No Good Deed creator and showrunner Liz Feldman and star Abbi Jacobson spoke to ComingSoon about the dark comedy and subverting expectations. The series is now streaming on Netflix.
“When Lydia (Lisa Kudrow) and Paul (Ray Romano) decide to move on from their empty nest to forge a new life, they list their gorgeous 1920s Spanish-style villa located in one the most desirable neighborhoods in Los Angeles — and the real estate frenzy begins. Multiple families all race to buy what they believe to be their dream house, convinced it will fix all of their very different problems. But as Lydia and Paul know all too well, sometimes the home of your dreams can be a true nightmare. As they struggle to hide the dark and dangerous secrets that linger inside their longtime home, Paul and Lydia begin to realize that the only way they’ll escape the past is to finally face it,” says the synopsis for the show by Liz Feldman.
Tyler Treese: Liz, you assembled such an amazing ensemble. How was it balancing the story? None of the couples are ever sidelined for very long, and I could see it being so easy to do so just because there are so many strong performances, but you let people shine while nobody is forgotten.
Liz Feldman: I mean, to be honest, it was a challenge to balance that many stories in a half an hour. I had never written an ensemble before, so I really bit off quite a lot and realized at a certain point, okay, I do need to pare down a little bit one couple’s story in this episode and maybe bring it back in the next episode. So it was a definite balancing act. But, you know, I knew that Lisa [Kudrow] and Ray Romano’s characters, Lydia and Paul, would be sort of our anchors for the show, and that the other characters would revolve in and out around them. But, I mean, I think I was just trying to give everyone a really satisfying story that felt like it had a beginning, middle, and end. And I’m really lucky that I work with a team of writers who are absolutely brilliant, and credit to them for helping me figure out how to do this [laughs].
Abbi, I love all your scenes with Poppy Liu. You just have such a great dynamic. What really stood out about her as a scene partner?
Abbi Jacobson: Right from the get-go, I was like, this dynamic is gonna work. There’s something…she’s so giving as a scene partner, and I just love all of our scenes. They’re a mix of, it’s not like we’re always kind of fighting, but we’re kind of…they get like very high energy [laughs]. They’re fast-paced, which was so fun because there are a couple of scenes in our car where we each have clues to what’s happened in the house, and we’re trying to figure out this mystery. We both have different total ideas, but we’re like yelling them at each other, and I feel like the camera would cut and we would be hysterical every time. I think that that kind of thing, even though it cuts, you feel that in the dynamic on screen.
Because it was just such a loving dynamic between us right from the start. Because it is also like, this couple has been through a lot, and when we meet them, they’ve gone through IVF, they’ve gone through a number of rounds, and they’ve been really dreaming about building their family and have kind of come to terms that they’re maybe not gonna do that even though this is their dream house. So, are they still gonna go after that even if they’re not gonna have kids? They’re really at a turning point in their marriage and trying to figure out what their family’s gonna look like. So that warmth between them, and that playfulness, I think really lent itself with the more dramatic parts.
Liz, I really love how you used a lot of familiar faces to the audience but showed them in a very different light. Linda is just a total revelation in this. You see Ray Romano snorting coke at one point. What do you like most about just subverting expectations by using established actors?
Feldman: I mean, you nailed it. I just like to subvert expectations, both in the storytelling and in the casting. I come from the sitcom world. I was a multi-cam writer for over a decade and I love that genre. It’s really fun, but it’s pretty much three jokes per page and very little plot, you know? And so I got really excited at the opportunity to tell a deeper story, where I could sort of write life more how I experience it, which is that it isn’t just one genre.
I love working with actors who you maybe know from a different world. Like, obviously Lisa and Ray, who are sitcom icons, it’s just so rewarding to be able to give them material that shows them for the multidimensional, incredibly vulnerable, real humans that they are. And you know, we’ve seen them do some dramatic work, but maybe not quite exactly like this. It’s just such a pleasure.
Thanks to Liz Feldman and Abbi Jacobson for taking the time to talk about Netflix’s No Good Deed.
