SPOILER alert: This interview contains spoilers from the first two episodes of “only Murders in the Building” Season 3, “The Show Must…” and “The Beat Goes On,” now streaming on Hulu.
When “only Murders in the Building” picks up at the start of Season 3, fans aren’t greeted with the familiar faces of crime-solving trio Mabel (Selena Gomez), Oliver (Martin Short) and Charles (Steve Martin). Instead, they’re dropped into a 1962 production of “No Strings” on Broadway, seen through the eyes of a pigtailed 10-year-old later revealed to be actor (and murder suspect) Loretta Durkin, portrayed as an adult by Meryl Streep.
For series co-creator and writer John Hoffman, who also directed the first two episodes of the new season, meeting Streep for the first time was daunting — until she revealed a surprising connection to her character that put him immediately at ease.
“My nerves were off the charts,” Hoffman recalls during a Zoom with PvNew ahead of the season premiere. “In the first moment, I’m walking her through the opening of the season, and I say, ‘We start on your character, and you’re 10 years old, and you’re seeing your first Broadway show coming from St. Louis with your mother. You’re watching “No Strings,” which is a Richard Rogers musical.’ Before I go any further, she cuts me off. She says, ‘I saw “No Strings” on Broadway. My mother took me when I was about 10. I’ll never forget it. Diahann Carroll was the star! She sang that beautiful song.’ And Meryl starts to sing it on the Zoom.”
Hoffman was stunned. “I was like, ‘I gotta stop you right now, because this is preposterous. I’m gonna send you the draft of Episode 1 after we get off this Zoom and you’re gonna see, the lyric you just sang to me now is on Page 1.’” Sure enough, in the season opener Loretta hears the line, “The sweetest sounds I’ll ever hear are still inside my head” as she watches on in awe. “That was the beginning of a very faithful, lovely time with her,” Hoffman adds. “And it all kind of leapt off from that first notion of that character.”
Coincidences aside, Hoffman never expected to land Streep for the role. “[Executive producers] Dan Fogelman and Jess Rosenthal and I, after Season 2, got together and started talking about this opener that introduced this actress into the world. I said to Dan, ‘Well, what would be dreamy for the person who never got their break, is if Meryl Streep played this.’ He’s like, ‘’Yeah, good luck with that, John.’ And then it was a matter of two weeks that Meryl was calling Marty and Steve, just to say that she likes the show,” he says.
“She told me later, ‘I have daughters who are actresses. I just go to them and I say, “Here’s what you do. If you’re having trouble with getting the work you want to be doing, just call up the show you love and tell them you’d like to be on it!”’ Hoffman laughs as he recalls protesting that sentiment, which Streep conceded. “She said, ‘Yeah, that doesn’t work that way for most, I know.’”
Streep’s not the only exciting addition to the “only Murders” family this season, though. Paul Rudd takes on the role of Ben Glenroy, the hot-shot Hollywood actor who is murdered on the opening night of a Broadway show.
“Paul particularly surprised me in the way that there’s this glint in his eye that I’d connect with,” Hoffman gushes. “He would make things just sing comedically over and over again.”
When the narrative shifts back in time, the cast of Oliver’s play “Death Rattle” meets for their first table read. After some awkward introductions, Ben bursts into the room with a fresh energy, exclaiming, “Who farted?”
“There was a moment we had in our writers room where someone pitched, ‘Who farted?’ as the thing he said. I’m like, ‘Come on. Let’s up it a little bit,’” Hoffman recalls. “But then thinking about the character and the way he delivered that, his enjoyment of it as though that’s going to just undercut everything. I love him. He got it in such a way that was so smart.”
New cast members aside, a top priority for Hoffman was ensuring the new season didn’t feel formulaic — how many murders can feasibly happen in one building, even in a whimsical comedy? “The last thing I want is to have it feel expected,” he says. “Everyone has said yes to lean in to the unexpected and to try things and take leaps.”
He continues, “We have a lovely audience for the show — people have been so lovely and responsive about it. And yet I was very conscientious of, ‘This could be a little bit of the same if we were to hit another in the building in the way that this might go.’ But knowing that we were infusing it with this theatrical identity subsequently and how that could affect the trio’s personal dynamic together, and then it might be a season of romantic entanglements, was fun to imagine.”
One such tactic for upping the stakes was placing Mabel, typically the confident youngster of the trio, in a fish-out-of-water scenario. This season, she’s not as connected to Oliver and Charles as they bond over the theater, a world which is completely foreign to her.
“We’re dealing with some trauma, and getting out from under the shroud of that was exciting for both Selena and myself. We learn at the end of episode one that she’s not going to stay in the Arconia much longer, and it just puts a heightened focus on this woman who’s facing 30 and looking at her life. She’s missing her old guys,” Hoffman says. “The only real prospect she has could be designing — she did a wonderful job on her aunt’s apartment. But that’s a challenging thing to break into, even at 29. The most successful thing she’s been doing is this unfortunate situation with murders and podcasts that are close to her. Here, one lands in her lap.”
He continues, “She’s really grasping for what to do with her life… Selena plays it so beautifully and I feel like her energy is different in this way for the season, which was fantastic to see.”
Hoffman believes Mabel’s story is representative of a broader theme this season: insecurity and bravery to overcome it, which he says is also at the crux of Hollywood’s ongoing labor issues. “I really can’t help but think of this season as emblematic of, in many ways, the risks that creatives take to do this work.”
He continues, “All of the anxieties and all of the funny stresses are there to exemplify that thing we can all understand and connect to when you want something so badly. You feel like, ‘This is what I meant to do.’ How far would you go? That’s the question right off the top of the season: how far would you go to hold onto it?”
Hoffman adds, “It’s so good to talk to you, as a director of these first few episodes, and to celebrate the work of the writers and actors in a season which is all about that. Especially in this moment, I’m in full solidarity and support of the actors and writers right now.”
“I’m hopeful that this can come to a place of real fairness soon,” Hoffman says. “If you enjoy this season, you know that the worthiness is there and the fairness should follow from this horrible, unfortunate time in our business.”
