HBO’s new comedy series The Franchise doesn’t pull its punches on the superhero genre, mining laughs and satire from the complex process of putting one of these bigger-than-life blockbusters together by creating a fictional superhero film titled Tecto. Along the way, the series also takes plenty of jabs at Hollywood as a whole and everything that comes with being immersed in that world, though in an interview with ComicBook’s Chris Killian, the creators and cast of The Franchise revealed some of the Hollywood elements that they would love to skewer in a possible season 2 that didn’t make the cut for season 1.
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Not So Intimate
For Lolly Adefope (Dag), the topic of intimacy coordinators is a gold mine. “I think like intimacy coordinators. Oh, yeah,” Adefope said. Darren Goldstein (Pat) completely agrees. “That’s a great one. Yeah. Yeah. Because that’s a big thing now,” Goldstein said. “Yeah, yeah, yeah, and what that’s like and I want to see how that actually works. You put your hand right under. Yeah. What does that look like? So inorganic, but I guess it has to be done there.”
Meanwhile, Aya Cash (Anita) feels there’s plenty more to explore regarding the process of hair and makeup on a set. “I mean, we’ve talked about this already, but like hair and makeup is not really explored,” Cash said. “And hair and makeup is where all the gossip happens. It’s also where all the therapy happens.”
Jessica Hynes (Steph) actually pointed out that press junkets would be interesting to dive into, as well as everything that goes into public appearances overall. “Press junket… but no, I’m only kidding, but like also the preamble to press junkets, which is the whole kind of experience of trying to find a stylist and trying to find a dress and trying to be dressed, you know,” Hynes said. “There’s something very performative about being dressed for these things. And yeah, you know, it’s… you kind of get taken to basements and shown these things that come off the catwalk that basically just look like somebody is going to rip up a sheet and you’re like, okay, yeah. It’s so… there’s so much I don’t know.”
Looking Back, Not Forward
Co-creators Armando Iannucci and Jon Brown point to Hollywood’s focus on nostalgia, and how that nostalgia is sometimes very recent, pointing to even powerhouses like Marvel trying to recapture some of the magic from the not-too-distant past.
“Yeah, good question. We’re still finishing season one, so it’s sort of like in the trenches. I mean, they are interesting, aren’t they? They’re in an interesting phase. Marvel is specifically at the moment and the way that it’s heading and it feels like it’s starting to look back instead of just being this thing that moves forward,” Iannucci said. “It’s now entering this phase where it starts to look back at its own glory and trying to recapture that. And that seems like an interesting thing that’s happening across many, many forms of popular culture, music, or even like sports, and there’s lots of like heritage rock acts now and there’s, football is playing in these sort of leagues.”
“I feel like we are looking back to our recent past more and more often, and instead of looking back to the sixties, we’re looking for, it feels like we’re looking back to our very recent past and we’re now in the cycle of nostalgia. And that’s something interesting,” Iannucci said. “And like movie stars, action heroes being in their eighties and I had like bands headlining Glastonbury that are 80-year-old men and you’re like, What’s going on? Our coaches at games, all of our coaches are getting so old.”
“And we touch on it in season one but that sense of you know a massive studio going through an identity crisis or even fearing for the worst, just not knowing what’s going to happen next. Yes, sense. You see these monoliths of these big studios as they’re always going to be there, but what happens when they think it could be over? We don’t know,” Brown said.
The Franchise airs new episodes on HBO every Sunday at 10 PM ET, and those episodes will be available to stream on Max after the HBO premiere.
What have you thought of The Franchise? You can talk all things TV with me on Threads and Twitter @mattaguilarcb!
