As the third and final season of the Dorian and Peabody Award-winning comedy series Somebody Somewhere debuts on HBO on Sunday, October 27th at 10:30pm ET/PT, and available to stream on Max, creators Hannah Bos and Paul Thureen speak with The Queer Review’s editor James Kleinmann about the show’s pace and tone, what they wanted to explore about friendship, its focus on queer characters living in a rural setting, and the role that music plays in the series.
Somebody Somewhere follows Sam (Bridget Everett, who also writes and executive produces the series), a true Kansan on the surface, but beneath it all struggling to fit the hometown mold with her sister Tricia (Mary Catherine Garrison). Grappling with loss and acceptance, singing is Sam’s saving grace and leads her on a journey to discover herself and a community of outsiders—including Joel (Jeff Hiller), Fred (Murray Hill), and Brad (Tim Bagley)—who don’t fit in but don’t give up, showing that finding your people, and finding your voice, is possible. Anywhere. Somewhere.
James Kleinmann, The Queer Review: One of the aspects that I love about this series is its gentle pace and the tone which make it so warmly inviting. How integral is that to telling this story?
Hannah Bos: “The pace is really important. During this whole ride of making Somebody Somewhere, we’ve been trying to write a show that we would want to watch and a world that we would want to live in. As we enter into season three, it’s been fun and moving to look back. When you’re watching the show, it feels like the pace and the style and the tone is so grounded and slice-of-life. We have some air in this show. But when you think about how much people have grown, it’s gigantic leaps. I think about Tricia from the pilot to season three; she’s really grown a lot. We try to make it as human and realistic as possible. Like life.”
Paul Thureen: “We found a similar interest as Bridget in really looking at those moments that are often before and after the big moments that are normally focused on. The nostalgic moment before or after. Part of that is also looking at characters that are not often the ones that are focused on, and focusing on those characters with full lives and full humanity. For us, it’s also a comfort to slow down, to let the story breathe and then hopefully it invites the audience to lean in and to pay attention to those little things. We have incredible actors who bring so much detail and nuance to those little moments. We could sit and watch Sam and Joel just sit in a car and shoot the shit for hours.”
Hannah: “For forever.”
I read a recent study about the epidemic of loneliness in the United States which found that it was not about us not having enough friends—apparently most of us have four or five friends—but a result of us not forming deep relationships and deep connections with those friends. I think Somebody Somewhere really speaks to why it is important for us to do that and shows how it can be complicated when we are vulnerable and open up. What did you want to examine and celebrate about friendship, particularly given the context of the world that we’re in?
Paul: “You put that in beautiful context.”
Hannah: “Yeah, that was beautiful and I’m thinking about all the lonely people. I hope they find comfort in our show. This truly is a love story between two friends and it’s been so fun to live in that world and to explore that world for six years making this show. Paul and I are best friends and we’ve been writing together for 25 years, so we draw a lot of the good and the bad from our own journey of keeping our healthy friendship.”
“I know that’s really important to Bridget, who also writes and creates all these characters with us. Her friendships are very important to her. In a show that’s about coming of age a little later in life, we see how important friendships are as primary relationships in your life. That’s why it’s so fun that we have a Thanksgiving episode this season. In a show about chosen family, you get to spend the time in this world and in this show, especially this season, going really deep on a major relationship which happens to be a friendship.”
Paul: “I think the way you contextualize it as not just being about having friends, or the number of friends, connects to the growth of Sam and Joel’s relationship. It’s about letting yourself be vulnerable or showing parts of yourself that maybe you are ashamed of or that you don’t think you are worthy of sharing. Joel loves and admires Sam so much that he lets her reengage in life and reengage in music in particular. I love that arc. I do think that there is something about that type of friendship, when you’re able to be vulnerable with each other, that can help you engage in the world in a way that family baggage can sometimes make a little bit more difficult.”
“This season, we see Sam and Joel trying to figure out how to redefine how they fit into each other’s worlds and we see the growth that they’ve had in their friendship. In the past, we would have seen Sam run away from the fact that Joel is in a relationship or feel betrayed and she doesn’t. But it’s still a hard thing to figure out where you exist. It’s an ongoing thing that needs to be nurtured.”
Hannah: “She’s there for him when he needs her. This season, he’s so helpful in getting her out of her shell to start her journey into self-love and self-worth. Everyone’s coupled up and Sam gets to do what she learned from Joel and she helps him when he’s struggling with getting a lot of things that he wanted on his vision board, but it’s not working and it doesn’t feel good. She’s the one who gets to give him some of what he’s taught her back. It’s always scary, but sometimes your friends tell you the truths you’re not ready to hear.”
It’s so refreshing to have a gay best friend, not sidelined, not just there for a few funny one-liners, but right at the centre of this story. You mentioned the Thanksgiving episode which is a beautiful illustration of the chosen family at the heart of the show. These queer folks are not living in a big city, they’re living in a small town, rural environment. What did you want to explore about that across these three seasons?
Paul: “I grew up on a farm in rural Minnesota, and a big part of it is looking at things like art communities and queer communities of faith in the Midwest. I feel like that’s something that you don’t see depicted, or if you do it makes you feel a little queasy, or it’s a very surface thing, or that’s the only part of somebody’s identity as opposed to looking at everybody as full humans. We talked to Jeff about Joel’s spiritual journey in the series, which I’m so proud of. For him, when he was growing up church was a place where he felt safe, but it’s also a place that’s done a lot of harm for a lot of people.”
“In looking at the nuance of that and at the stories of people who don’t go off to the big city—we’ve seen that story so many times—there have been so many people from where I grew up, from where Bridget grew up, and from where Hannah grew up, who have reached out to say how much they appreciate that depiction. It’s weirdly something that you don’t often see. When you are somebody who doesn’t see yourself reflected on screen, when you do it the stakes are very high. So for us, it’s very important to handle that with real care and hopefully nuance and an open heart.”
Could you talk about music’s place in the series? The evolution of that with Sam’s character is wonderful and we see her giving the gift of it to Joel’s boyfriend Brad in a beautiful episode this season.
Hannah: “That’s one of my favourite moments of the season. It was also one of my favourites on set too, seeing the crew react to that in the moment. That’s one of the secret gifts of this show. In general, it is a miracle that this show is even on TV, but to be on set and get to see Sam sing—Bridget sing in real life—and to feel it with the crew, who all love each other, was really special.”
“It’s a small show, and as you said it’s a slower pace, it’s very real, and to see Sam giving back to her friend’s partner what she’s learned is a really great example of how some of these characters have changed over three seasons. That was a very moving moment for all of us. Tim’s delivery of that song just killed us all. The whole crew was crying on the first take.”
Paul: “Bridget wrote that song having talked to Tim about it, but it was a private conversation. I think it was a really important thing for both of them that the song was a gift to each other’s characters. One of the greatest things for us working on this show is the way that Bridget talks about music and what music means to her. For her, it’s so connected to her family and to how she understands the world. We really rely on her to bring those moments to life.”
“It’s an amazing thing to be able to make something with Bridget that uses that gift of hers, but also to see how Sam connects with the world and how she is vulnerable and that she’s able to help Brad through this moment with what she’s learned herself through music. I feel like that’s a relationship and a scene that I’ve never quite seen before and the two of them together are incredible.”
Yeah, I was in floods of happy tears watching that at home, so people need their tissues ready for that episode.
Paul: “The second episode of last season, where Sam and Joel are on the toilet, we’d seen that scene sixty times but we were in tears laughing every time!”
Hannah: “Different kind of tears though. Me too, even in the edit with this scene, I was like, ‘Well, we did it again, guys!’”
By James Kleinmann
The third and final season of Somebody Somewhere debuts on Sunday, October 27th at 10:30pm ET/PT on HBO and will be available to stream on Max.
