An ‘SNL’ vet re-imagines ‘Murder, She Wrote’
I first became fully aware of Paula Pell in 2014, as the co-creator and costar, with James Anderson, of “Hudson Valley Ballers,” a brilliantly bizarre web series about friends who open a B&B in upstate New York. But I had seen her work on “Saturday Night Live,” for which she wrote for 20 years (including a few seasons as head writer), and had seen her acting, too, as Ron Swanson’s mother on “Parks and Recreation” and Pete Hornberger’s wife on “30 Rock.”
Later there were appearances on “Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt,” Judd Apatow’s, “Love,” a regular role as the secretary to Patton Oswalt’s principal on “A.P. Bio,” and last year’s women of “SNL” reunion film “Wine Country.”
Now Pell is on-screen again
— the very small screen — in the cockeyed “Mapleworth Murders,” which she co-created with former “SNL” colleague John Lutz. Available on Quibi, Jeffrey Katzenberg’s heavily capitalized, short-form mobile video app, it stars Pell as mystery novella-ist Abigail Mapleworth — a primly rude twist on Angela Lansbury’s Jessica Fletcher from “Murder, She Wrote” — with Lutz as a deputy enamored of her and a sublimely hectic J.B. Smoove as the town’s perpetually frustrated police chief. Guest turns by the likes of Tina Fey, Maya Rudolph, Fred Armisen, D’Arcy Carden, Tim Meadows, Oswalt, and Andy Samberg make it a party.
Q: Over the last decade, you’ve been slowly getting back into performing.
A: I would always say I was born at 50. I played the Mother Superior in “Sound of Music” when I was in eighth grade. I always had gray spray in my hair in school plays — I played the mom or the grandma or the matron. I’m, like, an old, round character actress now.
Q: Did you miss it?
A: I missed it so much, but when we started as writers at “SNL,” they were very clear about, you know, “You’re going to take that hat off, if you were primarily a performer before. We want you to really be here as a writer.” And I was such a rule-follower and good Catholic school girl, if you tell me to take that hat off, I’m going put it away in a storage unit. I got to know the cast and would goof around and do bits with them — it was always in me that I was a ham — but I didn’t ever want to push myself as an actor. And then over the years my friends would leave and have their own shows and they’d say, “Hey, do you want to do
this little part?”
Q: That’s the way I picture “Hudson Valley Ballers” and “Mapleworth.” “Hey, what are you doing Saturday? Do you want to come be in my movie?”
A: “Hudson Valley Ballers” was definitely like that . ... But the Quibi show was very much a professional thing where you’d have agents check with people’s availability and all that — but it’d still be your friends, so you could text or call and be like, “I’m going to tell you what this is in case you hear from your agent.” When we did “Wine Country,” we had the same feeling. And John and I said this so many times when we were doing “Mapleworth,” it’s just a shortcut to work with people you love, already know their moves and how to be so funny with them. Especially people when they come out of “SNL” and you end up doing things with them in your later years — that’s what I’m calling this, “your later years.”
Q: The way you’ve arranged the “Mapleworth” episodes, three to a story, they play out like a standard, halfhour sitcom.
A: That’s how we tried to do it. At first, it was strange to write something in such a short form, in pieces, and we were like, “How many Quibis make an episode?” We’ve done shorts, but those didn’t really have any narrative in them. But once we thought of it as a three-act thing it didn’t feel that different: The first third of it is the setup of the murder, and then let’s have some fun and games, and then the third part resolving it. Can you tell I’ve read my structure books?
I’d never done anything like that with any kind of clues or curlicues in it; it was really fun. I mean, I can watch “Law & Order: SVU” eight in a row. And I’ve always loved that genre of “Murder, She Wrote” and been a sucker for a spinster character — and in real life loved my relatives who were those older kind of eccentric little kookballs. (Lutz and I) always laugh cause we think Jessica’s a little bit judgmental in a really great way; like when she’s starting to listen to people’s witnessing of the murder, she’s always got a little bit of an eyebrow up, like, “Well, if you hadn’t been drinking that evening, maybe he wouldn’t be dead.”