Summary

Platonic creators Nicholas Stoller and Francesca Delbanco break down Season 2 and how difficult it was to crack the story.

Seth Rogen and Rose Byrne weren’t originally signed on to do a series that would have multiple seasons.

Giving Charlie a midlife crisis was a way to engineer a new storyline for Sylvia and disrupt their marriage.

Seth Rogen is the king of Apple TV+, with his star-studded hit series The Studio recently taking over the Emmys. A show that deserves just as much hype, however, is Platonic, the critically-acclaimed comedy series starring Rogen and Rose Byrne as ultimate platonic best friends. While the Season 2 finale clearly sets up the possibility of many more shenanigans for Will and Sylvia, that wasn’t always meant to be the case. Believe it or not, the hit Apple TV+ series was supposed to be an anthology, with a completely different cast and story for future seasons. Platonic creators Nicholas Stoller (who appeared as himself in The Studio) and Francesca Delbanco were thrilled that Season 2 got the greenlight, but realized the show would work best if Seth Rogen and Rose Byrne (who had previously worked together in Neighbors and its sequel), would reprise their roles. During this conversation with Collider, Stoller and Delbanco break down what it was like cracking the code for Season 2, why they decided to give Luke Macfarlane’s Charlie a midlife crisis, and how they managed to continue Will and Sylvia’s story. COLLIDER: I love this show so much. It just means a lot to me because I feel like we don’t see these types of stories told enough. You’re co-creators, but you’re also married. What’s something that the other brings to the table creatively that you can’t imagine making the show with anyone else? NICHOLAS STOLLER: From a very fundamental standpoint, it’s a show about a man and a woman, and so it’s written by a man and a woman, and I think that that’s a big part of it. I would say generally — and correct me if I’m wrong — I would say I’m the person with my foot on the accelerator, and she’s the person with her foot on the brake a little bit would be the way to describe it. I think I’m just pitching crazy bad stuff and being like, “what about this? What about that? What about that?” We usually have that sort of dynamic. Francesca is very much like, “that makes zero sense. How about this?” But we’re both sort of coming up with everything together. FRANCESCA DELBANCO: I would say that Nick has a very quick ability to make something funny, which I really respect and admire. When we’re talking about plots and stories, I’m seeing the shape of them and trying to understand how we could turn that into an episode. Before I’ve even done it, Nick has said four different ways of how it could end up being a huge and amazing comedy set piece. So I would say that the quickness of your ability to come up with comedy really is something that helps us a lot on this show. STOLLER: I don’t remember anything that happens in any episodes and she does. So that is also very helpful. A memory of what we’re talking about generally.
Nicholas Stoller and Francesca Delbanco Said That Coming Up With Season 2’s Storylines “Took Awhile”

“We had to engineer a way to get them closer.”

I adored Season 1, and what I really liked about it is that it felt so complete. I was thrilled when it got renewed, but I was really curious about where the story was going to go. What was the hardest part of cracking the story for Season 2? DELBANCO: Everything would be the answer. The show was originally conceived of as an anthology series. We thought that every season we would follow a different set of platonic friends and an entirely different circumstance. We thought we would do a period piece next about like the 1970s when colleges became co-ed. We had all kinds of really different ideas, but really in our heart of hearts, we wanted to make the show with Rose and Seth forever. But we just didn’t think that if we approached them and said, “do you guys want to be in a TV series that goes on and on open-endedly?” that they would necessarily sign on. So we wrote this season for them and it is a complete story. The first season was like a beginning and a middle and an end. And then about halfway through shooting the first season, we worked up our courage to see if they would like maybe be open to doing it again, but the season was already written. So we were shooting it and it was what it was. Then by the time they signed on for a second season and Apple gave us the green light to do another, we really had told their story. So it was very challenging when we got back into the Season 2 writer’s room to figure out, you know… they had the happy endings we had fixed to the best of our abilities, like Rose’s career problems and Seth’s romantic problems. And they lived a hundred miles apart from each other and were kind of saying goodbye to each other. So we had to engineer a way to get them closer, get them back into each other’s lives and get them to be total, complete messes again. Took a while.
‘Platonic’ Creators Had To Figure Out Charlie’s Purpose in Season 2 and His Relationship With Sylvia

“What’s a way to change her marriage that isn’t incredibly tragic?”

Luke Macfarlane’s Charlie looking startled in Platonic Season 2Image via Apple TV+ 

Another, one of the standout parts was with Macfarlane’s character, Charlie. Season 1, he kind of had the jealousy type of husband type, you know, naturally, then he really embraces their friendship and just himself. He goes on so many journeys. How was your approach to Charlie? It seems like you made a concerted effort to really give him almost like his own show within the show. STOLLER: The way the show kind of works structurally is both Will and Sylvia have their own separate stories and then they help each other with each other’s lives, and so we needed to give Sylvia a kind of challenge in her life. We had already told the story of trying to get back into the workforce in the first season. We started talking about it and we were like, “Oh, one of the things that she kind of probably wrongly thinks is that her life will never change, that her marriage will never change.” that those. What’s a way to change her marriage that isn’t incredibly tragic? Or, something that would be not fixable by a friend or not be something that Will could help her out with. And we were like, “Oh, if Charlie is a character who’s so secure in himself and so sure about everything, every choice he’s made, if he suddenly is thrown into a bit of an existential crisis for the first time in their marriage, that would be a fun thing for certainly Luke to play, who’s a brilliant performer and super funny, but also would give Sylvia stuff that would be conflicts for her. Then Will could also be in a constant state of flux in his life and wouldn’t be able to help her out.
The “Bachelor Party” Episode Allowed Will and Sylvia To Explore Taboo Topics in ‘Platonic’ Season 2

“Can you talk about that with a friend of the opposite gender?”

Beck Bennet at a restaurant in Platonic Season 2Image via Apple TV+ 

Francesca, you directed the “Bachelor Party” episode, which, seeing that name, you might think it’s going to be crazy. I love how it kind of switches everything on the audience. I’m sure it was exciting to mine a backstory for Will and Sylvia, because we’re bringing in a new character played by Beck Bennett, who is fantastic. What was it like creating that backstory for the third person in their dynamic? DELBANCO: In the first season, we told a lot of the stories that we kind of assumed we would want to tell for these two characters. We came in for the second season and we were like, what’s left? What haven’t we done? And one of the things that came very quickly to the writer’s room was this idea of… who are their other friends and what happens to their dynamic, which we’re so familiar with? When you introduce a foreign element, when they are a threesome instead of a twosome? And we felt like that had a million inherent tensions and fun dynamics to play with, especially because, whoever the friend is, it will be a two against one. We kind of engineer it in some ways that it’s like the guys against the girl and sometimes it sort of shifts around. But we did feel like, as in real life, you’re one way with one person and you’re another way with another person. We thought that it would be fun because we kind of set the sort of thesis of the show that Sylvia and Will are most themselves when they’re with each other. What happens when there’s another one in there who knows them as well as they both do? Where does the tension go? STOLLER: But when we were writing that episode, it did actually start the more kind of clichéd, “let’s have a bachelor party that goes crazy” kind of story. And we just were like, this feels totally false, that the Beck Bennett character would fall off of a balcony or whatever, like anything would happen. We’re all middle aged, really, and also, even when you’re not, like how many crazy things have happened to any of us in our lives? So we started to be like, wait, this wouldn’t happen. It took a while to figure out. But at some moment, we were like, wait, the whole joke would be that she would think something was going to happen and literally nothing would happen. And so that was how we kind of built it. And then it became a story also about sex and talking about sex. Can you talk about that with a friend of the opposite gender? That really became the kind of story spine. Thank you so much for your time and another great season. I hope there’s more! DELBANCO: Thank you so much! We do too!

Release Date

May 23, 2023

Network

Apple TV+

Writers

Francesca Delbanco