Armisen and Rudolph examine the realities of long-term love in Amazon’s ‘Forever’
Fred Armisen and Maya Rudolph were talking on a recent morning about the many tiny, telling details of their characters on their new series “Forever,” and the chemistry forged years ago on “Saturday Night Live” kept revealing itself as the natural key to their show, which finds them playing a longtime couple.
“I have a relationship with some objects where I get so mad at them because they only have one job,” Armisen admits, empathizing with his character, who at a particularly low point in the series takes out his frustrations on a jammed kitchen drawer. “They just don’t deserve to keep going.”
“Do you talk to them?” Rudolph asks.
“I’ve definitely talked to them,” he responds. “I did something really crazy once. Remember when Palm Pilots came out? I had one that would not dock correctly. It just wouldn’t load up. And I got a bowl of water, and I put the whole dock in it. I was like, ‘I asked you to do one thing.’ And I drowned it.”
“Wow,” Rudolph laughs, imagining the execution scene, “Did you fold your arms?”
“I’m like, ‘This is your time for you to do this, and you’re going to pick your own times?’” he says in mock aggravation, “Bye.”
“That’s fascinating, I love that story so much.”
That mix of intimacy and absurdity fits squarely in the wheelhouse for “Forever,” which premiered Friday on Amazon Prime. Written by “Master of None” co-creator Alan Yang and Matt Hubbard of “Parks and Recreation,” the series isn’t easy to talk about because of the way it plays with your expectations. In the first few episodes, the series changes twice before finally revealing what exactly it’s about.
“You’re told in television you have to know exactly what the show is about as quickly as possible when you start a pilot,” says Hubbard, who was reached on a recent conference call with Yang. “I think we liked the idea of not letting the viewer know exactly what this show is going to be about beyond that it’s Maya Rudolph and Fred Armisen, and they’re in it together for quite a while.”
With that in mind, it’s best if we don’t talk about where the show ends up. Suffice to say that Armisen’s and Rudolph’s characters — Oscar and June — are initially hoping to upend some of the routine that has built up in their relationship by going somewhere new for their annual vacation. And, well, they do.
But setting aside the aspects of the show that are better left to be discovered, “Forever” is often a surprisingly raw and often melancholy story about love and commitment. And despite the affectionate, natural rapport that’s regularly seen between its two leads, especially as their characters riff together about oddball thought experiments such as “the best way to spend a half an hour” or “the best way to sit,” the show is primarily concerned with how a relationship can fall apart.
Their characters live in Riverside, Calif., which for the purposes of the show is a sleepy suburbia where Oscar finds comfort and routine while June begins to ache for something more. Loaded with tract homes and sunshine, the show’s setting was a personal choice for Yang, who grew up in the area (he clarifies that June’s views aren’t his own, saying, “Don’t come after me, Riverside”).
But that sense of place also was a consideration for the show, which came together among many ideas Yang and Hubbard pitched their stars as they first began talking about working together.
“We also liked the idea of putting Fred and Maya in the most normal conditions we could think of,” Hubbard adds. “It’s like, well, what if these two unbelievable comic actors were living together in Riverside as these very normal people?”
Armisen has been married twice, once for six years to U.K. musician Sally Timms and then to actress Elisabeth Moss for less than a year, ending in 2010. Rudolph has been in a relationship with director Paul Thomas Anderson since 2001.
“If you really do ask people in long-term relationships or marriages about this idea of being with the same person for the rest of your life, who knows what you would get?” Rudolph says. “Are they thinking, ‘Did I make a mistake? Am I with the person I’m meant to be with?’ There’s so many stages to relationships. I feel like I’ve loved examining this couple.”