SANTA CLARITA DIET
What: 10-episode comedy set in Southern California about happily married real estate agents who face a crisis when she gets hungry for human flesh, starring Timothy Olyphant, Drew Barrymore, Liv Hewson.
When: Available today.
Where: Netflix.
What: 10-episode comedy set in Southern California about happily married real estate agents who face a crisis when she gets hungry for human flesh, starring Timothy Olyphant, Drew Barrymore, Liv Hewson.
When: Available today.
Where: Netflix.
Timothy Olyphant has spent a lot of time in Santa Clarita, so it seems like fate that he ended up on Netflix’s outrageous new comedy “Santa Clarita Diet,” which is available Friday.
The actor, who is known for his tough-guy roles, spent three seasons on HBO’s “Deadwood,” which was shot at the Melody Ranch, the city’s famed location for Westerns. He followed that up with six seasons of FX’s “Justified,” which was filmed at the Santa Clarita Studio, which is also where this series is based.
“They didn’t even move my trailer from ‘Justified,’ and I have the same parking spot,” muses Olyphant.
The difference is that the actor isn’t playing a lawman or even a tough guy in the comedy created by Victor Fresco. He’s a real estate agent who works alongside his wife.
In the show, Olyphant and Drew Barrymore play the nice — stress nice — suburban married couple Joel and Sheila Hammond with a teen daughter, Abby (Liv Hewson).
If life is a bit boring, it’s OK, until one day Sheila starts to exhibit “undead” symptoms, including the craving for human flesh. Other than that, she’s feeling pretty good.
In fact, as Fresco describes it, “She feels empowered and in control of her life in ways she hasn’t felt before.”
The show’s creator had this thought that the undead were the ultimate narcissists, wanting “their needs met immediately whenever they have them.” Then he thought making the character a real estate agent would be funny.
“You know we are all encouraged to get what we want, but we also have to live in communities and have relationships,” observes Fresco (“Better Off Ted,” “Andy Richter Controls the Universe”). “So how do you do that and still make compromises and live in the world? It seemed like a metaphor for how a lot of us live.”
This could easily slide into the horror camp. However, the surprise of “Santa Clarita Diet” is that it is terrific family comedy. Even after Joel discovers Sheila’s hard-to-fill urges, all the guy wants to do is make their marriage work.
“I wanted to have this relationship that had unconditional love at its core,” says Fresco. “The question was how do you keep your love and sanity when something so big happens that it shakes everything up?”
Olyphant thought the script was “totally original. At the same time, it’s very familiar, almost old-fashioned in a way. If you take the blood and guts and body parts out, it felt like an episode of ‘Bewitched’ and ‘Alf.’ ”
The actor was so used to playing alpha roles, at first he thought he was being offered the part of one of the two police officers (alpha males) who live on either side of the Hammonds.
It’s not that Olyphant hasn’t done comedy before, just not a lot. Most recently he played a bizarre version of himself on Fox’s “The Grinder.”
Last year, Olyphant received enthusiastic notices when he did his first play in 18 years: Kenneth Lonergan’s “Hold on to Me Darling” for the Atlantic Theatre Company in New York City. He played Strings McCrane, a country music and movie star, in what the New York Times described as “a poignant comic study of the bad faith and bad behavior of a narcissistic celebrity.”
Olyphant says that Lonergan — Oscar-nominated for “Manchester By the Sea” — would tell him, “[Forget] the laughs. Don’t go for the laughs. Go for the truth and trust it’s funny.
“On the other hand if I missed a joke he would say to me, ‘Tim, you [messed] up the joke. So it’s a bit of a high-wire act.”
The actor says the same type of thing goes for “Santa Clarita Diet.”
“I used to play ‘Justified’ like it was a comedy, and when your doing this you are going for the drama.”
Fresco says what he likes about Olyphant “is that because he comes from a dramatic background he will never sell out his character for a laugh.”
The funny thing about playing Joel, notes the self-effacing Olyphant, is that “as my wife will tell you, sadly, this role is probably closer to the real me.”
In the show, the Hammonds were high-school sweethearts and have been together for more than two decades and have a teenage daughter.
Olyphant married his college sweetheart in 1991 and they have three teens.
“I’m telling you in an oddly bizarre way this show is that somehow perversely close to home,” he says.
Fresco, who grew up in the San Fernando Valley, says he never thought of making the setting of the series fictional.
“I like the organized beauty of Santa Clarita, and that works well against the chaos that’s going on,” he says.
Unlike “Justified,” where they were trying to hide the fact they were shooting in Santa Clarita instead of Kentucky, in the new series “we are trying to show the city,” says Olyphant. “We tried to make the town a character.”
Fresco says Barrymore was always a prototype for Shelia.
“As a person, she’s delightful and joyful,” he says. “We wanted somebody who is doing these horrific things, but at the end of the day you are invested in her to be OK.”
“I think Victor has done something brilliant,” says Olyphant, “by having a woman who’s eating people as kind of a victim.”
Of course, he and Fresco are keeping their fingers crossed for a second season of “Santa Clarita Diet.” In the meantime, after doing publicity for the series in New York City last week, Olyphant was looking forward to “dropping off the kids at school and walking the dogs” after he got back to Los Angeles.
“The good news is I enjoy not working and the bad news is I enjoy not working,” he says wryly.
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