The Resort Creator Andy Siara Talks the Peacock Series' Ambitious and Genre-Spanning Tone

On the surface, the 2020 film Palm Springs appeared to be a standard romantic comedy, only for the experience to involve time-travel loops and other sci-fi themes, making for a much more inventive endeavor. Writer of that narrative Andy Siara has developed the new project The Resort, which once again might appear to be one type of story on the surface, only to offer audiences much more than they bargained for. Rather than being limited to feature-film length, The Resort has even more time to borrow elements from a number of influences to make for one of the most unique shows of the year. The Resort premieres on Peacock on July 28th.

"I would say that so much, to me, comes down to tone. From the very get-go, when I first started writing some version of this much, much longer ago, then when I broke the larger story that it is a couple of years ago, I was always ... Then until when I pitched it and showed it to Peacock, it was always wanting to ride this tonal line of having one foot on the banana peel, the other in the grave," Siara recalled to ComicBook.com of developing the tone of the series. "Being able to go from silly to sincere. Once one thing starts to get a little too heavy, then you shift it back into the, 'Let's not forget that life is inherently funny and sad at the same time.'

He continued, "Tonally, that's just what I'm most attracted to, I also feel like those are such a wide spectrum of emotions that it allows you to go into different genres. Because as long as the tone's consistent, then the genre -- especially as you'll see in the second half, you start to feel a little bit more of the Raiders of the Lost Ark kind of stuff that comes into play, or some jungle adventure points. But it's still tonally the same show. And I think that's where my happy place is in the writing of it, in our incredible writer's room. I think that they got that part of it, too."

More than just finding the right tone in the scripts, Siara recalled how it's up to the actual filming of those stories that the project really comes together.

"Where it really comes to life, where it lives and dies, is in production. And if you have a director that also ... That's why I think I lucked out, I went to Ben [Sinclair] for this because he is so good at riding that line and I've been a huge fan of High Maintenance for so long. So he can make me laugh and cry in a five-minute short and that's part of it. Then the actors are so good, as we've seen with Cristin [Milioti] and Will [Jackson Harper] and Luis [Gerardo Méndez] and Skyler [Gisondo]. I mean, everybody there is, they're so good at riding that line. So when everybody's on board with the tone, then it's like free game."

The series is described, "A multi-generational, coming-of-age love story disguised as a fast-paced mystery about the disappointment of time. An anniversary trip puts a marriage to the test when the couple finds themselves embroiled in one of the Yucatan's most bizarre unsolved mysteries that took place fifteen years prior."

The Resort not only has impressive talent behind the scenes, but also on camera, though Siara noted that one supporting character specifically proved to be the toughest challenge when it came to casting.

When asked about the most difficult role to cast, Siara explained, "I would say probably Murray, Nick Offerman's character. I say that because we didn't go to anybody else at all and I was hesitant to go to anybody else. And then, luckily, Ben went on a hike with Nick and pitched it to him back in January. Then Nick read it right away and loved it. All I will say, without spoiling anything, in the back half of the show, we take some of our biggest swings with that character. And in lesser hands, maybe the swings wouldn't work, but in Nick's hands, I mean, the guy is ... His talent cannot be replicated. And so, because of that, that's why it was the hardest to cast because of things you haven't even seen yet in the show in the back half."

The Resort premieres on Peacock on July 28th.

Are you looking forward to the new series? Let us know in the comments or contact Patrick Cavanaugh directly on Twitter to talk all things horror and Star Wars!  

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