We spoke w/ chrizmillr and philiplord about making TheAfterparty & having every episode tell the story using a different visual format and genre. Lord and Miller also give updates on the ‘Spider-Verse’ sequels and when they’ll direct live-action again
Like all of you, I constantly hear about fantastic shows that I need to watch. I’d argue there has never been so much incredible content on television due to the myriad of streaming channels producing movie quality series. And while you can only watch so much…I want to strongly recommend Chris Miller’s The Afterparty, which is now streaming on Apple TV+.
You guys, haven't directed a feature together, a live-action feature, since 2014. I think I speak for a lot of people when I say, not acceptable. So, when are you guys making a live-action feature together? MILLER: I hope that we're at least prepping something by this year. We have a lot to do still on Spider-Verse and some other things. So we have to get a few things off our plate before we have enough bandwidth to start rolling picture.
MILLER: I know that some of the episodes are in animation right now, but I don't know when it'll actually be on the air. At what point during the making of this show, did the continuity person say, "You are paying me more money."?MILLER: We did warn them that it was going to be a real pain in the butt because every episode has not only different lighting and camera work and music, but costumes are different episode to episode, slightly different. So, everyone had to keep really good track of everything on this production. It was a real head-exploder.
When you were casting people... how much did you tell them about who was going to be the actual killer? I obviously don't know who the killer is. I haven't seen episode eight, but I'm just curious because I think you guys block shot this. So, how early on, did people know who the killer was, or were you trying to hold that back to have everyone play it a certain way?
That was part of the reason why we cast them is because they could hand hold all of this information in their heads and figure out ways to play characters in slightly different shadings. Eight different shadings of the same character is a really hard thing to ask an actor to do. It was important for them to have a understanding of the whole.Sam and Ben are so good together. You can cast people and you can hope for the best, but when did you realize, "Oh, shit, these two are fantastic.
Phil, you co-wrote episode six, which is the animated episode. Was that the reason why you wanted to co-write that one because of the animation? They all were a challenge in that, as you said, every episode is its own little movie that has its own unique production issues. So you've got the action one where you got to figure out a car chase and a fistfight and a musical, where you kind of choreograph and write all these songs. And the animated one, which has its own entirely different pipeline.