South Florida Sun-Sentinel Palm Beach (Sunday)
AN UNEXPECTED PARTNERSHIP
Making murder mystery series a process of discovery for Steve Martin, Selena Gomez and Martin Short
Eliciting comedy from Steve Martin and Martin Short is usually a simple proposition: You just put the two of them together. Even as they looked back on their years of friendship and collaboration during an interview, they couldn’t help falling into a familiar rhythm of affectionately zinging and zetzing each other.
When Martin caught himself in a moment of self-reflection — “If I could talk about myself just for a second,” he said ostentatiously — his onscreen partner saw the opening he’d been given.
“I wouldn’t know it any other way,” Short quickly interjected.
A few moments later, Short offered an overview of his own work — “Throughout my career, I have satirized narcissism,” he said — and it was time for payback.
Martin replied, “Except for you, it’s not a satire.”
They can do this sort of repartee in their sleep. But what if you took these veteran entertainers outside their comfort zone and put them in a TV series playing creaky, washed-up showmen? What if they were teamed with a third actor who is in no way a member of their demographic cohort, like, say, Selena Gomez? What if the series were not only an arch sendup of cutthroat New York life but also a murder mystery?
This is the unlikely yet oddly effective premise of “Only Murders in the Building,” which recently debuted on Hulu. The series, in which Gomez, Short and Martin play mismatched residents in a beaux-arts building, drawn together by the death of a neighbor, is a comic whodunit that also inspires another, more basic question: How did this show come to exist?
The answer turns out to be not a computer algorithm or a dart board but a development process that played out over several years. Its end result is a series that drew Gomez, the actor and pop singer, back to television for her first scripted show since her early 2000s breakthrough on “Wizards of Waverly Place” — and cast Martin in his first continuing TV role ever.
Making “Only Murders in the Building” was a process of discovery for all three of its leads, one that showed Short and Martin that their well-honed routine had room for new tricks and new teammates, and also that Gomez could capably hold her own with her two seasoned co-stars.
As Gomez explained, performing alongside Short and Martin was an understandably intimidating task. “They don’t know what to expect from a 29-year-old, and they don’t know much about me,” she said. “We were getting to know each other.”
The central conceit of the series is one that Martin nursed for many years. He said he had devised it at a party whose host suggested that he write something for three other guests he described only as “older Broadway actors.”
As Martin recalled: “The idea came almost immediately, that they lived in a building, and they all were interested in crime. But they didn’t have the energy to go downtown, so they would only do murders in the building.”
In his telling, Martin, 76, had no interest in doing the series himself until Short, 71, suggested they could act in it together.
“Marty said, ‘You know, you’re old — we could do this,’ ” Martin said.
But the actual path to their pairing on the show was more elaborate. For some time, Martin has been courted by TV producers like Dan Fogelman, creator of shows like NBC’s “This Is Us.” When Fogelman and his producing partner, Jess Rosenthal, landed a meeting with Martin a couple of years ago, they hoped for a memorable encounter with one of their comedy heroes but expected few tangible results.
Near the end, Martin volunteered his idea for what would become “Only Murders in the Building.” After some cajoling, he indicated he might appear in it if Short did, too.
Though he and Martin are now inseparable peers, Short still had vivid memories of feeling inferior when they met on the 1986 Western satire “Three Amigos!”
Appearing alongside Martin and Chevy Chase in his first film role, “I was the cheap Amigo,” Short said. “Like, Carrot Top has passed, and now who do we go to?”
Despite an estimable resume that included runs on “SCTV” and “Saturday Night Live,” Short said he had been awestruck by Martin. “For the first couple of weeks, I had to do an impersonation of myself being relaxed,” he said. But over the course of the shoot, he said, “we laughed a lot and played a lot of Scrabble.”
Thirty-five years later, the Hulu series casts them as Charles (Martin), a vaguely famous actor from a long-ago TV cop drama, and Oliver (Short), a oncehot Broadway director still yearning for another shot at the limelight.
John Hoffman, who is the showrunner of “Only Murders in the Building” and shares credit with Martin for creating the series, said the crux of the show was not the age of its lead actors but the idea of “three lonely people who find a sense of connection.”
As Hoffman and his colleagues mapped out the new show, they were wary of making its three main characters too similar. Recalling those conversations, Hoffman said: “Don’t we want an alien in their world? The thing that we’re not expecting, that doesn’t make sense?”
Their solution was to have Charles and Oliver forge an uneasy alliance with a third character, Mabel, a sarcastic young woman who isn’t totally forthcoming about how she is able to live in their building or why she is so interested in the story’s central crime. Fogelman said that Gomez was an archetype the producers used as they sketched out the character — and later learned to their surprise that she was actually interested in the role.
As filming for the series took place in New York this past winter and spring, Gomez said, she learned to stop idolizing Short and Martin as elder statesmen and to open up to them in human, quotidian ways.
“They’re like my crazy uncles,” she said. “They were wonderful with giving advice, even just about my personal life. I’d ask them all the questions that girls ask, like, ‘So, when did you guys first fall in love?’ I’d ask them about boys and dating. They’d be like, ‘Well, make sure he’s kind.’ They were just so sweet.”
Given the unusual leap that “Only Murders in the Building” represents for each of its stars, they are all trying to strike the right balance between caring about its success and acting nonchalant about its prospects. Martin cited an adage that he attributed to his friend and fellow actor Richard E. Grant, saying: “You put your heart and soul into something, your dreams, your high hopes. Then later you realize it’s just another title on the shelf.”
When Short heard this, he could hardly contain himself. “That’s an optimistic thought,” he said sarcastically. “You know what else happens eventually? You’re laughing, you love your children, you have a stroke, and you die.”
Martin adopted a tone of exaggerated grandeur as he replied, “You’re welcome.”