‘Only Murders in the Building’ goes Hollywood: ‘This is a dreamy way to start the season’

LOS ANGELES — On an early March day cloaked in gray skies, Selena Gomez, Steve Martin and Martin Short are taking a stroll down a bustling New York City block — it’s the start of filming for the fourth season of “Only Murders in the Building.”

In the scene, they witness a series of vignettes: A guy who looks like a background actor in “A Bronx Tale” hollering at a taxi that won’t stop; an annoyed kid in a Knicks jersey evading his mother’s calls from the fire escape of an apartment overhead, where a sign hangs that says “Diversity”; and a young couple who failed to gaze up at the imaginary Godzilla in the distance — each going from one over-the-top New Yawk accent to another. There’s also a group of kids uncapping a fire hydrant and a hot dog vendor sluggishly pushing a cart down the sidewalk lined with garbage bags.

You know, just everyday New York things in New York.

Or is it? The unfolding cliche-riddled scene is really just showbiz, baby. The actors, who play true-crime-obsessed, murder-solving New Yorkers in Hulu’s comedy series, are actually wandering a Hollywood backlot, on a set doubling for New York, as the show finds a new way to get meta.

After spending last season dabbling in the theater world, the trio are nearly 3,000 miles west of their stomping grounds — the murder-prone Arconia building on the Upper East Side — as their characters juggle a new mystery and a tempting opportunity. Season 4 picks up with Mabel (Gomez), Charles (Martin) and Oliver (Short) investigating the suspicious circumstances surrounding the death of Sazz Pataki (Jane Lynch), Charles’ longtime stunt double who was shot and killed at the end of last season. While they’re searching for answers, the friends also are mulling a proposition from Hollywood to adapt the first season of their popular podcast, which solved the murder of a man who lived in their building, for the big screen.

On the set, John Hoffman, who co-created the whodunit series with Martin, is directing the season opener. In between takes, he huddles with the actors at video village, where the cluster of monitors capturing the day’s footage is stationed — all of which will be part of the scene in the episode when the camera pans out. They’re discussing possible alternatives for Mabel’s reaction to the stereotype-fest they just watched being shot — “They really nailed New York” is her line.

“What about, ‘Looks like AI New York’?” Martin suggests. “Or maybe we look at each other?”

Short later makes his way over to Benny Blanco, Gomez’s boyfriend, who is sitting nearby: “Hello, young man, give me some love,” he says playfully as they hug.

Hoffman seems pleased with himself for bringing his cast and crew to the land of glitz, glamour and golden sunsets. He hadn’t thought this far ahead when he pitched the show. But it was only a matter of time before Hollywood came calling — audio often rivals books as inspiration for adaptations — once the podcast at the center of the series found success. And a few of the show’s characters already have ties to the world of entertainment — Charles is an actor who starred in the ‘90s crime drama “Brazzos,” while Oliver is a struggling theater director.

So, here we are at the Paramount Pictures Studios lot on Melrose Avenue — production home to films like “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” and “The Godfather,” and TV shows like “Cheers” and “Happy Days” — at the start of the show’s three-day visit to the West Coast.

“It really has become a sweet spot for us to lean into a season of a thing,” Hoffman says while seated at the commissary on the lot. “What we’re doing here in L.A. is very purposeful for the case, but it’s also purposeful for the underlying story we’re telling. I watched the three of them sitting out there by the Paramount Theater and Steve was saying, ‘This is a dreamy way to start the season.’” (A bonus: Each actor has a home in L.A.)

In following the friends-turned-amateur sleuths and podcasters, the series has spent its run satirizing the true-crime ecosystem and celebrity culture within its whodunit storylines each season. The opening scenes of the fourth season feature a brief montage of home videos of the trio that signal this round, with its movie-making backdrop, will grapple with the idea of a version of oneself being captured and frozen in time.

It brings us to the other scene being filmed today: Gomez, as Mabel, is leaving the big meeting with the studio team. She takes refuge on a bench near the fountain in the lot’s famed circular courtyard as she considers how the trio will be immortalized by Hollywood: Oliver as someone we all want to strangle and cuddle at the same time; Charles as everyone’s un-fun uncle with a grouchy turtle face; and Mabel as a traumatized, homeless and jobless mumbling millennial.

“If they make a big movie about that Mabel — what if I don’t want to be that person forever?” Mabel says.

As a person who has been in the public eye from a young age, Gomez, in a follow-up conversation alongside her co-stars, is pragmatic about that concern: “I have been able to grow up as best as I can. I’m definitely not perfect, but doing this my whole life, there’s not really anything else that I’d want different about my life, even though it comes with complications.”

Hoffman says it felt organic for the story to take a Hollywood turn. “I get pitched every now and then — ‘There’s a podcast…,’ ‘There’s a podcast…,’ ‘There’s a podcast,’ “ he says in a video call this month. In fact, he recently opened the writers’ room on his next project, an Apple TV+ limited series about Las Vegas showman Siegfried & Roy, which is based on the Apple original podcast “Wild Things: Siegfried & Roy.”

“It felt very familiar to me to see how quickly that kind of thing can happen,” he adds. “The trio, having solved three, maybe even four murders — and the success and uniqueness of that — would have Hollywood calling. The jokes were there in my head.”

Hoffman considered making the podcast adaptation a TV series rather than a film, but he opted for the latter because, he says, it simplified the storytelling and kept it within the confines of a season while still giving due to the overarching murder mystery. He also didn’t want the studio in this season’s storyline to be associated with “Only Murders in the Building,” which is produced by 20th Television, a part of Disney Television Studios. The choice to use Paramount — Molly Shannon plays fictional studio executive Bev Melon — required some orchestrating, Hoffman admits.

“It was complicated, I won’t lie. You really have to give over and say, ‘We’re going to treat your brand with a lot of respect,’” he says about Paramount. “They embraced it and knew what we were doing, having that little bit of wink toward Hollywood studios.”

The setting provided a nice dose of nostalgia too. In addition to the Paramount lot being home to the writers’ room for “Only Murders in the Building” and his new Apple TV+ series, Hoffman spent years there as a writer on Netflix’s “ Grace and Frankie.” The lot was also the home base for Short’s short-lived 1979 sitcom, “The Associates.”

“I just remember I was like 28 and I realized they had shot a scene from ‘The Ten Commandments’ against a fake ocean over there,” Short says. “It was unbelievable.”

Martin adds: “I go back to Paramount a long way, when David Picker was the president. They were going to do ‘The Jerk’ and then David Picker left, and they passed on ‘The Jerk’ and they had already paid me, like, $50,000 — something like that.”

“That’d be like $18 million today,” Short quips.

“I know,” Martin says. “And they let me keep the money and gave me the script. … I would call that an error.”

Of course, the head-scratching meetings and deal-makings of Hollywood remains a steady source of fodder for satire on television, as it’s become more difficult to distinguish gag from reality. That was part of the thrill, Shannon says, of guest starring this season — that and, like Martin, she’s a true-crime buff: Her latest obsession was watching recaps of the Black Swan murder trial on YouTube.

“I’ve never really played a Hollywood executive, so that was really fun because I love the business side of Hollywood,” she says by phone. “She wasn’t based on anyone in particular, but it’s fun to play a character like that now, with what’s going on post-strikes, post-COVID. Behind the scenes, it’s just like the greatest Hollywood party that you’ve ever been invited to.”

That’s because “ Only Murders in the Building “ has featured a who’s who of A-list guest stars, including Sting, Tina Fey, Nathan Lane, Shirley MacLaine, Paul Rudd and Meryl Streep — the latter returns this season as Loretta Durkin, a veteran actress on the rise and the love interest to Oliver. The Hollywood-ness of this season brought even more stars into the mix. In addition to Shannon, Zach Galifianakis, Eva Longoria and Eugene Levy appear as heightened versions of themselves playing the actors cast as Oliver, Mabel and Charles, respectively. Kumail Nanjiani and Melissa McCarthy, who nearly made a guest appearance in a previous season, also join this season’s lineup.

“There’s moments on the set where I couldn’t contain my laughter,” Gomez says. “But it actually worked really well, because my character can make fun of Hollywood and [she] doesn’t understand it.”

“Have you seen that scene where you turn your back?” Short asks. “It made the final cut.”

“I was doing a scene with Molly Shannon,” Gomez says. “And I could not stop laughing and they ended up having to put it in the cut anyway. I had to physically turn my face away because it was so funny to me, but it made sense in the scene, so he [Hoffman] made it work. But I don’t think they had an option.”

It gets Martin talking about the energy the heft of their guest stars bring to set: “Here’s the thing, yes, they are celebrities and famous, but the main thing is they’re really good. Anytime we’re working with any actor who’s really good, whether they’re famous or not, we really enjoy it. It’s like the old tennis adage, when you’re playing with someone who’s better than you, you rise to the occasion a bit.”

“Except for Marty,” he deadpans.

As for who they would cast to play their counterparts in the series in a biopic, it leads to some fun ribbing.

“Obviously you go to Leo [DiCaprio] first,” Short suggests for Martin.

“Oh wow,” Gomez says.

“But then you go from Leo to Andy Dick,” Short continues.

“How about Tim Walz?” Martin says.

OK, so, who would Martin tap to play Short?

“Uh … has Mickey Rooney died?” he says.

“Yes, he’s gone,” Short says.

“Oh, he’s died,” Martin says, teeing himself up. “Still, I would go for Mickey Rooney. They’ve got the same energy.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah,” Short says.

Back to the L.A. of it all. Part of the show’s three-day visit also included shooting at a lavish home in the Hollywood Hills, for a swanky party meant to entice their characters to make a deal, and the apartment complex where Sazz lives: “We really looked long and hard for the perfect, evocative place that could be the seed of something else,” Hoffman says.

For now, the lore of Hollywood is in play as Oliver and Charles attempt to comfort an overwhelmed Mabel while background actors dressed as cowboys walk through the famed arches that lead to the lot’s many soundstages. At one point, Dan Fogelman, who created “This Is Us” and is an executive producer on the series, meanders over during a break from filming his upcoming Hulu drama, “Paradise City,” to observe the scene. And with Oliver and Charles doing the comforting, comedy is bound to take over, particularly when there’s mention of late film producer Robert Evans. Muffled laughter is heard around the monitors.

“Now, remember, you’re playing Charles here,” Short teases Martin between takes.

The scene ends with the trio hopping into a ‘80s-era black limo, which someone on set claims is the same Lincoln town car featured in “Die Hard” and is driven by Charles’s old chauffeur from his “Brazzos” days. And, so, the New Yorkers set off for their big tour of Hollywood and begin their Sazz investigation.

The amateur detectives are, once again, on the loose. And, yes, they’re making a stop at In-N-Out. Some L.A. cliches can’t be helped.