Talking Hedgehogs, Robots, Karaoke, And Season 4 With The Cast Of ‘Mozart In The Jungle’

Similar to classical music itself, Amazon’s Mozart in the Jungle has proven to be consistent and uplifting, and when necessary, soothing and exciting, for four seasons now. The latest premieres today on Prime Video. We rejoin our musical pals as Hailey (Lola Kirke) and Rodrigo (Gael Garcia Bernal) are setting into their relationship, with Hailey reconnecting with her past while she pursues her dreams of conducting, and Rodrigo… at a loss for inspiration. Thomas (Malcolm McDowell) and Gloria (Bernadette Peters) are also feeling the push and pull of their personal and professional relationship, and the show travels to Japan to confront both the fine pairing and frustrating peeves of music colliding with technology.

There’s a noticeable ease to season four, where the characters’ ambition is matched with introspection, before the flat-out hustle of the classical music world comes into play. And sure, it’s a world which remains classy, but at this point in the show, there’s also a comfortability with the politics and the personal behaviors of this universe. The characters chase dreams and work hard, but it doesn’t leave viewers feeling stressed out or tense. Binge-watching Mozart in the Jungle can be a luxury: there’s no urgency at hand, and it feels as though the show wants you to be cozy and take your time and savor the elements presented on-screen. This has perhaps never been truer than of the time they spend in Japan this season.

Decider spoke with stars Kirke, McDowell, and executive producers Will Graham and Paul Weitz about the non-human co-stars they lined up in Japan (you’ll see), why there are so few female conductors, and the decision to incorporate dance into this season.

“This season is really about creative relationships both for Rodrigo and Hailey and for Gloria and Thomas. What we were interested in was a more intimate kind of storytelling,” Graham explained. “It’s always been a love story triangulating on music and whatever in music is irreducible, no matter how insane these people are,” Weitz offered. “What they share is that they believe it is worth devoting yourself to music.”

While the season was filmed before the #MeToo movement came to be, there is still a very girl power vibe present, as Hailey both pursues her incredibly male-dominated ambitions and interacts with fellow females in the classical world. “It felt like a really great progression and a way to examine the sort of disparity in the number of women who are leading orchestras than men which is really insane,” Weitz explained of Kirke’s storyline. Graham also chimed in, “Somebody told us actually it’s on a similar trajectory to the priesthood, which is so crazy because you think of the arts as this progressive space. Part of the story that we were trying to tell is someone who’s come up in that world, and now is starting to imagine herself as a leader.”

Kirke, who is also a musician in real life, noted that the show has given her a “certain confidence” and has encouraged her to become “more emboldened to speak up.” It’s likely that she’s also been inspired by “the most amazing female conducting coach,” in Eimear Noone. “She is Irish but she lives in Malibu, and she goes all over the world,” Kirke gushed of her accomplished friend. “She composes for video game scores and she has the most beautiful waist-length blonde hair so whenever she conducts it sways and whips with her. She’s [also] a mother, and something that I thought was so gorgeous was she was very committed to this very particular part of her job. She really wanted women conductors to be represented right and she was so encouraging to me. We would do these Skype sessions where she would be sitting up with her young son on her lap because she didn’t have child care that night and she would be teaching me, and I think that’s really not something that you see. Motherhood has always been something that takes away from a woman’s [ability] to be successful. You don’t really have paid maternity leave, or we are trying to, it’s not really supported. And I loved sitting with this woman artist and watching her be a mother and an incredible artist and a mother at the same time. A lot of these old rock albums [she mentioned Paul McCartney’s Ram, Norman Greenbaum, and Richard Brautigan], a lot of men put their wife and their baby on the cover of their record. They did this a lot in the 70s because it would show that they waned of their cocaine addiction and they were settling down in the country somewhere. And you never see a woman put her baby on the cover of her fucking record because it would mean she wouldn’t get a job. So I think that there’s a way in which being a woman can obviously be difficult and be a challenge to your success and field.”

So while Hailey pursues her dream this season, Rodrigo is spending a lot of sleepless nights trying to figure out what’s next for him. “He’s had this massive success but all the responsibilities are making him feel like he’s lost touch with what’s made him want to do it in the first place. And the only thing he’s excited about is being Hailey’s boyfriend and supporting her as she takes this step. Is she going to be able to separate herself from him on a career level without separating herself from him romantically? That was a really interesting question for the romantic aspect of the show,” Weitz said of Mozart’s central relationship.

McDowell also explained of his character’s relationship to Rodrigo this season, “After loathing Rodrigo, [Thomas has] come to love him. He realizes that he’s the real deal. From sticking a knife in his back, he’s now protecting his back.” And it should also be noted that McDowell is having a lot of fun dong so. “It’s a magnificent role, Thomas Pembridge is, such a dichotomy of everything and very unpredictable. Just when you think you have a beat on him, he does a 180, and that’s just the way he is. I think from season one to season four, the journey for all of us has been immense and especially for old Tom because you know he’s had humiliating time. He’s [been] this prodigy and this maestro that everyone’s brown-nosed. And I think honestly that he’s probably believing if enough people call you maestro I guess you must feel special which is a nonsense of course. You’re the only person on the stage that doesn’t actually make a sound which is sort of weird.” Less weird and more fun is how freely and funnily McDowell unleashes a few extra f-bombs throughout this season. “Oh yeah, they’re probably not written but I like the fact that it’s supposed to be the rarefied classic music, the snobbishness, and having this conductor who says ‘Fuck this!’ or ‘Fuck that!’, and that to me, that’s funny. And real. And that’s why I’ll stick a few in as it takes me.”

Season three orchestrated beautiful episodes around the show’s journey to Venice, and this year the show took its cast to Japan — but discussing one scene really made McDowell perk up. “The hedgehogs!” he exclaimed as he sat up from his seat on the couch, confirming they were just as adorable as they look on screen. “They had a little otter outside as well in a pen,” he shared of the hedgehog café viewers will see in the second half of the season. “It’s really weird. Only the Japanese would come up with something like that. But it is soothing. I think they live such hectic, crazed lives,” he mused. “We were like, ‘What?!’ We couldn’t believe it when they came up with it. I think Will found it.”

“I actually lived in Japan for a couple of years when I was right out of college so it was incredibly fun to be back and to make something there,” Graham said. “Will speaks Japanese and it was always interesting to see people flip out when he could actually understand what they were saying,” Weitz added.

Kirke was sure to take in all the Asian country had to offer as well, traveling around for about three weeks after they were done shooting. Not that she didn’t have fun while they were in production, too. “One of the highlights for me was Malcolm has three amazing sons and he brought the eldest of the sons who’s thirteen but sounds like Otis Redding as a singer already, he’s ridiculous. And we did quite a bit of karaoke at the very famous Japanese karaoke places. There’s one where it’s a full band and they just have sheet music for Beatles songs and 80s pop songs and all sorts of stuff. So I did a lot of that.” Little did the singer/actress know, she’d have some stiff competition. “I kept going up after the thirteen year-old, who would slay me. The only other person who was at the bar was [this] thirteen year-old, a Japanese boy with his mother and would sing ‘My Heart Will Go On’ by Celine Dion and other 90s hits. But he actually sounded like Celine Dion.”

Of course while the actors would play, the producers would be…getting permission to film the show. “At first it seemed terrifying because every time we wanted to do something, the production team was like, you may not be able to do this and that,” Weitz said of the logistics. “Then when we got there it was ridiculously easy. We were able to take out a camera with the actors in the middle of Shibuya Crossing. But it was fantastic and also it allowed us to expand the musical palette as well.”

Plus, there really is no better location for classical music than Tokyo. “In some ways, western classical music is more alive in Japan than it is other places in the world,” Graham offered. “There’s like nine orchestras in Tokyo as opposed to at most two in any other major city. Just the idea that this place was like a mecca in a way was just interesting and really fun.”

Oh, but that wasn’t the only fun Graham was having. As the show explores the crossroads of music and technology, Rodrigo is introduced to a conducting prodigy in the form of…WAM the robot, short for Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, naturally, and voiced by none other than Graham himself. “I was behind a weird screen. It was one of the calmest times I’ve had on set because I was in a little room by myself next to set,” Graham explained.

As far as the inspiration for the newest cast member, Weitz said, “There was some sort of pseudo-robot that conducted recently, we were sending each other links to the article as we were working on it. I think one of the questions that are attached to the question ‘Is classical music dead’ is ‘Is classical music purely math?’ And if so, is it possible that an AI will be better at it and conducting it and eventually performing it and maybe listening to it one day than humans? [Rodrigo] has to introduce his robot and it seemed like the most distressing thing for him to have to do was to give the baton to a robot.”

Kirke, meanwhile, was dealing with a distressing decision she made for herself. Episode eight, “Ichi Go Ichi E” is an incredibly beautiful, intricate episode that revolves around Hailey and Rodrigo’s trip to a tea house, complete with many complex physical and emotional layers. “We shot that episode for so long,” Kirke sighed, explaining that everything in the tea room was shot there in Japan, with the rest of the scenes shot on a sound stage in Purchase, New York. “But I made the mistake of choosing to sit Japanese style where you sit on your legs because I thought that it would make me look more elegant. It was the worst. After like two seconds of doing that, I shit you not, two seconds, I was then fucked because of continuity.”

So even though Japan’s got the robots and hedgehogs and tea, there’s still plenty taking place in New York City for Mozart in the Jungle — including the exploration of dance for Rodrigo. Weitz credits Bernal with the suggestion to include the art form this season, and said, “I think it was Gael, he’s always come up with weird stuff like, why don’t we do opera, why don’t we do dance. I think the idea of him being a novice at something was really appealing and also the idea of him lighting a flame to his career was interesting.”

“It’s a totally new way for him to understand himself as a creative person, which he’s kind of craving because he’s worried he’s turning into stone, but it plays on something that I think we always come back to with this character, which is this tension between artistic freedom and ego and how easily that can lead you astray,” Graham added.

Viewers will experience Rodrigo conducting, dancing, lounging, and even waiting tables throughout the season — but will we see more after this season? Amazon’s been quite picky with handing out renewals for their original shows lately, and while the EP’s are unsure, they’re hopeful. “We don’t know yet, we hope so,” Weitz admitted. “The more people who watch this the more likely. But it’s a lovely show to do.” Graham echoed that sentiment, and pointed out, “I think we’re lucky to make a show about something that has hundreds of years of history and amazing characters and is really about the whole world and creativity and I think we’ve got a bunch more stories to tell.”

Where to watch Mozart In The Jungle