By George & Josh Bate
A man in his fifties having sex and starting a romantic relationship with his best friend’s 26 year old daughter, who he’s known since she was a baby, doesn’t exactly seem like the jumping off point for a breezy, light-hearted, and clever comedy, but Alice and Steve is exactly like that.
Streaming now on Hulu, Alice and Steve stars Nicola Walker as the former and Jemaine Clement as the latter, longtime friends now in their fifties. After a frenetic night that involves attending a friend’s funeral and an emergency trip to the vet after Steve’s dog accidentally sneaks into their stash of cocaine, Steve crashes on the couch at Alice’s house and, soon after, sleeps with Alice’s grown daughter Izzy (Yali Topol Margalith). Incensed at what she perceives as the most egregious of betrayals, Alice plummets her previously rock solid friendship into a vicious and messy feud.
The HoloFiles recently had the opportunity to interview Alice and Steve stars Jemaine Clement (Steve), Nicola Walker (Alice), and Yali Topol Margalith (Izzy), series creator and writer Sophie Goodhart, and director Tom Kingsley about their new series, the moral standings of its three complex leads, similarities to Beef and War of the Roses, finding humor in arguments, and more.
In less capable hands, Steve and, to a lesser extent, Izzy would be the de facto antagonists of the series, but Clement’s undeniably charming and quirky performance and Goodhart’s willingness to explore the flaws of every character on screen ensures that things aren’t that simple. “I liked the script, because it seemed to me that no one is wholly wrong and no one is wholly right,” Walker explained. “And that’s unusual in a script. And it seemed to me to be more true to life than a lot of dramatic versions of families that we see.”
“A lot of the feedback we’ve been getting is that people say that they haven’t seen this story before,” said Clement, speaking to the novelty of the series’ admittedly and unabashedly off-putting premise.
A joke at one point in the series pokes fun at Steve being an admirer of Woody Allen’s films, which not only serves as a humorous point of tension between him and Izzy’s friends but also gives a wink to the audience that Steve and Izzy’s relationship bears a disturbing resemblance to Woody Allen and Soon-Yi Previn’s controversial bond. It’s this kind of challenging, uncomfortable line between drama and comedy that series creator Sophie Goodhart thrives on.
In playing a key role in the writing of the hit Netflix series Sex Education, Goodhart excelled in finding humor in the uncomfortable, something she once again thrives at in Alice and Steve. “I like saying something that I’m not meant to say,” Goodhart explained. “If there’s a button that says don’t push, I’m like, ‘Oh, I must push it.’ So it’s bad impulse control, basically. I really love shows like [and] absolutely thought DTF St. Louis was mind blowing because they talk about [what’s] off kilter. Looking at subject matter that should be dark and should be really uncomfortable and trying to get the audience to realize, like maybe we’re being too judgmental.”
For a show that is thought-provoking as it is, Alice and Steve retains a vibrant, playful sense of humor throughout. The characters may be in utter turmoil, but the audience sure isn’t. “It’s really funny,” said Walker. “And I think that’s a winning combination. It’s the sort of show that I look for, that I’m looking for, to cram into my eyes and do it in over two nights and wish I hadn’t watched it. That’s what I would like people to feel. Wish they hadn’t watched it so quickly.”
Clement reiterated Walker’s point that Alice and Steve is the kind of series he would gravitate to as a viewer. “Reading the scripts, I was like, ‘This isn’t the kind of thing I’ve done, but it’s the kind of thing I like to watch.”
The series remarkably finds a way to make arguments and tension consistent sources of humor throughout its six episodes. “I think arguments in British comedy are really interesting, because it’s all about repression,” remarked Goldhart. “It’s about what people aren’t saying, and about trying to appear polite, and not exposing how angry and upset you are. And so that’s what I think makes it delicious. It’s about what’s not necessarily being said.”
Director Tom Kingsley deftly navigates the series’ tone, ensuring that the humor that so effortlessly flows from all the arguments doesn’t undermine the drama at play. “It’s great that you’ve found it so funny, because we wanted to be funny, but also there’s a point if you have too many jokes in a scene then you start to question whether this is really happening. We did a lot of work in the edits to find the exact level [of humor and drama].”
This balance is perhaps never more best exemplified than it is through the performance of Nicola Walker. The English actress largely known for her dramatic work in shows like Spooks, Unforgotten, and The Split dabbles in comedy more overtly than she ever has with Alice and Steve.
“Most of my stuff on telly has been straight,” Walker stated. “Straighter. I came into this job thinking, ‘I’m really fortunate to be here, because there are a lot of others actors that I would have thought would be first choice.’ So I felt very pleased and grateful to be there. At that point you then push that to one side, because you’ve got the script and you’re held by Sophie’s brilliant writing. You just get inside that character and try to make the lines work as well when they’re in human form as they do in black and white on the page.”
Walker most certainly achieves this feat, as does Jemaine Clement, who is no stranger to comedy. The New Zealand actor and comedian known for Flight of the Conchords and What We Do in the Shadows has made a career out of witty improvisation, a skill he got to employ once again here. “I’m always trying to sneak some improv in, always,” Clement said. “And some of it made it in.”
Goodhart tells a slightly different story. “We sent [the script] to Jermaine and Jermaine just seemed like the perfect Steve,” explained Goodhart. “And luckily, he’s incredibly good at improvisation. So about half of the jokes are his, but I’m going to take all the credit.”
The “last piece of the puzzle,” according to Goodhart, was Yali Topol Margalith as Izzy, the young woman who lies at the center of the story and in the middle of the vicious feud between her mother Alice and new, much older boyfriend Steve. “It was like three weeks before [production], and we didn’t have her,” Goodhart explained. “And I thought, ‘Oh shit, this could be a disaster. Like, if you get the wrong person here, it could just feel really unpleasant. And I think [Margalith] just has such a kind of swagger. She’s just so unbelievably cool and confident and powerful, but also sort of covering this gorgeous insecurity. She just killed it. She came into the room, and actually just her saying hello. Literally, she had me at hello. But she came in, and she just was the strongest person in the room. As soon as she came in, we all were like, ‘Oh, thank God.’ It meant that we could relax.”
It’s through the nuanced, tonally-attunned performances of Walker, Clement, and Margalith that Alice and Steve subverts having traditional antagonists or protagonists. In turn, the series excels in continually posing questions about its characters’ moral standing to the audience. Is Steve in the wrong? Is Alice? Is Izzy? All of the above? Some of the above? Goodhart’s writing ensures that answers to these questions don’t come simply and, as a result, we can’t help but simultaneously love and hate everyone involved.
“You start to feel that everyone is trying to do their best and none of them are bad people,” series director Kingsley explained. “The premise is so shocking and sometimes it puts people off or it makes them just really excited to find out what happens next. But I think, after that amazing hook, the show is delving very deep into the very real consequences of this crazy situation. And you realize there’s so much love in it. That’s one of the things I loved about reading the script for the first time – that there’s just so much heart and emotion in it. I think your allegiances change throughout the show. There are no obvious villains.”
As Goodhart succinctly puts it, “They’re all people. But just maybe making dodgy decisions.”
With such a pronounced age gap between Steve and Izzy and the childlike behaviors from Steve and Alice that characterize their ensuing feud, Alice and Steve toys with the idea of maturity not necessarily being a reflection of age, as Izzy, despite being 30 years younger than Alice and Steve, is arguably the most mature and composed individual of the trio.
“I think Izzy was written to be some sort of adult,” said Margalith. Meanwhile, Clement remarked, “I think it’s quite true generationally in a way that our generation, Nicola and I, is an immature generation. We have not grown up. And now we’re old. Old, big, old children. Old babies.”
Further speaking to the complexity of their characters, Walker discussed how the series takes a realistic approach to human nature by conveying people whose opinions and sense of identity fluctuate. “They don’t know themselves,” Walker explained. “I find that really interesting. Normally in dramas, you know, the characters know who they are. These people don’t know themselves. They find out about themselves and they think they’ve got everyone else sussed. And Alice especially thinks she knows who everyone is and what they should be doing. And really that all gets imploded.”
This narrative thread of characters undergoing self-discovery through interpersonal conflict mirrors a number of other acclaimed films and series that were touchpoints for the cast and creative team. “I love Beef, season one of Beef,” Margalith said. “I thought about that a lot. And then season two of Beef came out and felt like it fit it even more [with Alice and Steve].”
Walker, meanwhile, found Alice and Steve to resemble a slightly older project. “I talked to Sophie about [War of the Roses] before we started and it does hark back to that, a different age of drama,” she described. “I like that.”
As the interview wrapped up, Clement captured the appeal of Alice and Steve in a nutshell. “When I’m hanging out with [Izzy], it’s a rom-com and with [Alice], it’s a revenge horror movie,” he explained. Indeed, Alice and Steve feels like an anti-rom com, or maybe even a wrong-com. It has many of the essential elements of a rom-com, while offering something far more thought-provoking, subversive, and clever than the genre typically allows.
Watch our interview with Alice and Steve stars Jemaine Clement, Nicola Walker & Yali Topol Margalith below….
Watch our interview with Alice and Steve creator Sophie Goodhart and director Tom Kingsley below.
