Finally ‘Great’
‘One Tree Hill’ alums Lafferty and Colletti crowdfunded new gig
Two former “One Tree Hill” stars James Lafferty and Stephen Colletti feared their careers were stalling. Instead of waiting for the next show to find them, they created it.
“Everyone Is Doing Great,” premiering Wednesday on Hulu, is as close to a home movie as you can get. The longtime friends wrote the script, directed the pilot and cast themselves, along with Lafferty’s fiancée, Alexandra Park. Then they raised the money to keep going.
“Stephen and I had been twiddling our thumbs for a while figuring out what came next,” Lafferty, 35, told the Daily News. “So we looked inwards and realized there was a lot of absurd comedy in the things we had experienced and seen.”
“Everyone Is Doing Great,” a dry, sarcastic comedy, follows three friends five years after the end of their hit TV show. Andrea (Park) has found steady work, and has a career trajectory that has blown past her former co-stars, husband Jeremy (Lafferty) and
Seth (Colletti). Jeremy wallows in self pity, thinks about what could have been, yet does nothing to improve his lot. Seth is struggling, too, but at least he’s trying.
“It’s a world we’re very familiar with,” Colletti, 34, told The News. “It was about taking these puzzle pieces of different moments in our lives and building them into characters.”
“Part of our journey post-‘One Tree Hill’ is just figuring out where you fit in this industry,” Lafferty said.
“The underlying theme of the show that ... the moment you become any kind of famous is the moment you stop maturing. We wanted to bring that into the show: what happens when you have a lot of success young. It skews your vision of the world. It really stunts your growth.”
Lafferty and Colletti (photo, l.-r.) wrote themselves into the show, with the backdrop of fickle Hollywood. They made two episodes and started making the rounds at festivals, including ATX, in 2018. Then they launched an crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo to raise the rest.
“I prepared myself for not even earning a dollar,” Colletti joked. “That fear creeps in from the moment you’re creating something like this. James and I aren’t used to putting ourselves out there that much.”
They made a dollar. Then they made almost $270,000 from more than 5,300 backers. That allowed them to make the rest of the show.
“It was like watching two kids in a candy store,” Park said, “but the most organized, prepared kids.”
In December, Hulu, the same streaming service that airs “One Tree Hill,” acquired the rights to the show.
“What gives us the satisfaction is the show turning out to be what we wanted it to be, and even better,” Lafferty told The News.
“We had a really specific vision for how we wanted this to look and feel and the stories we wanted to tell. The coolest thing for us is sitting in that editing bay, finishing an episode and watching it back for the first time and saying, ‘I think that’s what we set out to do.’
“It’s something you’re actually proud of at the end of the day.”