The Big Picture

The Afterparty Season 2 features another murder, with Detective Danner teaming up with Aniq to solve the crime through different film genres. The cast of The Afterparty had fun making the show and appreciated its visual and layered humor that rewards attentive viewers. Jack Whitehall enjoyed playing a character with a hidden facade and switching between British and American accents, while Paul Walter Hauser embraced physical comedy in his role.

[Editor’s note: The following contains spoilers for Season 2 of The Afterparty.]In Season 2 of the Apple TV+ comedy series The Afterparty, naturally another murder has occurred, reeling Detective Danner (Tiffany Haddish) back into the mix, due to her desire to team back up with Aniq (Sam Richardson) and solve the crime. As the pair make their way through questioning all the family members and guests at the wedding of Grace (Poppy Liu) and the now super dead Edgar (Zach Woods), they take what they learn about the fateful event, with each recounting being told in a different film genre to match the individual’s perspective, to find the guilty party for this whodunnit.

During this interview with Collider, co-stars Jack Whitehall (who plays Sebastian, Edgar’s best man and former business partner) and Paul Walter Hauser (who plays Travis, a former suitor of Grace) talked about joining the Season 2 shenanigans, what The Afterparty has in common with Arrested Development, the fun of breaking Sebastian’s facade, whether Travis is self-aware, sharing particularly memorable moments with co-star Elizabeth Perkins, and not getting hurt doing physical comedy.

This interview was conducted prior to the SAG-AFTRA strike.

Collider: Your characters are both so fun this season. Did you enjoy the series as a fan of the first season? Were you prepared for this level of shenanigans?

PAUL WALTER HAUSER: Yeah, I thought the energy was wild. I remember watching Season 1. I’m friendly with Ike Barinholtz, and a couple other people that worked on the first season, and I remember thinking, “Wow, they definitely had fun making this.” You don’t bear the responsibility of carrying the whole show, like a lead character. It’s more of an ensemble, where everybody supports everybody, and that’s a fun place to walk into.

JACK WHITEHALL: I remember seeing the poster for the first season and thinking, “Wow, that’s an incredible cast of comic actors that they’ve managed to assemble for this, and people that I really admire.” I really enjoyed watching the first season. And so, when it came across my desk, I boarded it relatively early on. And then, seeing the cast that came on board was incredible. I realized the scope of ambition for the second season was pretty amazing. It was so great to get to work with so many of these people that I’ve really admired for so long.

Image via Apple TV+

Sometimes people turn on a comedy because they can leave it on in the background and just listen for the jokes, but you can’t do that with this show. It’s so visual and there’s just so much going on.

HAUSER: I always felt like the show Arrested Development did that, where they would reward the viewer for paying attention. A lot of the jokes are layered or specific, and you can’t be a peripheral watcher of a show like that. You do have to engage, and I think it rewards you when you do.

Since you guys got to know what was going on with your characters ahead of time, how did that inform the way you played them? How did that help you determine who they were to you?

WHITEHALL: Hugely. Knowing that there was gonna be this pivot, halfway through the season, in his episode, informed everything that I did in the prior episodes. So then, it was a case of going back through them and working out how many little bread crumbs we could lay throughout those initial episodes. It was really fun, thinking of him as this character that was very much presenting this facade to all the other characters. It was great that we had all the scripts in time and we were able to read them and really understand where the narrative was heading. It was a pretty intricately plotted piece. There were all these twists and turns, and that would inform all the different dynamics with all the other cast members.

Jack, I love everyone is fawning over Sebastian being British and his accent, only to learn that he’s faking being British. But then, you’re actually British and doing an American accent for your character’s reveal.

WHITEHALL: It was so fun. That was the scene I was looking forward to doing the most. Any of those bits where I got to flip between the accents were really fun. It was great. Also, that character presented in a certain way, so knowing that’s where it was headed was really great for me. To know that there was this other side to him that we would shock the audience with made it a much more appealing character to want to play.

HAUSER: Your American accent was really good, too. It was actually good, but then it was also funny because I know you. Because I know you, there was just the tiniest tinge of mockery. It was very funny. You did a good job.

Image via Apple TV+

Paul, do you think Travis is self-aware? Does he understand that, even though he got invited to the wedding, no one actually expected him or wanted him there?

HAUSER: It’s interesting that he got invited to his ex’s wedding. He thinks, “Why would she invite me? Maybe I can be help of service somehow. This guy seems shady.” Like a lot of conspiracy theorists, the origin has some truth, and then it just gets out of control. I had fun doing the poor execution of a good intention. I think Travis really feels like he’s onto something, at all turns, but of course, that’s not the case on the show.

How is it to get slapped around by Elizabeth Perkins in a couple of episodes? When you get slapped that many times, is it impossible to avoid mishaps?

HAUSER: It was amazing. I just really went for it, and she went for it. She’s so fun to work with. We had a lot of fun doing that bit. I remember, she and I wanted more bits together. We didn’t have that many moments. I really relished the moments I got to have with people like her.

And Jack, she pulled a sword on you. What was that moment like?

WHITEHALL: That was literally day one, and that was the first scene that I shot. The first time that I met Elizabeth was stripping off in front of her, and then having a sword drawn on me, which was certainly an icebreaker. That’s always the nature of filming. They never ease you into it. You’re in there, jumping into the deep end, as it were.

Image via Apple TV+

There’s no halfway with comedic moments like that.

WHITEHALL: Yeah, definitely. That was the case with lots of the performers in this. We were all very committed. With comedy, you need to be quite fearless. Certainly, when it came to some of Paul’s pratfalls, he’s a man with rubber bones who’s not afraid of committing to a joke, and you get a wonderful outcome because of that.

Paul, you have quite a bit of physical comedy throughout the season. Is that something that you enjoy doing?

HAUSER: I’m not very athletic, but I am big on pratfall stuff. My whole life, I’ve been doing that, just to amuse people and to be funny. Molly Shannon doing Mary Katherine Gallagher, or Chris Farley being Chris Farley, I guess I just try to emulate some of that energy when it calls for it. And for whatever reason, I just decided to make it fun and do a lot of physical comedy. I don’t know what all made it into the show, but I was grateful that Chris Miller didn’t neuter it. He was very much like, “Yeah, okay, if you don’t mind doing it, go ahead.”

When it comes to physical comedy, do you really have to get out of your own head because, if you think about it too much, you’re more likely to get injured? Do you have to just go for it?

HAUSER: Yes and no. There’s some choreography to it too because, if you take the wrong step and you don’t plot how you’re gonna fall, you can actually end up shattering your elbow on concrete, or something. So, it’s a little bit of both. You do have to just jump and do it, but you definitely don’t want to hurt yourself. It’s not because I’m worried about me getting hurt, but on my first movie, I hyper-extended my shoulder during a fight scene and it held up production. I had to go to the hospital and I was in tears because I was so embarrassed that I screwed up production. Come to find out it was literally the last take and they ended up wrapping, so it was fine. But you never wanna let somebody down, so I try to keep it together when I’m doing it.

The Afterparty is available to stream at Apple TV+.