Sex, Aliens, and Vaping: The ‘Now Apocalypse’ Cast Previews Their New Starz Show

“If you want to see my hairy butt, tune in,” Beau Mirchoff joked when asked about the short summary he’s been telling friends and family to describe his new show Now Apocalypse on Starz. Mirchoff stars as Ford, a teddy bear of an aspiring writer in Hollywood, who is just as naive about his desired career as he is about his relationship with Severine, an icy, maybe-robot, played by Roxane Mesquida. Oh wait, I should mention the show is not only created by Gregg Araki, but he’s also responsible for writing and directing all 10 episodes, the first of which premieres this Sunday at 9pm on Starz.

Besides the hairy butt (although it is very much present), what viewers can expect to see in Now Apocalypse is a group of millennials millennialing all over Los Angeles. There’s sex, vaping, aliens, and some more sex. It’s not an easy show to describe, so that Mirchoff decided to intrigue people by mentioning his hairy butt is…well, not that far off. If MTV’s late ’90s risqué scripted series Undressed was blasted onto a premium cable channel in 2019 and took a lot of drugs and signed up for all the hookup apps and also featured the occasional extraterrestrial being, that might give you the beginning of an idea of what this show is.

Now, to some, that’s also going to sound like a nightmare, but there’s something so intriguing about the tone this show achieves, which proudly balances between a satire and celebration of these mysterious creatures known as millennials as they are observed in their natural habitat that is sure to find your curiosity getting the best of you. Even if you’re watching simply because you’ve never seen anything like it or can’t quite believe what you’re watching, you won’t be alone.

Now Apocalypse also stars Kelli Berglund as aspiring actor Carly who makes her money as a webcam girl and Avan Jogia as Ulysses, a vaper who becomes smitten with a mysterious mystery man, Gabriel (Tyler Posey) when he’s not too busy trying to figure out if aliens exist – and if he just laid his eyes on one.

It was a cold NYC morning in early December when I watched the first two episodes of the series sitting in the row behind the cast (minus Berglund who was off shooting the upcoming Fosse/Verdon), and while most of them had already screened the episodes, it would be the first time Jogia was seeing it. “I took a risk seeing it [here for the first time],” he admitted. “This is the best way to do it because of the laughs. If I was at home, it wouldn’t be playing for the laughs. It tows that line of esoteric and introspective and also just going for laughs,” he told me afterwards.

Of course, all of that will make sense for fans of Araki’s work, which certainly includes the members of this cast. For Mesquida, who previously worked with Araki on 2010’s Kaboom, she didn’t even need to see a script to sign up for the project.

“When Gregg sent me the script [for] Kaboom, I was like, I don’t care about your script, I don’t need to read it, I just want to work with you no matter what I have to do,”  she said. “It was the same thing for the show. I told him I wanted to be on the show before reading it. I’m a huge fan of his work, I just want to be a part of it. And I’m lucky because he writes great characters all the time, for everyone.”

While she worried about what it might mean that he wrote the role of Severine with her in mind, noting in her French accent, “I don’t know if it’s a compliment, because she’s not very nice, I would say, so I was like, okay!” Though she did go on to admit that it’s definitely “easier when someone thinks about you,” and in this case likely is a compliment to her acting abilities.

But that doesn’t mean the job was any easier for her. “I had very hard lines to say and you don’t change a single comma with Gregg. It has to be exactly what he wrote. Just saying I’m an astrobiological theorist, it took me so long to learn that.”

However, while other actors typically have a harder time grappling with the more, shall we say, physical (read: naked) scenes, Mesquida completely shrugged them off. “I’m a French actress, it’s not really a problem. I would say as a joke, in France we don’t have money to have special effects so we’re naked and that’s how we can get audiences. I’m joking but it’s kind of true, there is a lot of nudity.”

The same goes for Now Apocalypse, which finds her character initiating a threesome in episode two, for example. But again, NBD for this gal. “I’ve done a lot of nudity. One of my first movies [Fat Girl] was about losing your virginity. Someone told me that I was like, 20 minutes naked in the movie. I can’t believe someone counted. I don’t really have a problem with that.”

When I asked if she had offered her co-stars any advice for these scenes, she laughed, saying, “Oh my god, that would be so pretentious to give advice about it,” but it sounds as though it would be unnecessary anyway. “I think the sex stuff was always a little bit funny,” Jogia offered. “Sex scenes are always really funny to shoot.”

At least, for this show. “There’s no really sultry, terrible, 50 Shades of Grey, super serious, saccharine [sex scenes],” he continued. “All the sex scenes are supposed to be there to serve the story, to observe about sexual relationships. We’re talking about sex on this show so it makes sense to have it.”

Mirchoff agreed, referencing the aforementioned threesome, “Ford having his first threesome, you’re not going to be Mr. Confident, you’re like, ‘I don’t know what I’m doing,’ he’s nervous.”

Mirchoff even experienced his own bout with nerves on the set in the form of giggles, and much to the dismay of the crew. “We had lots of moments where it was very hard to focus because we were laughing so much,” he explained. “There was one where it was really bad. People were actually upset with us.”

“The first three mess-ups everyone’s laughing still, and after seven, eight, it’s like, this is bad,” he recalled, estimating it took at least 20 takes to get the line right.

“Then you’re laughing nervously,” his scene partner in the incident, Mesquida, agreed. “You don’t even want to laugh, you’re just like, ah, this is not funny anymore.”

The same was not true in the screening room earlier that morning. The cast, especially, indulged in a lot of laughter, with Mirchoff noting, “I liked it way more watching it this time. I thought it was a great show.” Jogia’s first impression was similar as he continually gushed to his co-stars, “You guys are so good,” and “I loved it,” and “It’s so funny.” And while Jogia has previously appeared in Nickelodeon’s Victorious, and has the Shaft film and Zombieland sequel on his slate for the year ahead, there sure was something refreshing about seeing his genuine enthusiasm for the finished product of this show, one that much of the cast agrees they knew would be funny when they all gathered together for a five-hour table read. “We read all 10 episodes so we all had a shape of what the show was gonna be,” Jogia told me.

He, more than most of the other cast members, also had reason to be the least surprised by how much he enjoyed the show as he spent the most time interacting with the other performers. “I probably saw the most of everyone because I was jumping around from story to story,” he said, noting that he didn’t get to work with Mesquida that much though. Mirchoff only ran into Berglund “in the makeup trailer a few times.”

“I knew it was always going to have really good flash and visuals because Gregg works well in that,” Jogia said. “It’s really honest. You guys are so good, so funny. I was really touched by all the characters, all the performances and the relationships. You really want everyone to find love in the show. There’s no bad person, there’s no bitchy character.”

Which is quite a feat to pull off, considering they’re portraying such typical Los Angelenos, a stereotype it’s not only easy to mock, but also fun for many to do so. “I definitely recognize the characters,” Jogia said. “I recognize the honesty of, ‘Hey, I’m in LA, I’m just gonna find my tribe and wander around aimlessly.’ And the whole living in the valley, in the sun, and going to Del Taco and getting stoned all day, no job, that’s 90% of the people that live in LA.”

“I smoked that vape a lot, huh?” Jogia realized, to laughs from his co-stars, adding, “It’s very dry.”

So when tasked with providing his own logline for the series Jogia offered up perhaps the best description you’ll hear yet, stating, “It’s about four friends in Los Angeles who are trying to navigate love and the dating scene, and my character Uly is so stoned that he thinks there are aliens in the dating scene — and he might be right.”

Oh, right, the alien! Without giving too much away, yes, there is an alien, and one that was key to making the whole show make sense for its cast. “As soon as we saw [what the alien looked like], the tone of the show made a lot more sense,” Jogia said. “What I love about it is the direct reference to Gregg’s work, even the way the creature’s built. That to me, as a fan of Araki’s movies, I was like, oh cool. I like that we didn’t go realistic CGI alien.”

As Mesquida put it, “He wrote it, it’s his universe, it’s his vision, it’s really him.”

And just as some will be tuning in to see just how much Araki’s vision is really him, others will be tuning in to see if that hairy butt is really Mirchoff, who sums up the show to others by saying, “Theres a lot of skin if you want to see me kinda naked.”

“I did see your hairy butt!” Jogia exclaimed, dismissing Mirchoff’s jokes that he’s actually totally smooth, jokingly claiming, “they put CG in there” with Jogia replying, “Ford has to have bum fluff, we know this.” Well, yeah, after watching Now Apocalypse, we really do.

Where to stream Now Apocalypse