Producer Paul Feig calls 'Love Life' a 'romantic murder mystery'

LOS ANGELES, May 27 (UPI) -- Paul Feig is known as the director of hit movies like Bridesmaids, The Heat, Spy, the female-led Ghostbusters and A Simple Favor. This year, Feig returns to television, where he got his start as a producer on shows like Freaks and Geeks and The Office.

Feig, who produced Zoey's Extraordinary Playlist for NBC, is launching his second show of the year -- on HBO Max. Love Life stars Anna Kendrick, whom Feig directed in A Simple Favor, and each episode follows one of her character's relationships.

Love Life shows Darby (Kendrick) at different ages, and jumps around in her relationships. Feig said the show depicts Darby from teenage to her 30s. Each episode features a man who becomes one of Darby's ex-boyfriends, although Feig hints at the possibility that one could still return to be her true love.

"I refer to the show almost as like a romantic murder mystery," Feig told UPI in a phone interview Thursday. "All the suspects are there, and they keep coming in and out, but you don't know who's going to be the one."

Feig hopes that Darby's bad relationships ultimately teach her to break the bad habits that keep leading her into failed relationships.

"It's kind of fun to see the co-dependent relationships that lead you to a non-dependent relationship," Feig said.

Early episodes run the gamut of different relationships. Darby dates Augie (Jin Ha) in Episode 1, an older man named Bradley (Scoot McNairy) in Episode 2 and has a one night stand (Gus Halper) who becomes more serious than she'd like in Episode 3. Feig said every episode presents a different dynamic for Darby.

"It's just so realistic in the sense that we always think we know what we want," Feig said. "Then once we attain it, we find out if we really wanted it or not, or if it was right."

Most episodes feature love scenes, although none more explicit than you're likely to see in a PG-13 movie. The language is R-rated, as HBO Max streaming allows F-words.

However, since Love Life premieres two months into a pandemic, Feig expects viewers to be nostalgic for its depiction of life before social distancing.

"Handshakes are the new porn, basically," Feig joked. "You're just like, 'Oh, remember we used to do that and it was so nice? Oh look, they hugged and kissed somebody when they met them.'"

Sam Boyd brought the idea of Love Life to Feig. Boyd decided to focus on one character's love life, using non-chronological episodes to paint a full portrait of her character.

As producer, Feig sought to protect Boyd's vision. He did not want to see networks and executives water it down.

"I've worked with producers who really just micromanage you," Feig said.

Feig decided to cast Kendrick, but he was not sure she would be interested in a series. However, Kendrick responded favorably to the material and even contributed suggestions to Boyd.

"She was giving him a lot of ideas based on relationships she's been through and friends of hers have been through and just things that she's experienced," Feig said.

Kendrick's commitment to Love Life is for the first season only. In success, Love Life would become an anthology that chronicles a different character's love life in each season. Seasons might be interconnected through supporting characters, Feig teased.

"We wouldn't want to be like, 'The second season is the 1800s,'" Feig said. "We want to keep it in the same world so that characters from other seasons can come in and out if we want them to."

Subsequent seasons could feature a male or LGBTQ protagonists, Feig said. "Our plan is to really just run the gamut of every type of person and every type of relationship that's out there," he said.

Feig has remained busy during the coronavirus pandemic. He hosts a daily cocktail show on Instagram, raising money for charity, and spends the rest of the days attending to movie script rewrites and producing Zoey's Extraordinary Playlist.

A third series is in the works too. Feig filmed one day of an American adaptation of the BBC mockumentary This Country before production shut down.

"That one day we shot enough material to be able to cut a 16-minute pilot presentation for it," Feig said. "So they ordered three more scripts for that."

Feig thinks This Country could return to production sooner than other shows with larger casts and crews might. The show is about a documentary crew following a pair of young cousins through their lives in a small town.

"Being a mockumentary, we actually have a much smaller production footprint than a normal TV show or movie would have," Feig said.

Love Life premieres Wednesday with the launch of HBO Max.

Continue Reading