Even after the intricate behind-the-scenes planning — from coming up with a suitably dense and twisty murder mystery to plotting character arcs and dynamics for stars Steve Martin, Martin Short and Selena Gomez that were complex and funny — Hulu’s Only murders in the buildingshowrunner John Hoffman realized that he had to keep looking for inspiration in the moment.
He remembers throwing Martin, 75, a bit of challenging physical comedy on the debut season’s 10th episode. Expecting there would be limits to his enthusiasm, he was surprised and delighted when his series co-creator immediately declared that he was all-in and offered a fresh wind of ideas for additional bloom, in the same vein as the sublime manic bits of company that distinguished his earliest works.
“He starts showing me different things he can do and play with, and I’m like, ‘What more could you want?’ Hoffman marvels After the first season garnered a devoted fan base, critical acclaim and 17 Emmy nominations, Hoffman is especially pleased to add a late career payout to the massive amount of goodwill Martin has generated throughout his career. “He told me recently, just dancing around the room, that he never expected something so wonderful,” says Hoffman. “He said: ‘My career has not all at once been a mix of a warm, critical reception with a popular reception. like this. My films are appreciated twenty years later.” I hadn’t thought of that… I find it incredibly moving that he dived into that spirit with everyone to lead the way.”
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Steve Martin is a hero of yours. What was so intriguing about how the two of you screamed while working together?
I was able to quickly get past all the intimidating factors, which would completely thwart a creative mind, like, “How am I going to make all these people happy and see how I want this thing to go?” I had these conversations with Steve about elevating the material above what could be really funny about it and finding the humanity at its core. I remember the big moment when I went to dinner at Steve’s apartment in San Remo, New York. I was intimidated: Marty was there, and I spoke to them and played this video I found accompanied by “Clair de Lune” where this incredible dancer performed on a trampoline and bounced up and down. After dinner, I pulled my laptop to myself and watched them view this entire piece. I said, “This idea plays into the true art of the clown, but there’s pathos, there’s poignancy involved.” It’s what they’ve been doing all their careers, if you’re really honest about it: elevating the art form. There’s a jump, there’s a sweet note in it that makes us appreciate the fool without quotes they’ve been to us for so many years. I was pitching about what this bounceback could be in our episode one. They had to take a moment. Like, “Wait a minute — so this goes on the show?” And I said, “Yeah. It’s indicative of where we want to get to the heart of these characters emotionally, and boom — we’re getting it done.” They embraced it. I’m very proud of that moment because it jumps, and it sends a very clear signal: this is not the show you expect.
Tell me about figuring out the characters arcs and developing a clever murder mystery while also determining the comedic beats and tone shifts.
It’s easy to minimize what we do with this half-hour comedy. Steve is a big mystery lover, and I’m not, so I knew I had a huge job here, and we kept a lot of balls in the air. But that moved me. That felt like a piece to me, that you could puzzle this all together and hold it, and you would find great relief and delight in the deep-seated comedy between the two of these guys as you worked this mystery from behind to move forward and our way to the end so hopefully we can satisfy the people who are there for that mystery, the real criminals or whoever likes a good yarn. I had had a rather personal experience with a dear childhood friend of mine who was found murdered a year before I started developing this show. And because I hadn’t had any connection with him, I’d spent that year researching it in a way I never would have. I went to Wisconsin, met his family, had to understand what led to this moment. I was obsessed with it, and I’d never had that experience before, but I wanted this to be infused too. It is all in balance with the comedy, in which the human trio comes together and finds connection from great loneliness and isolation.
Steve and Marty are two of the greatest comedy sparring partners of all time. How did Selena fit into that mix, and how did you create that alchemy with these three artists?
“Alchemy” is the perfect word. You can only do so much as a writer to create the thing. The essential magic that occurred that none of us knew to expect, or dreamed to expect as well as it works, is when Selena Gomez [came in]. We had a table that Zoom read, the first time we heard the three of us read these lines together, two weeks before we started filming, and it was like, “Okay, here’s the show that’s going to happen.” She had her own comedic styles that were very well-crafted and shrewd. She came up with a wonderful understanding of Mabel’s backstory and the growing concern a millennial like her would have when confronted by these two unclean crazy people. After that Zoom, we all hung up and the phone line started to burn: Steve and Marty called and they said, “She’s perfect.” They were both properly disorganized as characters and thrown off balance by her.
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How did you get into the comedy zone you were going to operate in?
The organizing principle in my mind for the tone and comedy in this show is “New York City.” New York has it all: something tremendously dramatic can happen when you step outside your building in New York that is unsettling and deeply disturbing, and you have people grabbing each other that you never knew before and experiencing something like a unity. Once we set the tone of the show as New York City, you could have your cake and eat it too with these comedic geniuses. What if the cat is in the freezer? You can play a scene where Steve Martin discovers a cat in the freezer and has to pull it out and break one of its legs and now he puts it in his pocket. But that scene has to be accompanied by something deeply rooted: then he meets Oliver at a very low point when he goes to sell the valuable poster of his biggest bust on Broadway. It’s absurdist, but both things are held at the same time. It all has to be in good measure and give the audience what they want, but it has to be organically true to the story we’re building. That’s the nice thing about this show: it can go in many different directions, and you never know where it will go from one moment to the next.
Interview edited for length and clarity.
This story first appeared in a standalone August issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine.