‘Only Murders in the Building’ EP on the Killer’s Comeuppance in Season 4 Finale, Addressing Plot Holes and Preparing to ‘Pay Respect’ to Season 5 Victim
SPOILER ALERT: The following contains spoilers for the Season 4 finale of “Only Murders in the Building.”
Goodbye, Sazz.
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“Only Murders in the Building” bid its final adieu to a fan-favorite character with Monday’s Season 4 finale, which concluded the investigation into the murder of Sazz Pataki (Jane Lynch), the plucky lesbian stunt double of Charles-Haden Savage (Steve Martin). After following several threads throughout the season, including the question of whether Charles was actually the bullet’s intended target, Charles, Oliver (Martin Short) and Mabel (Selena Gomez) discover that Sazz was shot by Marshall P. Pope (Jin Ha), whose real name is revealed to be Rex. Marshall is the screenwriter credited for the “Only Murders” movie they’ve been participating in all season, but in a bittersweet twist, they learn that it was actually Sazz who penned the script in honor of her friendship with Charles. Marshall, then an aspiring writer working as Sazz’s stunt protégé, stole her work and got a greenlight, then killed her after she threatened to expose him.
But when the trio realizes what Marshall did, Mabel is alone with him in the unit of the Arconia she’s been squatting in, and he threatens her life. But thanks to a distraction from the Westies — a group of people who live in the Arconia’s western tower and were initially suspects in Sazz’s murder before the trio realized they were only guilty of a plot to illegally sublet rent-controlled apartments — Charles and Oliver sneak into the apartment through the window to save her. They manage to get ahold of Marshall’s gun, but things look dicey when he gets it back, until he falls forward and begins to bleed out. The trio looks out the window and sees Jan (Amy Ryan), who has shot Marshall from Charles’ apartment on the other side of the Arconia, where she has been hiding all season via secret passageways. Jan had been dating Charles before being revealed as the Season 1 murderer, and then dated Sazz, so taking out Marshall doubles as a favor to Charles and an avenging for the lover she lost.
The trio doesn’t get to celebrate their solved murder for long. They soon discover the dead body of their doorman, Lester (Teddy Coluca), in the fountain of the Arconia. Like in previous seasons, his death sets up a new investigation for Season 5 — as does a conversation with a woman named Sofia Caccimelio (Téa Leoni), who implores the trio to investigate the disappearance of her husband, Nicky “The Neck” Caccimelio aka the Dry Cleaning King of Brooklyn, who also has ties to a notorious crime family. They decline her offer to hire them, as they focus on murders at the Arconia, though Sofia insists that her case has “everything to do with this building.”
“Only Murders” showrunner John Hoffman spoke to Variety about killing Marshall — and the importance of New York City doormen.
Now that you can factor spoilers into your answer, how did the decision to kill Sazz come together?
It was an idea of Jess Rosenthal, one of our executive producers. He came into my office in New York while we were shooting Season 3, and said, “What do we think of this? And I said, “Well, that’s the most awful idea, so it probably means we should lean into that. Before we do anything, let’s go talk to Jane Lynch.” So I sat down with Jane, and she lit up. She was so game.
It offers a rare opportunity explore a relationship that we’ve used for humor — to understand and have Charles understand all of who she was to him, and who she was for herself as well.
This series has always been slightly meta, critiquing the culture of true crime while the characters produce a true crime podcast — then Season 4 ends up being set in your own industry. What were you trying to say about Hollywood as the trio participated in the “Only Murders in the Building” movie?
That was really fun, this idea of what Molly Shannon says in Episode 1: “When I see a hot piece of IP that horny rival studios are going crazy for, I get in there.” That sense of, “What’s out there, and how do I commodify it further?” And it was really fun for us to imagine who would be playing these parts and how that would expand into the natural desperation around the project, and how intense it can be until the moment of a greenlight.
Reflecting back on the podcasters, it’s a story, and how you tell it is everything. If you hold to that for as long as you can, and you have some control over it, that’s the purest form of entertainment. It’s a vision. It’s a voice. It’s a perspective that no one else will have in telling the story — and here they are, watching their own story and connecting with people and trying to influence it, like Oliver trying to get Zach inspired. That investment felt like comedic fodder for us — and also more personal reflection, as long as the satirization of the world doesn’t overtake it and feels more background. It’s always about the connection between our trio and how the story is being told. In the finale, there’s a sweet moment of them standing there with new appreciation for this movie that their beloved friend died over. It was just a lovely opportunity to sort of find our own way of telling that Hollywood story.
Compared to the first three seasons, Marshall might be the culprit who earns the most sympathy, because you can see how his Hollywood failures drove him crazy and ultimately led to his death. What was he meant to represent? And why have him get killed by Jan instead of arrested like your previous murderers?
It was pretty quickly that we landed on this writer once we understood the details of that mentor-mentee relationship. He becomes a stunt double, so you’ve got a skill understanding with Sazz, and that more personal relationship where she was helping him to become a screenwriter and being inspired by him as she was inspired by Charles. And I do tend to come from a humanist point of view on all of it, for both victim and culprit and everything in between. I like surprising. I like delving into the more unexpected qualities of people and their backstories.
And we had sort of forgotten about Jan. We thought it would be really interesting if Jan never left, and she’s just been in those passages, so the idea that she’s the one who finally takes out our killer of Sazz after the relationship she’s had with her, and after the relationship with Charles, it all just felt thrilling and surprising and right. But I was not prepared for how it would feel when we were shooting it, because we’ve never killed [the killer]. Watching that scene was very difficult. But then she has this gun, and she shoots, and she does this gesture [a small wave to Charles], and Amy came up with that all on her own. And I thought, “That is hysterical. But maybe it’s too much?” Because it was making me laugh and delight. I’m like, “Do we need an alt? Do we have one where she’s not ta-da?” But we did three more takes, and she did it each time, and I’m like, “That’s it. I’m committing to it.”
To me, the wave read almost like an apology. Like, “I’ve ruined your lives a bunch of times, so let me take care of this murderer for you.”
I think it’s one of my favorite scenes. And after it, when they come back in and she and Charles are having that exchange, and she’s palpitating. She’s so excited by the idea of them being endgame. That’s what’s motivated her, so it felt like great success to her that she could redeem an apology.
It’s really nice that the Westies end up helping the trio with Marshall after the breakthrough they had in Episode 8, where Mabel promises not to tell their story on the podcast, so that they don’t go to jail for everything they’ve done to keep their rent cheap. How did you arrive on that conclusion for the relationship?
When you’re living in a building in New York and you look out the window, you’re seeing whole families and lives and existences going on, and you get sort of a connection in some way. You make a judgment about what you’re watching. It’s a fascinating little movie happening in many different windows every day. You don’t want to be a snoopster, but you find yourself — I find myself — watching, going, “What are they doing? Are they playing a game?” So all of that felt right for the show. But when we got into the scheme that was happening around the Dudenoff apartment, what I needed was some truth underneath the story. And our great writer Madeleine George is our New York Wikipedia. She had researched all of these things people do to keep their rent low, and those stories are so much more extreme than even what we did. People are just wanting to have a dream fulfilled and they can’t afford it anymore, and where do you go? What do you do? So Mabel, at the end, when she steps out of that apartment in Episode 8 and says, “We were three lonely people in the Arconia. I’m not going to put them on our podcast,” I loved her for that.
That brings me to Helga (Alexandra Templer), the Westie who helps to figure out the “plot holes” in the previous podcasts that were pointed out earlier in the season. Have you always been aware there were loose threads in the earlier seasons that you wanted to come back to and address later? Was it always your plan to return to them?
I came to terms in Season 1 that there are things we’ve created that are just loose ends. Things you’ve poked at that don’t necessarily make sense for the crime you’re trying to solve, but wait a minute, what happened there? Who really did poison Winnie? I thought, “If we’re fortunate enough to get a second season, third season, we will be collecting many of these things.” We keep a tab in our writers’ room — a big list of our loose ends. We’ll spend a whole morning on loose ends. So in some way, this season, it feels like we’re getting closer to understanding all those loose ends, but I’m not sure it’s conclusive. There’s many other things that have happened this season that also feed into this collection of loose ends. I’m really intrigued by the idea that you probably feel you don’t have that answer yet, and that feels right to me.
Tell me how the writing of Season 5 is going. Do you already know who’s responsible for killing Lester and dumping his body in the Arconia fountain? And what about Téa Leoni, who plays a woman asking the trio to investigate her husband’s death? Is it safe to assume that murder is connected to
I know the killer. I know the story. We are now breaking the fourth episode of Season 5, so we have a pretty good handle on it all. There is always a wish to look into a new world, and hopefully with a real New York bent. The show has always been about classic-meets-modern. Season 5 is shaping up within the microcosm of our building in New York, and modernization, and grappling with that. The victim was a doorman, and that is a very rich lineage and heritage to New York City — what that job is, and the union around that job — and there’s a level of respect involved. Now we have to pay respect by finding out what exactly might have happened to Lester. The old-school nature of all of that piety that you still find in New York, matched up with sort of the modern.
And Téa Leoni, I love her so much. We’ve had the greatest talks about her character and what’s going on with her. And how there may be a relationship to why Lester is in that fountain!
This interview has been edited and condensed.
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