Search Party Season 5 Adds Kathy Griffin to Cast as Conspiracy Theorist

Season 5 of Search Party has officially found its latest cast member. According to a new report, comedian and actress Kathy Griffin has joined the beloved dark comedy series in its fifth season, which will debut exclusively on HBO Max. Griffin is set to play Liquorice Montague, a conspiracy theorist who takes Chantal (Clare McNulty) under her wing as a codependent apprentice.

"Working with Kathy was a huge life moment for us," exeuctive producers Sarah-Violet Bliss and Charles Rogers said in a statement. "She brought so much warmth, humanity, and professionalism to set and delivered a performance that will delight the world."

The first three seasons of Search Party followed best friends Dory (Alia Shawkat), Drew (John Reynolds), Elliott (John Early) and Portia (Meredith Hagner) through a messy private investigation, semi-accidental murder, absurd cover-up and sensational trial. In Season 4, Dory was held prisoner by her psychotic stalker (Cole Escola), forcing Drew, Elliott and Portia to again become a search party – but this time for Dory.

Season 5 of Search Party will see Dory enter a very public business partnership with charismatic tech billionaire Tunnel Quinn, played by Jeff Goldblum. Dory folds her old friends into the venture as they embark on an altruistic but terrifying journey.

Search Party first debuted on TBS, before moving to HBO Max in its third season. Sarah-Violet Bliss, Charles Rogers, Michael Showalter, and Jax Media's Lilly Burns and Tony Hernandez executive produce.

"We always paint ourselves into a big corner every season," Rogers told Variety earlier this year. "We swing for the fence with a big cliffhanger and then we pray we get another season."

"[The ending] definitely the hardest ending of any of ours to figure out," Rogers added. "We are leaving off on a very, 'Oh my god, what does this mean?' energy, but we talked a lot about enlightenment. We pitched the title card to be white this season to reflect that feeling. We tossed around a lot of different ideas about Dory having an epiphany, and it just so happened that in also thinking about her dying at the end of the season we also found a way to mix those two notions together. Possibly in death is the only way that you can integrate all aspects of your psyche in this very definitive, archetypal way. It was a new way to say that she had fully self-actualized."

h/t: Deadline