‘Casual’ is more than a dating comedy
Hulu’s new series starring Michaela Watkins digs deeper into relationships
Hulu’s Casual isn’t quite what it might first appear to be.
The streaming service’s 10-episode comedy (Episode 4 is available Wednesday) offers laughs as it focuses on recently divorced mom Valerie (Michaela Watkins), who’s dipping her toe into the foreign world of contemporary dating, and her bachelor brother Alex (Tommy Dewey), creator of a dating-app algorithm that provides him an endless supply of beautiful, short-term lovers.
Alex is 35 and enjoys a comfortable Los Angeles lifestyle, but his glibly confident outer shell shields a loneliness. He welcomes Valerie, 39, a successful therapist, and her mature but vulnerable 16-year-old daughter, Laura (Tara Lynne Barr), into his home, where the series explores family relationships, insecurities and new rules for romance.
“They did a little bait and switch. They call it a comedy and then it’s a little serious,” Watkins says of the show, in which laughs emerge from awkward entanglements.
Film director Jason Reitman ( Up in the Air, Juno), who directed the first two episodes and is an executive producer, says creator Zander Lehmann’s script “on the surface was about dating at 40 ... and then found its way into so many things. This is a kind of love story about a brother and sister who discuss everything. … There’s kind of an openness that is this beautiful bond but also prevents them from having romantic relationships on their own.”
Casual contains a different kind of TV performance from Watkins, 43, a Groundlings improv alum, one-season Saturday
Night Live player (2008-09) known for a collection of eccentric characters, including celebrity blogger Angie Tempura, and second wife Jackie in ABC’s Tro
phy Wife, which was canceled in 2014 after one season. (She also has appeared on New Girl, The
Goldbergs and Veep.) Valerie “is not just fun, silliness, which I absolutely love to do. She’s more of a well-rounded person who has a lot going on in life. She’s a mom, she’s going through a divorce, she’s still a sexual being or trying to remember that she is,” Watkins says. “She’s got this incredible relationship with her brother, which for most of it is a really good thing and for parts of it is really dysfunctional.”
Unlike Trophy Wife’s Jackie, who “couldn’t shut up,” Watkins says, Valerie is no “chatterbox.” She “understands it’s sometimes better to say less. But I think, like many of my characters, she’s also incredibly sensitive and aware of herself and her surroundings.”
Reitman felt Watkins had the depth to take on a different type of role. “Michaela understands the meaning of every line of dialogue and every moment,” he says. “She’s able to ground scenes in dramatic human emotion and at the same time be hilarious.”
Viewers will learn about Valerie and Alex through their dating experiences and through their relationships with each other, with Laura and with their parents, played by Frances Conroy and Fred Melamed.
“You’ll get to know why Alex appears, at first blush, as a snide, shallow, good-looking bachelor guy. Once you get to meet the parents, you see this whole other side of Alex where he becomes the most empathetic character,” Watkins says. Laura is “the biggest adult in every room,” shifting roles with her mother to a degree after the divorce.
Hulu has an ambitious slate, with new episodes of The Mindy
Project; the Amy Poehler-produced Difficult People; 11/22/63, an event series starring James Franco and produced by Stephen King and J.J. Abrams; and The
Path, produced by Parenthood’s Jason Katims.
Watkins’ busy schedule includes a return engagement on Amazon’s Transparent and a role in The House, an upcoming film starring Poehler and Will Ferrell, and she’s hoping for more seasons of Casual. “I feel like as an actor, you get to use every part of you.”