In Jeff Hiller’s first scenes as Joel in HBO’s Somebody Somewhere, he reminds Bridget Everett’s character Sam that they were in high school show choir together but gives her a pass for not remembering him. Joel then promises to lie for Sam, who’s still grieving the death of her sister, if she wants to walk out early from their mundane job.
“I’ll tell Irma you got diarrhea or something,” he quips. “You’re free!”
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That opening scene marked “the birth of the show,” explains Somebody Somewhere’s executive producer Carolyn Strauss, who moderated the comedy’s recent panel at Deadline Contenders at HBO Max.
Check out the conversation here and scroll down for photos from the event.
“When we shot it back in 2019 the world felt like, especially for now, an incredibly different place,” recalled Strauss, who was joined on the dais by Everett, Hiller and creators/executive producers Paul Thureen and Hannah Bos. “But I think we also looked at the show as sort of a response to the environment we were in at the time, and as luck would have it or not have it, it feels even more relevant right now in terms of the spirit of the show.”
That “spirit” Strauss spoke of was about the relationship at the heart of the Peabody-winning comedy about a Kansas gal who discovers there’s no place like home. Even though Somebody Somewhere featured multiple plot points about death, infidelity, marriage and self-worth, the primary story revolved around Sam and Joel.
“From from the start, we always wanted this to be a love story about friendship,” explained Thureen. “This was the central love story of the show. It’s moving to look back at that and see how undeniable Joel was the very start and this idea of somebody who’s shut down because of grief and life beating them down, and somebody [like Joel] who can see the things in you that you can’t see yourself … that first season was [Sam] sort of like coming to back to life, awakening because of this person who loves her from from high school.”
“I don’t think a lot of TV shows make love stories about friends, and I feel like it’s very real for a lot of people, and we really got to lean into that and celebrate that,” added Bos. “It was fun to just see Sam and Joel. Joel makes the first move in this relationship, and he opens Sam up in a new way. And then, as the seasons continue, Sam gets to do it for Joel, and that was a really beautiful way to volley back and forth over these three seasons and watch the two of them come together and grow.”
Somebody Somewhere received two Emmy nominations for its third and final season: one for Thureen and Bos for Comedy Writing, the other for Hiller for Supporting Actor in a Comedy.
“I know this is going to be a surprise, but I’m also not remembered by a lot of people from my high school,” said Hiller. “Can you believe I was picked on? But I really knew Joel right away and I also really appreciated he’s this complicated character who’s both gay but also a member of a faith community. He goes to church. When I read the script, I thought, I know exactly who this person is, but I cannot believe these writers put it in a script, because I can’t point to any other character like him in any television show ever. I was so moved because I like him, and it was like representation.”
More than anything, Everett said, she wanted Somebody Somewhere to be gentle and kind.
“We didn’t want to have a mean-spirited show,” said Everett. “We didn’t want to do snark. We didn’t want to be a snarky show. So in that way, it kind of felt like a gamble … we just really wanted to stay true to what felt like was exciting to us. We were in the room together all the time, and really sort of always on the same wavelength about what we wanted for the show. Sometimes that meant a lot of discovery, but definitely no snark, and definitely the love story of friends, and also music and singing. To me, one of the big tentpoles of the show is singing, and how that connects people.”
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