarthy over Oliver. Then letting her get married… I wondered if a lot of people were worried that we were going to do something terrible to Loretta at the end of this season, but I couldn’t imagine doing that. Truthfully I have nothing but huge wishes that we get to do more with her without question. It’s all about getting the right story for her and getting her something worthy.
Tea Leoni makes a cameo appearance as Sofia Caccimelio and asks Charles and Mabel to help her find her husband, who’s briefly mentioned in episode 9. Is it safe to say we’ll see her again in Season 5?
I just got a text from that actress while we were on this Zoom, so that’s a little bit of something for you. That’s for sure, an opening up of the other elephant in the room.
Which brings me to how did you land on killing Lester?
There are many, many facets to that, and that one is a big question for us every season as to what kind of areas we can think about for the next season and what kind of things haven’t we done? How could that all tie in? Who gives us an emotional hook, but maybe a different vibe of an emotional hook? What are the mysteries that could be surrounding all that?
We’re in the middle of breaking Episode 4 of Season 5 right now, so it’s crazy. But I’m really excited about it and it’s a completely different world opened up.
I already have a theory that he might be connected to Nicky Caccimelio going missing. Is there more about Lester that we don’t know about?
I’m curious about that too (laughs). I promise we will have that answer.
What can you tease about Season 5?
What I’m excited about for Season 5 is that we’re trying to tell a particular kind of take from a New York angle. Season 5 will hit on some very current things going on within New York, specifically very relevant things that are happening in the city right now, in ways that honestly we couldn’t have even predicted. We built our story and then certain things revealed themselves, and vice versa. We found out certain things, we were hearing whispers about certain things and it’s a little bit more reflective, deeply New York, both historically and the modern New York right now too.
The show has always been classic meets modern. So that is carried through again in a very, very big way within the next season. Another wildly funny world for our group to get thrown into is all I will say.
One more fun question with the election next week. Vice President Kamala Harris mentioned on a podcast that she’s been watching “Only Murders in the Building.” How does it feel to know that she’s a fan of your show?
I love it so much. I love her so much. I would be more than delighted to see her become the president and talk to her about our show. I had heard that [she watched] while we were shooting Season 4 early on, and there was a moment when the campaign was starting up for President Biden and they were talking about a potential vice presidential campaign moment connected to the show. I had a conversation with people in Washington about arranging for a Kamala Harris visit or something like that. We were engaged in that. But I think it wasn’t too long after that that everything changed in what the campaign was going to look like. But come over anytime Madam Vice President, anytime.
