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+.
If you haven’t heard of the series, it’s a murder-mystery comedy set at a high school reunion afterparty where each episode features a retelling of the same night told through a different character’s perspective. But because this is Chris Miller and Phil Lord, they had to raise the bar, so each episode has its own unique visual format and film genre to match the teller’s personality. One episode is a musical. Another is animated. While another episode is told like the lead is in an action movie. In addition, on top of the brilliant format, you’ve got terrific performances from the entire cast, and scripts that will keep you guessing.
I really can’t recommend this series enough.
Shortly after seeing seven of the eight episodes, I got to speak with Chris Miller and Phil Lord about making the series. During the fun interview, they talked about the challenges of making a series where every episode tells the story in a different visual format and film genre, how Miller figured out the order of when to reveal information, when they told the cast who was the killer, why Lord worked on the animated episode, and the fantastic songs in episode 3. In addition, they talked about the new episodes of Clone High, when they might be directing a new live-action feature, what they’re excited for fans to see in the next two Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse sequels, and more.
Watch what Chris Miller and Phil Lord had to say in the player above and below is exactly what we talked about. The Afterparty stars Sam Richardson, Tiffany Haddish, Ilana Glazer, Dave Franco, Ike Barinholtz, Zoë Chao, Jamie Demetriou, and John Early.
COLLIDER: So obviously, you guys are involved in a number of projects. Almost every day on Collider, we're covering something about you guys. So I'm curious, do you actually know how many things you're working on today? Like at this moment as a company?
PHIL LORD: Oh, is there a number in our head? There is a development-
Do you actually know everything you guys are working on? Because it's a lot.
CHRIS MILLER: It is a lot.
LORD: I could safely say yes, that there's not a half dozen projects that we haven't heard of yet. We have an amazing group of people that we work with, and we're chatting all day long. They're always keeping us up to date. The trouble with hiring ambitious, smart people is they keep wanting to do things. And then the things they want to do, keep being really good. They become competent at doing them. That's part of why we're lucky to be able to work on so many things.
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: We are working on that. Hopefully, soon. We've got some stuff up cooking and hopefully we'll get to prepping something…
LORD: It's so vague, there are scripts, there are things, but there's like a physical copy of something on paper that could be a movie that's in our inboxes.
Do you think that you'll actually be filming something this year together? Or do you think it's more next year?
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.
Last question, before The Afterparty. Very excited about Clone High. Where are you in the production process? When do you think it might be something that fans can watch?
LORD: Well, this is the microphone that I use to do Scudworth. So we're recording voices. It's a two-season order, so every episode is in some part of the process right now. It makes it a really busy time, but it's also really fun.
So next year, or this year?
MILLER: Great question.
LORD: That's something that I actually don't know.
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.
Getting into Afterparty. Yhe information on the show says the eight episode first season. So, I want to know what... Was this envisioned as some of that could go on for multiple seasons, or did you sort of just think, “Let's just make a cool show and see what happens."?
MILLER: Well, it was written originally as a feature film, and then it expanded into a series because it seemed like you could really dig in deeper to each of the characters and give them their own episode. Whereas as a movie, they only had a few minutes each, so you couldn't really get into the complexity of, of the characters.
So it was originally conceived as one complete unit. But obviously, we had a lot of fun making this. And right now, we just are caring about people being excited about this. But there are plenty of other styles of storytelling left to explore, and we're big fans of the genre. So anything's possible.
At what point during the making of this show, did the continuity person say, "You are paying me more money."?
LORD: She would say that.
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.
How did you figure out which character's story would go in what episode? How did you decide Yasper would be episode three?
MILLER: It was figured out as like a puzzle to begin with. I had the idea a little over a decade ago, it was sort of, "How am I going to ha tell a story where each person's story advances the narrative?" Because part of the issue of seeing the same scene multiple times is each time you see that scene, you have to learn something new. There has to be a deeper understanding of the relationship. And there has to be some sort of surprise because otherwise it'd be really boring just to see the same scene multiple times.
So, it was sort of figured out that it had to go in a certain order so that you could reveal the narrative. It was figured out almost like a math problem, which was why named the characters with names that started with A, B, C, D, W, X, Y, Z. And that sort of-
LORD: That should tell you a lot about Chris.
MILLER: Yeah. I had to figure out what the order would be. So, it all became necessary. And once you start working with these ... Especially in a murder mystery, the puzzle pieces can really only fit together one way, when you're like, "Oh, maybe we should move the Chelsea episode earlier." But it doesn't work because everything necessarily begets everything else.
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?
LORD: Well, it was awkward because we told everyone they were the killer, just to get them to take the part. So it was more a process of telling each of them that they were the killer.
MILLER: That is not actually true. Everybody, once they signed on, got all of the scripts together, like one giant movie, because writing his thing had to be a thing that was like making one four-hour movie. So everybody, after they came on board, found out whether they were the killer or not.
It was important because actors had to understand what really happened and so that they could play in the early scenes with an understanding of everything. So they're all amazing filmmakers and showrunners and creators in their own right.
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."?
LORD: It's really early on. You just kind of go like, "Oh, this is going to work." But they're also ... It's not surprising because they're both so well trained. They're both have lots of time on improv stages, sometimes together. They just have great chops, so it's not a shock.
MILLER: Yeah. What was a real special thing about this show was that everybody fell in love with everyone right away. Everyone admired everyone, and no one was a jerk. So everyone was happy to come to work, partially because it was shooting in the middle of a pandemic, and everyone was excited to get out of their houses and just see another human being. So it was a low bar.
But everyone was just so happy to be there that you could just feel this natural chemistry and joy on set, as I think really came through on the show. You can really feel that these characters know and like to hang out with each other.
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?
LORD: It really was just what ... My role on this is whatever Chris needs. And that was what I got. That's what ... Chris was like, "Can you tackle this?” I wrote it with our now former assistant, Rachel, who's now has a full on writing career. So part of that was just a pleasure of getting to write with somebody that we think is really talented. You have to ask Chris why I was cast.
MILLER: To me, it was the-
LORD: I know the most about Zoe.
MILLER: Writing animation is really tricky because it's a such a visual medium. I knew that Phil would know how to nail it the best. Because there's a lot of tropes that you want to avoid, but it's an opportunity for that episode is to really see a window into Zoe's internal struggle and visualize it in a way. I knew that Phil would know how to handle that in a way that was clever and not hack-y.
I think people are going to be so excited that each episode is a different genre and how each episode is shot a different way. It's a very ambitious series to pull off, and you guys did such a great job with it. Not trying to put myself into this, but the Yasper songs are so good. Who wrote those? Because they're so good.
MILLER: Oh yeah. Thanks. Well, the writer of that episode, Jack Dolgen, was one of the exec producers of a Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. And he co-wrote the songs with Jon Lajoie, who we had worked with on Lego Movie Two, who's a very funny songwriter. And so, it was sort of both of their influence, but they turned out so great. Ben did such a great job of committing and doing all the rehearsals for the choreography. That episode obviously was one of the harder ones to execute.
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. So it really was almost seemingly impossible, but that's the type of stuff that Phil and I always like to do is stuff that seems hard to do and has never been done before.
So recently, Zendaya and Tom Holland and Jacob talked about wanting to be part of Spider-Verse. And Chris, you responded on Twitter by saying, "Call me," or something along those lines. So, I really need to know, have phone calls been made? Because Jesus, I want this.
LORD: I don't know. No one's called me.
MILLER: I just got a call right now, but I put it straight forward to voicemail, so it could be-
LORD: From Zendaya?
MILLER: It's possibly Zendaya. She's always calling me.
LORD: It could be at Tom Holland, or it could be a local political campaign asking for money.
MILLER: No, it is-
LORD: I can't tell.
MILLER: It's this gentleman, Potential. His name is Potential Spam, I believe his name is.
LORD: Yes. Yes. I love that guy.
MILLER: He's so corny.
LORD: Tough last name, but he really makes a go of it.
I can see the avoidance. I'll just switch to something else to say. Look, obviously, I'm over-the-moon that you guys are making two Spider-Verse sequels. What can you tease about the movies?
LORD: Well, I would say that as Chris pointed out, we only like to do things that are hard. So we made it really hard on ourselves. And we've made it pretty hard on Miles too. I don't know, can you ... I'm looking at Chris because I'm hoping-
MILLER: I mean, the thing that-
LORD: He's more circumspect than I am.
MILLER: It is, as Phil said, a very ambitious sequel, because we didn't want to just sort of do the same thing again. so, the idea that we would be going to different dimensions really opened up an opportunity artistically, to have each world have its own art style and to be able to push the folks at Imageworks to develop a way to have each dimension feel like it was drawn by a different artist's hand. And seeing the development of that stuff is breathtaking. It's the reason that we keep doing it because it's so hard to get it right. But it seems we're going to make…
LORD: But the opportunity is to push animation in directions that it hasn't gone yet. That's what we're always trying to do. That's what Chris tried to do with Afterparty. It's what we tried to do with Mitchells vs. the Machines. It's a problem if that's your brand, because it means you can't just go like, "Oh, I do these paintings with dots and lines. I'll just do a bunch of those for the end of my career." For us, unfortunately we have to keep changing it.
I got to stop. Again, congratulations on Afterparty. So good. Great are talking with you guys,
MILLER: Always, buddy.
LORD: Nice to see you.
The Afterparty is now streaming on Apple TV+