The Hollywood Reporter (Weekly) - The Hollywood Reporter Awards Special
The Kominsky Method
Showrunner Chuck Lorre reveals it was a daunting task to bring his Netflix comedy to a close: “I can’t tell you how many times I was ready to call and say, ‘Hey, guys, can we not do this?’ ”
Showrunner Chuck Lorre reveals it was a daunting task to bring his Netflix comedy to a close: “I can’t tell you how many times I was ready to call and say, ‘Hey, guys, can we not do this?’ ”
Chuck Lorre insists he was consumed with gratitude when he found out his passion project, The Kominsky Method, had been Emmy-nominated for its third and final season. “That people thought well enough of the show to include it, how can you not feel grateful?” he says. After all, Lorre is exceedingly aware of the seemingly infinite choices TV viewers have today, and it was he who had convinced Netflix to let him continue after co-star Alan Arkin decided to step away. “To be singled out in any way, shape or form has to result in gratitude,” he continues, “and if you’re not grateful, you’re not paying attention.”
In this final season of The Kominsky Method, Michael Douglas’ character wrestles with what happens when your dreams come true — when doors you never anticipated opening are opening, in his case as an actor — and the fears that come with that. In what ways could you relate?
I didn’t set out to be a TV writer. My journey into TV came after 15 years of banging my head against the wall trying to make it in the music business. There’s a moment in the last episode where he’s talking to Roz, played by Kathleen Turner, and he’s staring up at that billboard talking about dreams deferred and that this wasn’t supposed to happen. He says, “I’ve lived my life with a broken heart,” and without going too deep into this personally, my music career didn’t happen — I had a bit of luck along the way, but there was a broken heart associated with that and there still is because it was my first love. Growing up as a kid, music was everything. TV was I Dream of Jeannie and Gilligan’s Island, music was The Beatles — a fairly different world of inspiration and aspiration. The idea of a broken heart connected with me personally. The career I’ve had in television is far beyond anything I could’ve ever imagined, but it wasn’t the dream I had.
Do you remember your “billboard moment”?
Well, the billboards for The Kominsky Method — they put my name on the goddamn things, and that’s astonishing to me. I don’t take that lightly.
Your name had never been used to sell a show on a billboard?
No, nor should it. I’m not the show. The actors, the people in front of the camera, are. Your name is supposed to be irrelevant. It’s about Jim Parsons and Kaley Cuoco [of The Big Bang Theory], it’s about Melissa McCarthy and Billy Gardell [of Mike & Molly] and Allison Janney and Anna Faris [of Mom] — that’s the show, and your job is to make that work. And when your name becomes something that adds value in the advertising and promotion, that’s a moving experience. If I were to say, “Oh, it means nothing to me,” I’d be lying.
I’ve heard you say you didn’t know what closure would be like on Kominsky until you sat down to write it. What happened as you began to put pen to paper?
It was in the beginning of quarantine, and it was a lot of false starts. Writing a script and then throwing it out and starting over again. But I did want closure. We knew
“We went through a lot together — through the jungle, the desert, in a chandelier, for God’s sake. It was easy to fall back into our rhythms.” KATHLEEN TURNER
On reteaming with frequent co-star Michael Douglas