[This story contains MAJOR spoilers from the Your Friends & Neighbors season two finale.)
Olivia Munn wasn’t even supposed to be here.
When Munn signed on to do the Apple TV series Your Friends & Neighbors, it was a one-season thing. But by the time she filmed episode the second episode of season one, appropriately titled “Deuce,” showrunner Jonathan Tropper asked if she would stick around. Munn tells The Hollywood Reporter now that she “waited until the end of the season to make that decision.”
“When I was reading the first season, I really loved the idea of these people who are so wealthy that they’re not going to clock when one of their expensive watches are swiped,” Munn said. “There’s some people who just are so wealthy they don’t even know what they have, yeah? I just thought that was really clever.”
For one season.
“The first time you have no idea, right? Your expectations are really low, and then for it to be so well received was so exciting,” Munn said.
But then the pressure to avoid a sophomore slump really sets in. Your Friends & Neighbors attempted to match the whodunnit mystery of season one with the introduction of a new mysterious character, Owen Ashe, played by James Marsden. Unfortunately, Ashe ends up just as dead as Samanatha Levitt’s (Munn) last romantic partner, Paul Levitt (Jordan Gelber). Well, the second time he ends up just as dead.
In the ninth episode of season two, Ashe is presumed dead after a crazy, drug-fueled night that ended with shots fired and some slippery marble. The character didn’t actually die-die until the final episode of the season, however, when his SUV ends up at the bottom of a lake. Coop (Jon Hamm), Barney (Hoon Lee) and Nick (Mark Tallman) make it out — as I write this, Ashe is still down there, and he’s not coming up (not alive, at least).
In a Zoom conversation with Marsden and Munn, I asked the guy who is now in all the TV shows and all the movies if he played Ashe any differently as “seemed dead” vs. “actually dead.”
“No, because to me, I’m always thinking about the audience,” Marsden said. “The audience has to believe he’s dead, so I just fully commit to that he’s dead. And then maybe, you know, something happens and he just sparks back to life.”
The something that happens here is ketamine serving as a late-stage defibrillator.
Ashe is, of course, not the only dead guy to not be a dead guy. The most famous one of our time is probably Jon Snow (Kit Harington) on Game of Thrones. He was stabbed in the back, quite literally, by Night Watch traitors, but revived by a witch using the power of the Lord of Light.
Anyway, Munn explains it much better than me, and we paused the interview for her to bring Marsden up to speed in great detail. He gamely listened to what Snow/Harington did, and then responded, “I did that.”
Jon Snow (Kit Harington) in Game of Thrones.
Courtesy of HBO
When you work as much as Marsden does, you’re bound to die a few on-screen deaths. Those odds skyrocket when you star on a show with “Dead” as the first word of its title.
“I died in Dead to Me. I died every episode of Westworld. So I die quite a bit. I don’t know why people want to see me dead,” Marsden said, adding of his personal technique: “I do closed eyes with, like, one kind of halfway open on the side.”
“I died in one show and and I didn’t tell my mom,” Munn said. “I forgot, and it was really traumatizing to her. Like, they see me — I’m dead. I get zipped up in a body bag. She’s like, ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ I was like, ‘Mom, it’s just TV.’”
“You forget how impactful it is on some people when they’re watching,” Marsden said.
Amanda Peet, who plays Sam’s frenemy (and Hamm’s ex-wife) Mel Cooper, could not recall having died on screen. She has a painful memory, however, of playing a character in anaphylactic shock on Jack & Jill (1999-2001; she played Jack.)
“All the cast members had to lean over me to be like, ‘Are you OK?’” Peet remembered in a separate Zoom conversation. “The camera was over me, too. I was supposed to be on the ground with my eyes closed, [but] as a result of Sarah Paulson makes me snort a lot I could not do it. It was round 4 within the morning and everybody was so drained and upset. The angrier they bought, the funnier I discovered it and [Paulson] I assumed that was the case. So lastly we put a shawl over my face to see if I might simply maintain my eyes nonetheless. So sure, I believe it is fairly tough.
“You’re feeling your eyes fluttering and also you say to your self, “STOP!” “You inform your self to loosen up, to not bat your eyelashes, after which they flutter extra,” Peet continued. “It’s actually scary proper now simply fascinated with it.”
Amanda Peet in Your mates and neighbors.
Apple TV+
For the third season of Your mates and neighborswhich was ordered months earlier than the season two premiere, Mel enters a world of angst — as if menopause is not sufficient of an inside wrestle for a girl.
On the finish of season two, Mel units about writing a brand new e book. Not a narrative about menopause – her writer has already rejected this manuscript with out seeing it – however about her life, which, a couple of yr earlier, noticed her ex arrested on suspicion of homicide. Wait till “she will get on the path and begins sniffing out” the true story right here, Peet teased about season three, including, “I suppose.”
(Troops depend THR that Your mates and neighbors season three is “way more of a direct continuation” that “picks up very shortly after the tip of season two.” A few yr handed in-universe between season one and season two.)
Frankly, I am unsure Mel might take one other season like season two, by which she spent a variety of time combating together with her daughter (Isabel Gravitt), her personal physique, and/or her next-door neighbors. She killed a canine, for God’s sake. Peet did not thoughts.
Peet says she was “so impressed” with how Tropper wrote the menopause storyline for her character.
“I benefit from the truth that he wished it to be nuanced and that he did not wish to make [Mel] this vapid ex-wife who’s on the house entrance, ready for one thing thrilling to occur,” Peet stated, “and I believe that is fairly uncommon.
“He desires it to be actual and pure, however he has a beautiful humorousness,” she continued. “Menopause is absolutely humorous.”
Your mates and neighbors the second season is now streaming on Apple.