When Nick Stoller and Francesca Delbanco started working on the first season of Platonic, they thought they were writing an anthology series. The concept they originally pitched to Apple TV+ was built around one season that would follow Seth Rogen and Rose Byrne‘s friendship, with subsequent seasons featuring entirely different stories and casts — like a period piece about women’s and men’s colleges becoming co-ed campuses in the 1970s and a work-wife/work-husband story. Then, about halfway through production of the first season, they realized they were having way too much fun with Rogen and Byrne to move on.
“They have such amazing chemistry together, and it was such a great experience, that we decided to ask them if they would be open to doing more, and they said yes,” Stoller tells THR. “And Apple, rightly so, felt like they were the show’s identity. I remember they said, ‘Who is going to want to watch a season two without them?’”
What that revelation meant for the show’s creators — who are also married and have two children together — was that they now had a brand new, and bigger, challenge as they started working on season two. “We had to blow up this neat little bow we’d originally tied at the end of the season,” says Delbanco. “We had told a complete story. But it wound up being a great creative exercise — we had to figure out, one chapter of their life is over, so now what are they doing to do? And through that we realized that where we first thought of the show as one snapshot of one time in their lives, we could actually tell stories about these two forever.”
Fans will get to see the fruits of that labor when the second season premieres on the streaming platform on Aug. 6. The show sees Rogen’s Will getting ready for his wedding to Johnny 66 CEO Jenna (played by Rachel Rosenbloom); Byrne’s Sylvia serves as his event planner as part of her new career and struggles to balance the work with her own marriage. Here, Stoller and Delbanco preview the new episodes.
How did your decision to extend the story of Seth Rogen and Rose Byrne’s characters beyond one season affect your plans for the original ending?
DELBANCO In our original conceit, we thought that Seth’s fiancé would get pregnant and they would announce that at their engagement party. That would have been hard to structure a season two around, because then he has to stay living with her in San Diego — we didn’t want him to have to walk out on his family in order to get back to L.A. and have fun again. We were worried about likability. (Laughs) Plus, the odd-couple dynamic is what is so fun about the lead characters, that she has a family and he doesn’t.
After watching Seth and Rose embody the characters, and their dynamic, during the first season, did that change anything about the way you approached writing the characters?
STOLLER We knew them well enough from working with them before that we really were writing season one with their performances in mind. There’s still a lot of trial and error that goes into figuring out a show, so I’d say the second season felt easier and smoother. I think we also figured out what makes Luke McFarlane’s character funny, and what his dynamic with Rose should be. And we were surprised by how great Rose’s physical comedy is. A lot of times those big, juicy, stupid set pieces go to men. In season two, there’s a scene where she gets blown backwards by the hose of beer. She gets abandoned on a kayak on the L.A. river. And Seth would pitch it that way, he’d say it’s funnier if she does it. Like the special K drug scene in season one.
What is your ethos for writing the conflict on the show, specifically between Seth and Rose? As a viewer, it feels like there are certain lines that they never cross when they’re fighting.
STOLLER Something we discovered in the first season and brought into the second is their conflict is always that they are mad at themselves about something and the other person is calling them out on it. They’re not always totally thoughtful about each other’s feelings, but what they really get mad about is their own stuff that has nothing to do with the other. I find that really true to life.
DELBANCO Some of my favorite scenes when I’m directing are the two of them fighting, because they do it in such a funny way. Maybe this is the admission of a passive-aggressive person, but there’s a wish fulfillment for me in the way they just have it out. There isn’t a lot of simmering.
STOLLER And a lot of the writers room time is spent figuring out what is their core personal problem that the other one can help them with — that’s another wish fulfillment, that a close friend can help you with whatever you’re going through.
I want to ask you if the character of Jenna, who plays Seth’s fiancé, is meant to be unlikable, but I’m also loathe to use that very loaded term on a female character.
DELBANCO I mean, I don’t think we felt like we were creating a character that we would want to hang out with.
STOLLER She’s nice, but basic.
DELBANCO She isn’t cool and fun the way that Sylvia is mean to be cool and fun. We were not trying to destroy her or make her seem like the bad guy in any way. We were trying to show those times when your friends get engaged to people and you’re like, great, now I have to hang out with this person every time I want to see my friend.
STOLLER Rachel Rosenbloom is super cool herself and so good at acting that I would forget that, and we’d cut, and she’d be so cool.
Aidy Bryant joins this season; did you write that guest role for her?
STOLLER It started as one of those parts that just gets the job done, and then when we asked Aidy to do it we rewrote it for her. Her pacing, the way she delivers her lines, is so off-kilter and there’s an unpredictability about it that I absolutely love. We also feel like we all know this person. She created a character that’s very familiar.
She works in marketing for a studio, and one of the young stars has a pretty non-PC sense of humor. Is he also based on people you know?
DELBANCO We’ve been fortunate not to work with jerks. We were trying to capture the kind of alt-comedy joking around that they claim is pushing boundaries but is actually just misogynistic. We didn’t want to be preachy, but that is something that I certainly see happening. The core of that story is a famous young actor and the invisibility of being a middle-aged woman, and that is something very real that I have encountered. It’s that feeling of, I could meet you a thousand times and you barely say hello to me.
STOLLER That debate that Sylvia and Will have, where she’s like why will he only text you and not me and Will’s like, who cares? That’s a debate we have had, where I’ll be like, if the guy doesn’t want to talk to you then why do you want to talk to him?
DELBANCO And it’s like, it’s still insulting. I’m still deeply offended. I don’t want to talk to him, but how dare he.
It reminds me of that great moment in season one, when Charlies’ boss doesn’t remember Sylvia’s name…
DELBANCO We did wonder, are we retelling a story from season one? But then I was like well, I’ll tell this in every season of everything we ever write for the rest of time, because it’s that evergreen.
There’s also some really juicy conflict within the marriage storyline, between Rose Byrne and Luke McFarlane’s characters. Can you talk about that?
DELBANCO That was one of my favorite parts of this season. It was all about Luke wanting Rose to read his book, and her trying to balance what she owed him versus her own anger about what he owed her. There’s a scene in the kitchen where she starts out being really apologetic. But he’s really mad, and says something like, “I never ask you for anything and you couldn’t even do this one thing for me.” And she’s like, “Well you may ask for nothing, but here are 15 things that I’m doing today, none of which you’ve ever thought about or thanked me for.” It’s a very real thing in the adult business of being married and having a family, and I feel proud of the way that dynamic plays out on the show.
Last season had a fair amount of L.A.-specific running jokes, and this year has elements like Seth’s character hating the Coco delivery robots and an episode dedicated to the horrors of the L.A. river. How do you decide how much L.A.-ness to imbue?
STOLLER We always want the show to really be about this place, and a lot of the ideas come up organically. The kayaking episode came about because one of our writers who is an old friend of ours was talking about how great the L.A. river is, and then I went there with our kids and it was not. It was desolate. So I came back on Monday and just made merciless fun of him, and that turned into us realizing oh, we should put this in the show.
How important is it to you that the production be hyper-local?
STOLLER We direct every episode, and we simply couldn’t do this job if it wasn’t here. We have kids and they’re in school. Sony and Apple were really cool about it. I’m always a little frustrated with the way that things are budgeted in this industry, because you actually do get tons of invisible savings by shooting here. You get the best crew in the world, and that saves you time. You get actors who are willing to work for less because they don’t have to get on a plane or be away from their families. Fortunately our studio partners on this show totally got that.
Nick, you have a recurring role in The Studio. Was that payback for Seth doing your show?
STOLLER He told me he’d written me into an episode, and I thought I was just a placeholder. I assumed he’d rewrite that a million times and I’d be replaced. He kept telling me it was really happening, and then eventually he was like, seriously, these are your filming dates. I thought the whole storyline was so funny, and I really was just hired to fulfill the vision that he and Evan wanted.
DELBANCO He was shooting it while we were in the writer’s room for season two of Platonic, and the writers’ room is hard and not that fun. It’s a slog and it’s intellectually and creatively taxing. So every time Nick was like OK, I have to go to Vegas to be in The Studio, you could just see the glee.
STOLLER I felt like a baby, in a good way. They did everything for me. I was like, where should I stand, what should I do? They do your hair for you. I’ve been approached more about that role than about anything else I’ve ever done.