The Afterparty Producer Chris Miller Reveals Process for Picking Killer in Murder Mysteries (Exclusive)
The murder mystery has become an age-old part of our popular culture, and many of the tales have worked overtime to stand out from the crowd. One murder mystery that has become a recent hit is the Apple TV+ series The Afterparty, which returns for its sophomore season later this month. While speaking to ComicBook.com's Chris Killian about Season 2 of The Afterparty, co-creator Chris Miller dove into his approach for crafting a murder mystery around a particular suspect.
"You have to start with that," Miller said in our interview, which you can check out above. "I think that's really the only way you can make a really compelling murder. You don't procrastinate until you're like, 'Oh, no!' It has to start around figuring out a unique way for a person to murder somebody and kind of get away with it. And then you have to cover it up, and think about how you're gonna hide it, and then think about all the characters that surround that murder, and the relationships and secrets that they can have that allow them to feel like they're also suspects. They have motives, but they also have their other stories and you build it all around that uh murder. Otherwise, it'll feel just arbitrary. And you want it to feel really satisfying at the end to be like, of course, 'Oh, why didn't I see it?' And that's when I think murder mysteries work the best."
What Is The Afterparty Season 2 About?
In Season 2 of The Afterparty, a wedding is ruined when the groom is murdered and every guest is a suspect. Detective Danner (Tiffany Haddish) returns to help Aniq (Sam Richardson) and Zoë (Zoë Chao) solve whodunnit by questioning family members, star-crossed lovers and business partners, and hearing each suspect's retelling of the weekend.
New cast members for Season 2 will also include Elizabeth Perkins (Sharp Objects, Weeds) as Isabel, Poppy Liu (Hacks, Better Call Saul) as Grace, Paul Walter Hauser (Black Bird, Cruella) as Travis, Anna Konkle (Pen15) as Hannah, Jack Whitehall (Jungle Cruise, Clifford the Big Red Dog) as Sebastian and Vivian Wu (Away, Dead Pigs) as Vivian. The series is co-showrun and executive produced by Chris Miller and Anthony King (Dead to Me, Wet Hot American Summer), with Phil Lord also serving as an EP.
"All the characters were really well figured out, as you might imagine in a murder mystery. You really have to plan all that stuff as we cast," producer Phil Lord told ComicBook.com last year. "So it was just about trying to find great creative partners for each of those parts who could do a lot of different moves. If you look at this cast, everybody is a great actor and so many people are also great writers and showrunners and directors. They have a real holistic sense of what a scene might need and they have all the moves so they could do it, like, Ilana [Glazer] can do it as a comedy and also as a thriller because she's just really smart, a really smart filmmaker. Tiffany [Haddish] is always great at playing characters that are underestimated but are very, very, very bright. You just go down the line and it's a wealth of creativity that we couldn't have done it without that."
Are you excited for Season 2 of The Afterparty? Share your thoughts with us in the comments below!
Season 2 of The Afterparty will premiere with two episodes on Friday, July 12th, with subsequent episodes arriving weekly, exclusively on Apple TV+.