Watch ‘Quiz Lady,’ ‘What We Do in the Shadows,’ ‘Reservation Dogs,’ ‘Only Murders,’ and ‘Life and Beth’ Writers Talk Balancing Tone in Comedy

“Only Murders in the Building” is a comedy that features a broad range of talent, from longtime collaborators Steve Martin and Martin Short to Selena Gomez as a novel addition to their comedic duo. According to writer Ben Smith, the entire first season of the hit Hulu series was a “big process” of figuring out how this unlikely trio’s comedic dynamics gelled together.

Those challenges, of molding comedy to the actors performing it, was a topic of discussion during the Disney Storyteller Panel of comedy writers IndieWire hosted at Vidiots in Los Angeles April 29. The panel was part of our “Pass the Remote” series, produced in partnership with Disney — watch a panel with drama writers here. (Sign up for our next panel, for “Abbott Elementary” and featuring Quinta Brunson and the producing team taking place May 20.)

The panel featured five writers in conversation with IndieWire features writer Jim Hemphill: Smith from “Only Murders in the Building,” Ron Weiner from “Life & Beth,” Zach Dunn from “What We Do in the Shadows,” Tazbah Chavez from “Reservation Dogs,” and Jenn D’Angelo, writer of the Hulu original film “Quiz Lady.” During the conversation, the five writers discussed the challenges of writing for distinct comedic voices in their projects, as well as the tricky tonal balancing that comedy requires to excel.

Smith, while discussing “Only Murders,” said they eventually landed on an onscreen chemistry for Martin, Short, and Gomez that mimicked their real-life relationships. Talking about melding the show’s dual identities — as a crime and comedy series — he said one of the best parts of writing the scripts is finding material that shows new sides to the stars.

“I think when you write a line of dialogue on any show you kind of imagine how it sounds, but I think jokes in particular, every actor has their own comfort with humor in particular. So it’s really helpful to know what type of comedy they’re good at and comfortable with,” Smith said. “I think part of the joy of working on the show, at least for me, was not just playing their hits that everyone knows and that dynamic but also showing sides that I think people weren’t as familiar with, like Marty’s and Steve’s dramatic sides.”

D’Angelo, on the other hand, wrote the script for “Quiz Lady” on spec, with no particular actors for the two sisters who lead the film in mind. Once stars Awkwafina and Sandra Oh came on board, both playing against type as the more introverted and extroverted sisters respectively, D’Angelo and director Jessica Yu met with the stars in London to go through a heavy rewriting process to bring the characters more in line with the actor’s skills and sensibilities.

“We had, like four days where we just worked on the script together, the four of us. And you know, we just read through the whole thing, we talked about the characters, we talked about our families, and we talked about just sort of like, what we want to see from these people,” D’Angelo said. “And so the script was really affected by that.”

While all of the shows and film discussed during the panel are comedies, they also contain a fair share of dramatic elements to them as well. Discussing balancing comedy with drama in the series, Chavez said that the writers on “Reservation Dogs” had to handle particularly heavy emotions in the third season, which focuses on themes of intergenerational healing and trauma. Several episodes, including the third episode “Deer Lady,” have little to no humor whatsoever. According to Chavez, the writers purposefully made the episode after “Deer Lady,” “Friday,” one of the most lighthearted in the season, to ensure that the show could pick up in tone from the darkness.

“We understood that if we wanted to go to deeper places, and sometimes darker places, that we needed to balance out the comedy with that,” Chavez said. “We were really conscious of the order in which we place these episodes as well, because we also feel a responsibility to care for our audience as they’re on this healing journey with us.”

On the opposite end of the spectrum, Dunn describes “What We Do in the Shadows” as “very stupid.” However, he says the writer’s room on the show still cares about the emotional stories present in each season and making the silliness feel grounded in the lives of the characters. Discussing the episode “Pride Parade” he wrote for Season 5, Dunn said the episode’s comedic high point where main character Nandor (Kayvan Novak) goes to space was only able to work because he and his cowriter Jake Bender figured out the emotional reason behind the joke.

“Jake, and I pitched the idea like four years ago, in like, the very beginning of the pandemic, in the season three Zoom Room,” Dunn said. “And then in this season, it was like ‘okay, now there’s an emotional reason to do it.’ And Paul [Simms] was talking to someone and being like ‘Yeah, we put this stupid space idea on the show. We figured it out.’ And Jake and I were like ‘That was always a good idea.’ We didn’t realize it was like a fake idea to him. But I think because we found the emotional element of it. It was able to work on the show.”

One of the hardest parts of writing and comedy is feedback, and the writers discussed how they worked on receiving feedback during the process of working on their shows. Weiner said that while he’s had problems working with notes in the past, they almost always prove constructive in some way. As an example, he explained how while working on one season of a show, he had to completely rewrite the first half of the first episode because notes from the studio about the three episodes they had locked made the writers realize the opening of the season was too repetitive compared to the season they were following up.

“Even if you have to have your round of ‘We hate these notes,’ or ‘We don’t understand these notes.’ There’s often the kind of idea a minute later, like, okay, ‘Well, what’s the note behind the note,'” Weiner said.

Watch the complete video of the panel above. Read here for a list of upcoming Pass The Remote events, and click here to request an invite for the “Abbott Elementary” panel on May 20.