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Hollywood Reporter On a group of Alice and Steve Watch the master at work.
It’s June last year, and on a warm day in south-west London, THR She guest stars on the Disney+/Hulu show that would go on to sweep Canneseries and garner some serious buzz for writer Sophie Goodhart, whose credits include Competitors and Sex education.
This wallet is a great symbol of what is to come in the six episode “wrong-com” Alice and Steveairs this week on June 8, a year after arriving on set and seeing Nicola Walker doing exactly what she does best: having a little meltdown.
The series revolves around Walker, who was nominated for a BAFTA Award and is known for his roles in… Ghosts and the hit BBC drama DivisionLike Alice. She was best friends with Steve (Jemaine Clement, better known as… Concorde flight And as a creator What do we do in the shadows?) for decades, but her whole world is turned upside down when Steve announces that he has started dating Alice’s 26-year-old daughter Izzy (Yali Topol Margalith).
In one particularly poignant episode, two scenes were filmed that day THR Arriving at the set, Alice abandons her attempts to appear calm about the situation and crashes into family board game night. Izzy’s Gen Z friends and Alice’s husband (game of thrones‘ Joel Fry) is forced to witness the damage done by seeing her daughter and her lifelong boyfriend. As previously mentioned, it’s impeccable work from Walker, who navigates every shot with a combination of imaginative looseness and razor-sharp script precision.
“I have to apologize,” Walker begins, addressing her co-star as she sits down with her THR. “Midway through the first day, I had to say, ‘I’ve been a fan of yours forever,’ and I’ve been really, really bad for the last two hours,” she says, referring to those board games — ones that required her to remain somewhat emotionally charged.
“no!” Clement objects. “I I felt like a fan.” He turns to us. “Nicola may not be a method actor, but she does use a bit of method when we do scenes.” “I’m feeling quite grumpy today,” Walker laughs.
It’s surprising that Walker, an industry sensation in the UK, and Clement, a big comedy name here, haven’t met yet. But suddenly, they are thrust into a show based on the chemistry between two friends who have known each other for over 30 years. And their first scene together? A drunken karaoke bar serves as a marker of that chemistry. “That was a tough day,” Clement says. “But we bonded [it]”.
Walker adds, “I think they planned it out well. At the beginning of the timelines, they always seem to be having sex or getting along well with someone — always, in any job you do, they always put those things first. And I think there’s some method to their madness, actually, because by the end of that week, I just felt like, ‘Oh yeah, Alice and Steve really know each other.'” Walker adds.
At this stage of their career, they should be receiving a lot of scripts. Walker reflects on what attracted her to Goodhart’s writing. She remembers reading the first page, where a middle-aged woman, looking like she was having a nervous breakdown, walks up the stairs of a grand mansion carrying an ax covered in blood and stuffing a wedding cake into her mouth. “I called my agent and said, ‘Please, please, I want to do this,'” she says. “It’s a very unusual tone. We keep talking about it. And when you get it, you’re amazed. So, I think what Sophie did was write something that was very, very funny, but then it could become really sad, and be a bit honest at times.”
“It’s definitely an intergenerational connection,” she continues, talking about the broad audience appeal Alice and Steve. “Which we really don’t get enough of. When people ask ‘What’s going on?’ And she says, ‘It’s about best friends, mothers and daughters.’ It’s about betrayal and hating someone you really love. Clement chimes in: ‘They’re all picturing it in their minds with their friends and their parents’ friends.’ It’s really easy to describe.”
So what exactly is Steve thinking when he gets involved with Izzie? “He doesn’t think,” is Clement’s simple answer. “Then the rest of the time he’s thinking: How can I fix this?” [But] It’s too late. “He’s trying to put water back in the balloon.”
Before Alice loses it to Trivial Pursuit, Steve, the famous hairdresser, tells a half-ironic, half-touching story about one of his clients. Clement’s penchant for comedy is of course easy, so was it different for Walker, as someone with an extensive background in drama? “Not really, because I think it’s all about good writing, and I think that’s his good writing,” she says. “Our mission is to embody a group of characters, [so] “I didn’t really think about it that way.”
It’s really mature material. Walker describes Alice as having “a can of hairspray under a lighter” that burned every bridge around her, including her marriage. “She ends up isolating herself because she’s so convinced that she’s right. She doesn’t allow any gray within this situation.”
We’re privy to how this affects all the characters across the six half-hour episodes, including Izzy. Margalith says THR“She really looks up to her mother, and I think she considered her mother to be one of her best friends before this happened. It’s like when you’re a kid and you have something difficult that you want to tell your parents, and you think, ‘Yes, they find it difficult, but not when it comes to me, of course — because she’s my mother.’ And then she finds it difficult. She still can’t be happy for me.”
“Because I really feel like I’m in love,” she continues of Izzie’s infatuation with Steve, “and I’m being treated right for the first time in my life after being hurt so badly over and over again.” Clement says there is “a lot of understanding” between the two characters, even though he is twice her age: “They’ve both been through terrible breakups, and they feel mistreated.” Let the board games begin.
All six episodes of Alice and Steve It will be available to stream on Monday, June 8 exclusively on Disney+ in the UK and Hulu in the US. It is created and written by Sophie Goodhart and directed by BAFTA Award winner Tom Kingsley. Petra Fried, Andy Becker and Wim de Greed are executive producers for Clerkenwell Films and the series is produced by Fran de Belle. The Hulu Original has been commissioned by Lee Mason, Vice President of Writing at Disney+ EMEA.
