Yahoo Lifestyle I Genuinely Cannot Watch "Only Murders In The Building" The Same Way After Learning These 23 Fascinating Facts And Details
1.Steve Martin created the series with John Hoffman, and originally, the series was meant to feature three older actors. While mapping out the show, they realized they didn't want the three main characters to be too similar and wanted to bring in someone "unexpected."
"The idea came almost immediately that they lived in a building, and they all were interested in crime. But they didn’t have the energy to go downtown, so they would only do murders in the building," Steve said.
John, who previously worked on the series Grace and Frankie, didn't want to do another show focused on aging. He said, “On that show, there was already a lot about growing older and issues around that. I very consciously said, I don’t want to do that again.” He added that he didn't want the three main characters to be so alike and said, “Don’t we want an alien in their world? The thing that we’re not expecting that doesn’t make sense?”
2.Steve initially had no interest in starring in the series, but Martin Short urged him to do it. He later told producers that he might appear in the show if Martin did too.
“Marty said, ‘You know, you’re old — we could do this,’” Steve said.
“I don’t think Steve operates from a place of, what’s a vehicle I can create for myself?” producer Dan Fogelman said. “He thinks, ‘What’s an idea that I find funny or interesting?’ Then it probably takes somebody nudging him to do it himself.”
3.Steve was always certain he wanted Selena Gomez to star as Mabel, even though he'd never seen her act on Disney Channel.
“You get a list of names, you know, you’re thinking, ‘Sure, they’d be good, they’d be good,’” he once explained, “and then they say, ‘What about Selena Gomez?’ and it’s just — yes, of course. There was no question except, ‘Can we get her?’ We knew she would enhance the show in so many ways, the number one being talent.”
Selena was also the archetype they used when creating the character of Mabel, and it was even more exciting when she said yes to doing the show.
4.Steve and Martin were unsure of how Selena would vibe with them before meeting on set. Before filming, they'd only ever chatted on Zoom, but once they got going they realized they're a perfect trio.
"Marty and I joke around constantly, and we weren’t sure if she’d be game for it. But now we think of ourselves as the Three Musketeers,” Steve said.
"I remember when I was leaving LA to go and shoot the first season, I was worried that I’d be a little lonely because I’d be on set and most of the time I would be with Steve and Marty, who I had only met briefly on Zoom...And the moment I got on set they made me feel included," Selena said. "They asked questions about my character and they valued my opinion. Eventually they kind of just took me under their wing and picked on me and made me laugh and had words of wisdom when I needed them. All of the fear of me feeling like I would be alone went away, and now they’re my guys. I was just watching videos of them and I got emotional because I’m like, 'Those are my guys.' Some of my best friends are 70-year-olds."
5.Selena is also a major true crime fan in real life. She'd even just gotten home from CrimeCon right before she started on OMITB.
"When we had the first discussion of who [Mabel] was, I had just gotten back from CrimeCon, which is basically a convention where we’re trying to help solve a real cold case. It’s a three-day weekend and I went with my mom. And we just ended up talking about all these different stories of mysteries and the idea of me being into (true crime) as a character," she said.
She added, "My mom and I used to watch true crime shows all the time, so I was very aware of all of these types of shows. It wasn’t about the incident so much as it was about the forensics. I’m interested in how people are able to figure things out. And that just so happens to be my job on the show as well."
6.Da'Vine Joy Randolph got hired after Steve Martin saw her in Dolemite Is My Name.
"Steve Martin told me he saw Dolemite, was very impressed — ‘You held your own,’ that whole thing — and that was a straight offer from him and the showrunner,” she said. “It’s such a wonderful working environment. Lovely hours. You’re out by like six, seven o’clock. You go have dinner, a life. And just to be around Steve Martin and Martin Short — they still have this childlike anticipation and excitement, like it was their first project. That blows me away every single time."
7.While the Arconia was made up for the series, several outdoor scenes were filmed at the Belnord, an actual luxury apartment building in NYC.
The building was built in 1908, has 13 floors, and has archways that lead to its courtyard — similar to the Arconia. It's located on the Upper West Side of Manhattan at 86th and Broadway.
However, all of the indoor scenes are filmed on a soundstage.
8.Nathan Lane, who plays Teddy Dimas, had about six weeks to learn American Sign Language (ASL) with his interpreter Doug Ridloff. All of his dialogue with his onscreen son James Caverly, who is deaf in real life, was done through ASL.
“I did not know ASL, and when I was asked to do it, I thought, ‘Oh, this will be a blast; I get to hang out with Steve and Marty.’ And there’ll be high jinks, and we’ll just laugh and laugh — which, you know, all happened,” he said.
"Sometimes they would change things and you would go, 'Oh, don’t do that. It took me long enough to learn the first version,'" Nathan explained. "Very often, they wrote things that were hard to translate to American Sign Language and Doug had to reinterpret certain things. You don’t want to embarrass yourself and you want to make it look as if you’ve been doing this for a while, but one of the helpful things about the character of Teddy Dimas was he was someone who was ashamed he had a deaf son and didn’t learn American Sign Language for a long time, so he’s not supposed to be so great at it."
9.During Season 2, Howard and Jonathan's first date ends in disaster when we learn that Jonathan is allergic to Howard's cat, Sevelyn. But the same thing actually happened to Michael Cyril Creighton in real life, except he was the one allergic to cats.
“I don’t think I ever mentioned this to John [Hoffman], but when I met my husband, I was allergic to cats. I didn’t know it, but the first time I went to his apartment, he made me dinner, and I broke out in like the worst hives ever. And it was because he had a cat,” he said.
10.During Season 1, Charles plays the concertina in several scenes along with Jan and her bassoon. In real life, Steve Martin actually knows how to play the concertina, along with several other instruments like the banjo, guitar, mandolin, and upright bass.
11.In 2022, Steve shared that OMITB would probably be his last acting role in his six-decades-long career. "When this television show is done, I'm not going to seek others," he said. "I'm not going to seek other movies. I don't want to do cameos. This is, weirdly, it."
12.The music for Oliver's musical Death Rattle Dazzle was written by Broadway songwriters and composers like Sara Bareilles, Pasek and Paul, Michael R. Jackson, Marc Shaiman, and Scott Wittman.
Sara Bareilles, who wrote the music for Waitress, wrote “Look for the Light,” which is sung by Meryl Streep and Ashley Park. Michael R. Jackson, who composed A Strange Loop, co-wrote “For the Sake of a Child,” sung by Meryl and Paul Rudd. Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman, who collaborated on Hairspray and Smash, co-wrote Charles' song “Which of the Pickwick Triplets Did It?" with Pasek and Paul.
13.During the filming of Season 1, Sting performed an impromptu private concert for the cast.
“There’s the moment when he gets up with his guitar and sings sort of an impromptu song about Tim Kono,” John explained. “And when we were doing takes of that, he would get up, and each time he would — instead of playing the impromptu song, because we’d already gotten it — play one of his famous songs, and it was different each time. So literally, we had like a Sting concert happening, unplugged, on our set. We were just in love with him. He was just brilliant.”
14.This year, composing duo Benj Pasek and Justin Paul won an Emmy for their work on the song “Which of the Pickwick Triplets Did It?” earning them EGOT status.
They're best known for their work on The Greatest Showman, La La Land, and Dear Evan Hansen.
15.The character Cinda Canning is based on real-life podcaster Sarah Koenig. Sarah is best known for her critically acclaimed true-crime podcast Serial.
16.A running joke in the series is that Cinda Canning only hires assistants who look just like her. One of her assistants is played by Steve Martin's wife, Anne Stringfield, who many people — including Steve and Tina — have pointed out looks like Tina.
Patrick Harbron / ©Hulu / Courtesy Everett Collection, Michael Kovac / Getty Images for AFI
17.Andrea Martin plays Charles' hair and makeup artist, Joy. She is actually Martin Short's ex-sister-in-law. Andrea's ex-husband, Bob Dolman, was Martin's late wife Nancy's brother.
18.There are also several jokes thrown in that reference Steve Martin, Martin Short, and their decades-long careers. In Season 1, Jan serenades Charles with the song "Under the Bamboo Tree," and in the 1983 movie The Man With Two Brains, Steve sings that song to a brain.
19.Another joke thrown in is during Season 3, Loretta (Meryl Streep) mentions losing a role in Little Shop of Horrors to Ellen Greene. Steve Martin starred alongside Ellen in the film adaptation of the musical in 1986.
20.In Season 3, Charles and Oliver lie their way into a courtroom, saying they're "fathers of the bride." Steve and Martin both starred in the 1991 film Father of the Bride.
21.In Season 2, there's an exterior shot of the building of Alice's art gallery. That building exterior is the same one used throughout the entirety of New Girl.
22.It took four days to film the moment in the Season 2 finale where Charles, Oliver, and Mabel map out who murdered Bunny. The writers kept the murderer a secret, so most people learned of the big reveal while filming the scene.
"It was exciting to watch people on set, the camera crew, and other people who hadn't known where all of this was going, watching it get filmed and read through the stuff until it became clear when Poppy steps forward," showrunner John Hoffman explained. "There were still people on the day when we were shooting that went, 'Oh, my God. I had no idea. I thought the script had changed because of certain things happening, and now I think Alice did it.'"
23.Finally, Dana Covarrubias, the show's costume designer, said that Charles, Oliver, and Mabel's clothing is symbolic of who they are as characters. Charles is "the kind of guy who wants to wear the same thing essentially every day" and is obsessed with repetition. Oliver "knows how to get what he wants and uses his clothing to do it." And Mabel "uses her clothing as armor" and for hiding secrets.
