Creators/Showrunners Mike Weiss and Heidi Cole McAdams along with lead actresses Violett Beane and Lauren Patten talk to The Inside Reel about tone, approach, heightened reality, humor and mystery in regards to their new Hulu series: “Death And Other Details”.
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00:00 [MUSIC]
00:10 There are billions on the line.
00:14 It's a puzzle.
00:15 We have what we need to solve it.
00:17 Now we make the pieces fit.
00:20 [MUSIC]
00:25 Pay attention.
00:26 [MUSIC]
00:29 Details matter.
00:31 What have we learned?
00:34 A lot. Just not, you know, whodunit.
00:39 With this show, you know, the melding, and I just told Violet and Lauren this,
00:44 the aspect of tone, mixing the drama, the humor, and a bit of sort of the heightened noir mystery,
00:52 it's a hard thing to balance.
00:53 Could you talk about finding that in the writing,
00:56 but then finding it also when you guys got over to set?
00:59 Great question.
01:02 Yeah, I mean, those were, I mean, yeah, I feel like you really understood the show.
01:06 I mean, those were the, those were kind of like the three guiding principles for us creatively.
01:11 We wanted to have a really solid murder mystery.
01:14 We wanted it to be witty and stylish and have intelligent characters being able to trade kind of barbs
01:20 like in a classic Golden Age detective story.
01:24 But in updating the genre for 2024,
01:27 we also wanted to go farther than some of those classic genre pieces
01:35 in terms of the emotional inner lives of the characters.
01:39 And so we were challenged to tell a great murder mystery that also activated emotional dynamics
01:46 in our really talented cast.
01:49 And I think that was, it was hard, and it was really fun.
01:53 We would, something that Heidi and I wanted to do from the beginning,
01:56 and our really talented writers helped us do it in the writer's room.
02:00 We had really sensitive, detail-oriented directors who bought into the tone.
02:07 And then on set, you know, the actors were really excellent kind of stewards of their characters
02:14 and of the story overall, and they knew when to push it,
02:18 and they knew when to bring it back and ground it.
02:21 And, you know, it was hard, but it wasn't impossible.
02:26 I can't believe we're going to be trapped on this thing for 10 days.
02:29 I'm so sorry I dragged you into this.
02:32 Pay attention. If you want to solve a crime, you must first learn to see through the illusion.
02:37 Details matter.
02:39 Yesterday, one of our guests was murdered.
02:49 You've got to be kidding me! This watch is worth more than you make in a year.
02:53 Somebody has to do something.
02:55 It doesn't always have to be you, though.
02:57 But I'm so good at it.
02:59 We've increased security throughout the ship to keep everyone safe.
03:04 And we're fortunate to have a world-renowned detective on board, Mr. Rufus Coatsworth.
03:12 Oh, my God.
03:13 Should I introduce myself?
03:15 Both these characters, it's interesting because it's about their perspective and their perception of what is going on,
03:21 what they're doing, especially with you, Violet.
03:24 Could you talk about approaching that both physically, emotionally, also intellectually?
03:31 Because especially with you, Violet, there's so much going on in their head.
03:34 No, with Lauren, too.
03:35 There's so much going on in their heads and how they need to attack a certain situation.
03:40 Could you talk about that within the milieu of, obviously, this piece?
03:44 Yeah, absolutely.
03:45 I mean, I think that her image in her biggest driving force is watching her mom's car blow up when she was a child.
03:51 And that's something that, like, no matter what your childhood trauma is, it causes all of these different types of reactions
03:58 and these ways of dealing with things.
04:00 And someone had said to me recently, like, it feels like Imogen is sort of the still water throughout all this chaos.
04:07 And I wonder if that is because when you've seen something so traumatic, somebody else dying in front of you that you don't really have a relationship with
04:16 doesn't do a whole lot to you because you've seen so much worse.
04:20 And so I think that for her, she can kind of keep sort of level-headed and sort of truck through and look for the truths.
04:31 And having Rufus Coatsworth sort of leading her on this journey and helping her discover her abilities, I think, is sort of how she's figured it out.
04:42 I mean, I think each character in the story has what is basically their driving force, what's most important to them,
04:49 and also the information that they have.
04:51 So I think for Imogen, Imogen is always coming at it from the experience of watching her mom killed like that.
04:59 And for Anna, I think she's really, she's a lot at stake with this trip on the boat.
05:06 And I think her family and her company are the things that are the most important to her, you know, her blood family and her wife and keeping this company afloat.
05:16 And so I think when the chaos starts to happen for her, all of her perspective relates back to that.
05:21 How does that affect that? And how can I protect what I need while that's being affected?
05:25 And, you know, I think that's such a different perspective from what's important to Imogen.
05:30 When this starts to happen, as the season goes on, you get to see how sometimes the characters converge and diverge around that.
05:38 Because everybody has, you know, their own agenda of what they need to protect when this starts to happen, all the chaos.
05:43 - Hey. - What's with the cloak and dagger?
05:48 - I didn't want him to see us together. - Him?
05:51 Rufus. He asked for my help on the case and he doesn't want anyone to know.
05:55 We focus on the suspects assembled out there. Danny rattled them all.
05:59 - What do you need me to do? - Chapter 8. Broken Cloaks.
06:03 - You want me to spy? - I need you to get your hands on the Collier Mills books.
06:08 Right. So that's why you played this whole game with me? Why you need my help? Because I have an in with the Colliers?
06:15 What are you doing? You hate him. He's a liar. He's a fraud. He sucks.
06:21 Yeah, yeah. He's all those things and he does. Look, Anna, there's so much more going on here.
06:27 The man across the hall, he was not what he appeared to be.
06:32 So, uh, who was he then, really?
06:38 You're not gonna like this.
06:40 The North Star for the show was kind of about pay attention, details matter.
06:45 And I think we had a whole bunch of everyone who worked on it kind of locked onto that.
06:52 And then because of that, our cast, I mean, they got to know the episodes fully.
07:00 You know, even the episodes they weren't in, they were reading and they knew like they really I feel like they understood their characters, but they also understood the whole.
07:09 And so because of that, they helped us with that tone, because like you're right, balancing, making it funny, but not too funny, serious, but not too.
07:17 You know, like there's like there's a line that's like a little bit, you know, you find it, you find it on the page and then you find it again when you're on set and then you find it again when you're in post.
07:27 And you're kind of navigating between those two things the whole time.
07:30 But yeah, and for whatever reason, the two of us kind of found the tone in the pilot from the beginning.
07:37 So that also, I think, helped.
07:40 I could just tell you, Rita, but it's a lot more fun if you figure it out for yourself.
07:45 How was it? Are you OK? Oh, my God, it was brutal.
07:48 What kind of questions did he ask? What?
07:52 We're being investigated for murder. I feel like we should maybe know what we're walking into.
07:58 He knows things. I don't know how Rufus knows these things, but he does.
08:02 I don't ever want to see him again.
08:05 I don't ever want to see him again.
08:06 Both characters are creatures of their environment and they both react to stimuli in different ways.
08:29 Obviously, Anna, you know, with her wife and everybody else, but then with Imogen Violet, it's how she sort of sees certain situations and how she acts within them.
08:39 And same with Anna. Could you talk about that?
08:41 But it's also about blending the drama, sort of the heightened noir aspect, obviously beautiful costumes, but also the humor.
08:48 There's this subtle humor jabs that are sort of beautifully sort of wicked.
08:53 Can you both talk about that? Obviously, multifaceted question.
08:57 Yeah, I mean, I think that like all of that kind of relates back to the writing.
09:01 Right. Like Mike and Heidi, the creators of our show, created such intricate characters and created.
09:07 Responses that are so different and it kind of shows you what people will do when their lives are put on the line.
09:15 And I think, you know, all of us, all of the actors, everyone that was cast added our added all of our spices onto it.
09:23 But we were we were given such a beautiful piece to work with.
09:27 And I think that when you when you see this sort of menagerie of all of our suspects, you get to point at them and be like, oh, I know how this person would respond.
09:37 Oh, I know what this person is thinking. And that kind of allows you to become the detective as you're watching it.
09:43 You know, as far as to speak to like the drama and the humor of it, I think, of course, it's dramatic because it's a murder mystery and there's a lot of very serious things going on.
09:52 But to what Violet was talking about with Mike and Heidi's specificity in their writing, I think for me, so much of the humor comes from just how particular each of these characters are.
10:03 And it's so it was really like as an actor, we're not trying to be funny.
10:07 You know, we're not like, oh, let's end this joke. It's just that how each person reacts and how they play off of each other.
10:13 It ends up being funny because we're so serious about how we would respond to a certain like to me, one of the funniest things.
10:21 For me, one of the funniest moments or some of the funniest moments I got to do were with Jack, who plays my brother.
10:27 And I think just brother sister relationship, we are so particular.
10:30 We were not we were playing all of those scenes very seriously, but it's also because of what their sibling dynamic is.
10:39 In 24 hours, Interpol lands on the ship and you will be their only suspect.
10:45 I didn't kill him. I want to help him with Scott.
10:48 Anyone on the ship could have killed the victim. But why?
10:51 I will be questioning you individually.
10:55 Tell me about your interactions with the victim.
10:58 I never met him. The man was a buffoon.
11:01 Hey, where were you between midnight and 8 a.m.?
11:04 My grandmother won't be happy. I did not say that.
11:07 Who told you that? Preposterous. Do not make an enemy of us.
11:11 No alibi then. Excuse me.
11:14 But it maintains all the way through because you were saying, you know, those dead that line because it's edgy, but it's not so overtly edgy that it loses its track.
11:22 But that become is because each of the characters is so fully developed, you know, that you can pull one out and they could have their own show based on them.
11:31 Could you talk about interweaving sort of those story points of the details of each of these characters lives without it overwhelming the rest of the milieu, per se?
11:41 I think we felt probably one of the hardest things was cutting.
11:44 Yeah, because it's like you you feel like, wait, but there's a boy that I can tell that this person and like, you know, but but yeah, the balance of it.
11:53 Look, we're in the murder mystery genre, but then we're open specifically doing it on a 10 episode serialized TV.
12:00 And so, yeah, balancing the number of twists that you need, you need more twists than in a two hour movie.
12:07 And so, you know, the twist what to come from character.
12:12 So if you're going to tell multiple twists per episode that are going to be based in character, yeah, you wind up creating very complex characters that hopefully, you know, the audience gets upset with.
12:21 You're good at this.
12:25 You already knew everything that I have just figured out.
12:29 It's more fun when you unravel it yourself.
12:32 What do you need me to do?
12:34 You need me to spy.
12:36 I need you to trust me.
12:41 There are forces at play that you cannot comprehend.
12:45 I'm.
12:47 I.
12:49 I.
12:51 I.
12:53 I.
12:54 (dramatic music)
12:56 [BLANK_AUDIO]