[Editor’s note: The following contains spoilers for Season 2 of Avenue 5.]
From show creatorArmando Iannucci(Veep), the second season of the eight-episode HBO comedy seriesAvenue 5, that’s set 40 years in the future in a world where space travel is a booming business, finds Captain Ryan Clark (Hugh Laurie) avoiding telling the passengers of the luxury spacecraft that they’re about eight years from their return home. Growing into the leadership position that he was only faking at the start of this journey, Ryan has to keep everyone calm, even though there’s no shortage of wild and unbelievable things going on around him, at any given moment, that could send everything into a tailspin.
During this interview with Collider, Iannucci and Laurie talked about the delight of constant surprise, that the cast always has the opportunity to try other stuff and play, how Laurie is bad at not cracking up during scenes, if they feel Captain Ryan is becoming better or worse as a leader, doing a streaming series within the show about what’s going on inside the spacecraft, and Laurie’s favorite moments of Season 2.
Collider: Hugh, I’m curious, could you ever have imagined that you’d find yourself on a job where, “Take me to hell and toast my tits,” is something that you would ever say?
HUGH LAURIE: I’ll give you as honest an answer as I can, and in all honesty, no, not in one million years, would I have predicted that. No, I did not see that coming, which makes it all the more delightful. What could be more delightful than constant surprise? I think all of us, everybody in the cast, is just constantly surprised and delighted, with every script and with every day. We get to try different things and experiment. Armando’s got a very generous and hospitable atmosphere, in which people can chip in all sorts of things and mad ideas. Most of mine are hideously unsuccessful, but I try, and I love playing the game. It’s a real pleasure to be a part of.
I love the humor on this show, and so much of that humor, for me, comes from crazy, random things like that, where I just find myself laughing out loud. Armando, for you, do you ever write anything where you’re like “How am I going to ask the actors to say this?” And Hugh, how often do you read a script and go, “Oh, my god, how am I supposed to say that?”
ARMANDO IANNUCCI: I don’t know. I like to be surprised, so we give them opportunities to try other stuff. For me, the funniest line is in episode three when Billie says, “Of course, it’s a terrible idea, brackets, is it thought?” And Ryan says something like, “Yes, it is, brackets, fuck yes!” That was just Hugh, on the day. That wasn’t in the script, but it’s a golden light in the episode. I like to be surprised, so it’s about giving everyone the safety net of the script and the story, and then everyone feels happy, but confident to then start wandering from it, to see what else might come up.
LAURIE: Yeah, I don’t think any of the actors are, in any sense, squeamish about what they would allow their character to do. From time to time, they might go, “Oh, I feel like that doesn’t quite make sense with what I did in the previous scene. Can I try something slightly different?” That might happen. But I don’t think any of those actors are prim, in any way. I don’t think anyone’s gonna go, “Oh, I couldn’t possibly. Oh, no, goodness me, I couldn’t possibly say that.” I think they’re a very game, sporting bunch. They’ll try anything. Desperate is another word. Desperate and needy. No. There’s a wonderful spirit of, “Let’s go for it. What’s the next step beyond that? Okay, we’ve got that, but can we go one further? And then, can we go one further than that?” That’s part of the fun of it, really.
IANNUCCI: Everyone knows that, if it doesn’t work out, that’s what the edit is for. People have got to feel free to try stuff out, knowing that if it falls flat on its face, it won’t be seen.
LAURIE: Oh, my God, if it ever does get seen, and you ever get to see uncut versions ofAvenue 5, we could never converse, ever again.
IANNUCCI: Only show the uncut versions to my neighbors. That’s it.
Hugh, when you do a scene where Zach Woods is in your face and calling you a depressed, anorexic Santa Claus, how do you not crack up? Do you guys crack up on this?
LAURIE: I’m a pretty bad cracker-upper. Zach makes me laugh. The truth is that they all make me laugh. I’ve had some bad days, or very good days, depending on how you look at it, with Josh Gad. We can both get hysterical, where we actually can’t get through. Even if the line is just, “Good morning, how are you?,” we can’t even get through that. We’re in that much trouble. It’s very contagious, and we get giddy. Armando is very patient, but I can see, every now and then, that he’ll glance down at his watch and wonder how many thousands of dollars we’ve just [wasted] away.
IANNUCCI: We’ve stopped the cameras, by that stage.
LAURIE: Oh, right, okay.
Would you say that Captain Ryan is getting better or worse at leading people?
IANNUCCI: I think he’s getting better, actually. He’s nearly ready to do this. Nearly.
LAURIE: Yeah, I agree. I feel like he has come to that very adult realization that, actually, this is all adulthood is. It’s faking what you thought, as a child, was a real solid, concrete adult world, that had structure and integrity and where the arithmetic had been done. You realize that a large chunk of the adult world is just people winging it, and he begins to realize that he’s no less entitled than quite a lot of other people, to actually fill that role. He may not have a degree in astrophysics or engineering, or whatever he would’ve needed. But plenty of other people don’t, and they seem to have prospered okay. So, I think he feels like, “Why not him?,” in a sense.
Armando, I love the fact that we have this show within a show. We have this streaming series ofAvenue 5, while the events on Avenue 5 are still happening. What made you want to do that?
IANNUCCI: You’ll see how the TV show affects what’s going on, on the actual ship, but also how people on the actual ship are starting to try and influence the TV show. I don’t know where it came from, just the explosion of content. There’s so much stuff being made, these days. Somebody only has to go out and buy some milk, and then they’ve sold the rights of that activity to Netflix or Amazon, for a four-year, 50-part series. I just wanted to look at that. And also, especially during the pandemic, we absorbed ourselves in entertainment. That’s how we got through it, really. We tried to hide the real world by watching an artificial version of it. So, I wanted to look at that, too.
There are so many crazy things happening this season. There are cannibals and pedophiles, and there are all sorts of insane things happening.
IANNUCCI: It’s likeThe Golden Girls, isn’t it? It’s like Lucille Ball. It’s the same old, same old.
Hugh, personally, I love the moment when you put a guy in an inflatable ball, to roll him down a hallway. Did you have a favorite moment, this season? What do you most love about Season 2?
LAURIE: Some of my favorite moments really come from insults. The evermore ornate way that all these characters have of insulting each other, is just consistently entertaining to me. I don’t even remember if it’s my line, but there’s a line that’s describing Matt as having a face like a haunted pond. I don’t know why, but that made me laugh for days, after I read it. I just thought that was so beautiful. The evermore intricate ways that we could find of taking out our frustration on each other, which is primarily verbal, are quite fun. There are occasional moments of violence, but it’s mostly verbal. It’s mostly emotional. And I do find that endlessly entertaining.
Avenue 5airs on Monday nights on HBO and is available to stream at HBO Max.
