ONLY MURDERS IN THE BUILDING

When This Is Us creator Dan Fogelman began developing Hulu’s Only Murders in the Building, he approached the NBC tear-jerker’s casting director Tiffany Little Canfield with an email she still finds humorous. “It said, ‘I have a new show with Steve Martin and Martin Short. You don’t have to say yes, but I’m only sending this to you,’ ” recalls Canfield. “There’s nothing I like better than Steve, Marty and murder podcasts. Of course I’m saying yes.” Her first order of business became securing a female lead. “We needed someone who could stand up to Steve and Marty in a comedy,” says Canfield, for whom Selena Gomez topped the dream list. “I think of her as really mysterious. There are a lot of facets to her, and you can see her in a lot of different ways. Mabel really is the mystery of the show, and Selena has that built in.” With three worldfamous actors in place, one might think, “Job done!” but that was only the beginning for Canfield, who is now casting season two of the show. “In a murder mystery, you need suspects,” she explains. “And the ensemble actors who inhabit The Arconia were crucial to the fabric of the show.” Luckily, Canfield has the New York theater world to cull from and a hefty pedigree behind the project to entice the thespians. “Sometimes guest star parts can be a little bit thankless, but because of the writing — and, of course, Steve, Marty and Selena — people took that leap of faith.” The most challenging Arconia resident to cast, because of the scarcity of information about the character, was the murder victim himself. “You go, ‘Is he supposed to be that big of a jerk?’ Because his first scene with the three leads, he’s absolutely dismissive,” says Canfield. “I love that Julian Cihi leaned into that. He wasn’t afraid in his audition of being unlikable. That’s almost the number one thing people tell actors about auditioning in television: ‘The most important thing is to be likable.’ It’s not great acting advice.”

2 From left: Selena Gomez as Mabel, Steve Martin as Charles and Martin Short as Oliver. 2

1 Aaron Dominguez (second from left) as Oscar, with Ali Stroker, Daniel Oreskes (standing) and Jaboukie Young-White as superfans of the podcast-within-a-show on Only Murders in the Building. 1

Canfield