You save one of the best teases for next season for near-last: the introduction of Tea Leoni as a clearly formidable “dame” who wants to hire Charles and company to find her missing crime kingpin father.
I’ve loved every conversation I’ve had with her. I’ve had a couple of texts with her in the last week that are delightful, and lots of thoughts and ideas around her character and where it might go for season five.
Has the show grown in ways you could not imagine when you first started?
Standing on set for episode seven and that majestic brawl between Meryl Streep and Melissa Mccarthy amidst that collection of actors—Molly Shannon, Steve Martin, Martin Short, Selena Gomez, Zach Galifianakis, Eugene Levy, Eva Longoria—all of us just standing there watching those two go at it was just one of those moments where you feel like you are in an Al Hirschfeld drawing.
From top to bottom, the show is perfectly cast. You mention those names, but how great is Richard Kind?
He is the greatest. His name and his personality are a perfect match. But he had been on my mind since we started doing this show, and it was only like, how can we find something that did justice to him because he’s our Ruth Gordon; he is that personality that feels so signature to New York. Richard lives only a few blocks away from the building that plays the Arconia. He told me [here, Hoffman lapses into a very respectable Kind impression], “I would walk on 86th Street and be in front of that building where you shoot, and it was about season two, maybe season three, and I found myself stopping in the middle of that block and just cursing, ‘Why the hell am I not on that show?’”
Going back to episode eight and the existential question that is at the heart of this season: If your life is a movie, what would be your happy ending?
Oh, my god, the Dudenoff question! My happy ending is that I have nothing but experiences like this one I’m in right now. The process of making this show with heroes of mine, becoming friends with them, getting to hang out and be silly and laugh our heads off. This has been just a wild ride. I feel like I could write for these three forever. I love them. Just put me in an elevator that goes everywhere and nowhere with this collection of people for the rest of time.
