Hulu’s breakout mystery-comedy is back. Vanity Fair has your exclusive on what’s next for the Arconia trio, new characters played by Amy Schumer and Shirley MacLaine, and much more.
here’s so much talk in Only Murders in the Building’s second season about the pitfalls of making a second season that one might wonder, for a moment, whether the show is setting us up for disappointment. Life imitates art in Hulu’s hit comedy, after all, and as Charles (Steve Martin), Mabel (Selena Gomez), and Oliver (Martin Short) embark on a dangerously funny new adventure—and, in turn, follow-up podcast—they consider the pressures of living up to the hype. “It was a bit of a trick,” showrunner and cocreator John Hoffman tells Vanity Fair in his first interview about the new season. “I found great comfort in the writers room that anything that would come up about our season-two challenges could find its way into the narrative.”
Indeed, such meta touches only reflect the confidence of a series expanding on an enormously successful freshman run. Following three strangers who band together to investigate a death in their Upper West Side building—and make a lo-fi podcast about it—Only Murders offered smart crime fiction that doubled as a biting ensemble comedy. The second season, premiering June 28, cleverly twists its whodunit structure onto our lead characters: In the aftermath of solving the murder of neighbor Tim Kono, the Arconia’s armchair-detective trio sops up glory and fame—until Arconia board president Bunny (Jayne Houdyshell) is found dead, bloodied while wearing an Only Murders merch sweatshirt, in Mabel’s apartment. The prime suspects are hilariously obvious. “Do you try and exonerate yourself, or do you take advantage of this weird New York–famous moment that happens, where you’re on the front pages?” Hoffman says of the new season’s primary tension. “It was a great edge to write on, the back-and-forth of conflict that allows for, ‘Be careful what you wish for.’”
If putting Mabel, Charles, and Oliver in the hot seat marks a narrative departure for Only Murders, the action surrounding them in season two represents a kind of deepening: more celebrity guest stars, more clashes between classic and modern, more insight into the prewar apartment building where the series takes place, more cliffhangers and twists. “That feeling of being embraced [in season one] gave great buoyancy to ideas and trust that the audience would go with us,” Hoffman says. “It just made us more confident in our approach on season two.”
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