Lord & Miller On How The Afterparty Season 2 Is 'Even Bolder' Than Season 1 [Exclusive Interview]

Chris Miller spent over 10 years working on his murder mystery project "The Afterparty," first as an abandoned movie script, and ultimately as an eight-episode series on Apple TV+ in which each episode is shot and edited in the style of a different movie genre. With his longtime collaborator Phil Lord along for the ride as a writer and producer, Miller delivered a delightful show full of heart, fun twists, and the comedic brilliance for which the duo has become known. 

Now the show is back for season 2, and a few familiar faces return. This time, a murder happens at a wedding where season 1 characters Aniq (Sam Richardson) and Zoë (Zoë Chao) are guests, and they call their old pal Detective Danner (Tiffany Haddish) in to help solve the case. The rest of the ensemble is made up of a murderer's row of excellent performers, including Zach Woods, John Cho, Ken Jeong, Vivian Wu, Anna Konkle, Jack Whitehall, Paul Walter Hauser, Elizabeth Perkins, and Poppy Liu (the latter of whom is my personal MVP of the season).

I had the opportunity to speak with Lord & Miller as well as executive producer Anthony King about the show's bolder second season, choosing the genres for the episodes, working with this new collection of actors, what they envision for the future of the show, and more. 

Note: This interview has been lightly edited for clarity and brevity.

Chris, you spent a long time with the original story for the first season of "The Afterparty." Did you feel any trepidation going into the second season knowing that you didn't have all of those extra years of living with the material for the new story that you're telling here?

Miller: Luckily, I have some great partners and very smart people to help. We were starting from scratch, but we had learned a lot from the first season and what worked and what people really were excited about and it was an opportunity to lean in more to some of the choices and be even bolder. Make more twists and turns in the mystery, but also go deeper and harder with the genres and do things like a Jane Austen period piece that we would never have done in the first season. Because you're like, "What? Are we jumping in time?" But the fact that we had the confidence to go, "People are going to go with it if we go there, and we can really make each of these things feel really unique and special and different," that gave us a lot of confidence. But trying to put together a complicated interwoven "Rashomon"-style murder mystery is a really hard task, but we have an amazing writing staff, amazing crew, and an incredible cast to pull it off.

Anthony, was there a genre that you originally wanted to fit into season 1 but ended up maybe not being right for that story that you were able to actually use in season 2?

King: I don't know if that happened because the genres really come out of the characters. We want it to feel organic to the characters when they start telling their story that you, as the audience, go like, "Oh, of course, that's the genre that they're telling it in." There are definitely genres that we have not had a chance to do yet that I think would be really fun. Because we don't want to just go, "It's a Western because we want to shoot on a dusty street." We'll have, hopefully, time in other future seasons to figure those things out, but for the scope of genres we got to do in both seasons and the way we got to take those genres to another level in season 2 was really exciting.

Phil, when I spoke with you for the first season, you mentioned that the Hall and Oates biopic in season 1 was inspired by people pitching you movies that you guys said no to, and I'm wondering if there's anything in season 2 that was inspired by any real-life interactions you guys have had.

Lord: Oh, man. Hall and Oates biopic, by the way, not entirely off the table.

Miller: That's right. We still hope we can actually do that for real. I will say that the vow box, which is a crazy thing that happens in the wedding, was based on one of the writers' real experiences going to a wedding that had a vow box and was like, "This is crazy!" and showed us pictures from the wedding. We're like, "Oh, this is definitely going in."

King: It's a real thing.

Miller: She was like, "Oh, I better alert my friends that we're putting this in a television show, because they'll make fun of me if they find out by watching."

Last time we spoke, you said that you were actually interested in making that Hall and Oates biopic into a real movie. Have you guys had any real conversations about that since then?

Lord: Define "real." [laughs] We hung out with Davey [Franco] once and we're like, "What if the movie is written and directed by your characters, and you are desperately trying to get the rights for the Hall and Oates songs but can't get them?"

Miller: Yeah. Because in reality, I think the holdup would be getting the actual rights from Hall and Oates, from understanding how much we love them and cherish their music.

Lord: It would be a not insurmountable hurdle.

One of the things that hit me more this season than it did in season 1 is this idea of huge revelations which redefine the characters and their relationships to one another. I'm wondering what kind of conversations you guys must have had with the actors about that, because for some of them, their characters get way more interesting in the back half of the season.

King: Yeah, one of them is a killer and is hiding that, but they all have secrets and parts of themselves that they're not revealing when you meet them and that they either reveal through their own story or through other people's stories.

One of the biggest arcs of the second season is Edgar, who's the victim, but what you learn about him as the people tell their stories and their relationships with him, he goes from being this kind of lovable weirdo to maybe a sociopath. [laughs] I think Zach Woods takes that on such an incredible arc — the subtlety of how he is always the same character, but you kind of feel the sinister side of him come into play as the season goes on.

I imagine that's something that must have excited the actors, the idea of, "We're going to almost be different characters, in a way, for the first couple episodes, and then have those layers peeled back."

Miller: I think it's a really great opportunity for each of these — they're all amazing actors. We really choose people who we think have a lot of different skills and a lot of range, because we're asking them to be funny, we're asking them to be dramatic. We're asking them to do two different things and also do 10 different things where we're going, "This is your character, but this is the film noir version of your character," and to remember and understand all of that, it's a big ask.

So you need to have people who really know what they're doing. And it's a really fun opportunity where each of them gets their own episode and gets a chance to be multiple things at once and to see a side of them that you maybe don't see. Like Ken Jeong, you've seen him be silly, you've seen him be goofy, but this one gives him an opportunity to do that, but also to be grounded and emotional and vulnerable and real and show that kind of range that you don't normally get to see from someone like him. Or John Cho, where you maybe have forgotten that he started in comedy and is super funny because he is also an amazing and handsome dramatic actor.

Lord: Can handsome people be funny?

Miller: It turns out they can! Only the worst ones, the ones that can do it all.

King: John proves the exception to the rule.

Lord: Who knew?

The physical humor from Paul Walter Hauser in the season is off the charts. It's hilarious.

Miller: None of those pratfalls were scripted. They all were things where he's like, "I'm going to do this." Then the first [assistant director] would be like, "Wait, wait, wait. We don't have a stunt coordinator. We don't have pads. It's not safe." He's like, "Okay, fine. I won't do it." [Pretending to be Hauser, looks both ways, does heightened whisper] "I'm going to do it!" [mimics Hauser taking a dramatic tumble]

That's great. Do you guys have an overall plan in mind for how many seasons ideally you would like this to go, in a perfect world?

Miller: Think 12 is too many.

King: I agree.

Lord: But 11 is too few. I'd say that it's so sweet that you think there's a plan for any of this. [laughs]

Miller: Yeah, I think the thing is that there are always fun ways for people to die, and there are so many more ways to tell a story that we haven't explored. So there's still at least I think a few more seasons worth of stories that could be told.

"The Afterparty" season 2 premieres on Apple TV+ on July 12, 2023.