What’s your wedding horror story? A best man’s gaffe-riddled speech? A stumble down the aisle? A belligerently inebriated uncle? How about a murder?
The 10-part second season of dark comedy Afterparty returns with all the ingredients viewers loved last time – and a whole lot more sprinkled on top, too. This time the setting is not a high school reunion, but a wedding. And the victim is the groom.
Tiffany Haddish, Sam Richardson and Zoe Chao reprise their roles as Detective Danner and lovers Aniq and Zoe, respectively, joined by The Hangover’s Ken Jeong, Black Bird’s Paul Walter Hauser, Star Trek’s John Cho, Sharp Objects’ Elizabeth Perkins and The Office’s Zach Woods.
Haddish, as Detective Danner, is yanked back into the nucleus of a murder to solve this matrimonial whodunnit: Edgar, the groom – a Silicon Valley mogul, is found dead the morning after the wedding. As in the first season, Danner grills the guests to discover the culprit and each episode is told through a character’s version of events – not just through their eyes, but via the visual style of a specific film genre.
“It’s a lot to juggle,” admits Oscar-winning filmmaker Chris Miller, who created the show with creative partner Phil Lord.
“To have each story tell a story in its own unique style and genre: its own little movie that’s completely unlike any of the other episodes; to tell an emotional story, where you end up really empathising with the character in that episode, that’s also furthering the murder mystery, which is its own complicated puzzle.”
“And then on top of that, to have it be dramatic stakes and have it be funny,” he continues. “The show is really ambitious and the fact that it all works and fits together is somewhat of a miracle.”
What sets Afterparty apart from the myriad other shows in the crime genre is its focus on telling the story through each character’s distinct perspective, rooted in a film or television genre. Essentially, the series reinvents itself every episode, while weaving the narrative through each to create a tapestry that is both complex and consistent.
There’s Jane-Austen style rom-com. Frenetic heists. Wes Anderson. Film noir. Mockumentary iPhone-filmed scenes. And so on.
Lord and Miller – the comedic masterminds behind 21 Jump Street, Into The Spider-Verse and Lego Movie – were joined by Broad City’s Anthony King when upping the ante for the second season.
“What Christopher Miller, Anthony King and Phil Lord have done is create another sub genre within the murder mystery palette of murder mysteries that are out there,” comments Jeong, 53, who plays Edgar’s father, Feng.
This season is “heightened” he continues. “The genres are even more vivid and they’re all different than season one. And that’s what blew my mind.”
On the spark for the second season, King, 47, says: “We knew that we wanted to follow Aniq and Zoe and their relationship because they’re really the heart of the show… Where are they in their relationship? They’re not ready to be married but Zoe’s sister’s getting married and it gives us a place to explore that – love is in the air, but also murder.”
Along the way, you’ll discover long-hidden secrets, star-crossed lovers and questionable business deals. Hint: everyone’s got a secret, everyone’s got a possible motive and everyone’s a suspect.
“The new dramatic wrinkle for season two is this family drama, where we’re at a wedding and you’ve got in-laws and that’s just a comedic goldmine,” explains Cho, who plays Grace and Zoe’s magnanimous uncle, Ulysses.
“We get to explore origin stories,” says Chao, 37. “Family is involved, an epic theme of the second season, so it gets even richer.”
“It’s been fun to explore many different facets of Zoe,” she continues. “What’s cool about the second season is you think we’ve seen all the different Zoe’s in season one, but we get to meet her as a daughter, an older sister, a partner, a detective.”
For many of the actors and actresses, prep meant watching old movies to get into the mood, style and accents of their sub genre.
“I thought it was a really great idea having these sort of Rashomon different points of view of the same event seen through somebody else’s eye, as well as the shifting genres,” says Perkins, 62, who plays Isabel, Edgar’s mother. “So when they asked me, I didn’t even really read the part. I said yes, this is a no-brainer. I’m on board.”
“I was not so much Alfred Hitchcock as 50s noir,” she explains. “I watched a lot of Hitchcock movies to get into it. And the one thing that I picked up on was this sort of vague accent that all the 50s actors were using which they called-mid-Atlantic.”
“It felt almost like acting camp,” shares Poppy Liu, 31, who plays Zoe’s sister, Grace, the bride (soon-to-be widow).
“You get to experiment with a new genre every week. It’s so fun. You kind of get whiplash, almost… sometimes because of the film schedule we’d be doing three different genres in one day. We’d be doing film noir, and then Wes Anderson, and then Jane Austen in a day, and you’re just catching up with where you are, who you are, what’s going on, the world that you live in. So it’s really fun. It’s kind of like a theme park.”
What’s the process like of figuring out all the shocks, twists and secrets, on top of matching each character with a genre?
“Oh, man,” Miller half laughs, half grimaces. “It’s a long, laborious process… you start with the murder and you kind of work backwards of who did it and how they did it. And then you have to cover that up. But you also need to create motives for everyone else that are plausible.”
As if that wasn’t knotty enough, embedded in each episode are hidden clues for the armchair sleuths who want to try and solve the mystery in real-time.
“There’s a bunch of hidden puzzles in every episode that can give you clues as to who did it. And they’re hidden in the set design, they’re hidden all over the place,” says Miller, 47.
“We had a bunch in the first season and on Reddit people solved them immediately. They were so good and so smart. So we have twice as many hidden puzzles this year for those who care. And for those who don’t, you won’t even notice.”
A play on perspective sits at the core of Afterparty – both in the initial judgments made of characters, that shift as you learn their backstories, and in how each sees the world through their distinct genre-styled lens.
“We always talk about this show as a kind of empathy machine,” says Miller.
“You meet these characters, and you kind of judge them to be a certain way, and then as they tell their story hopefully you come out the other end liking them more and seeing the world from their point of view a little more, and hopefully going ‘I don’t want them to be the murderer because I like them’.”
The first two episodes of Afterparty will premiere on Apple TV+ on Wednesday, July 12.
