Francesca Delbanco had always had platonic male friends from her teens through her late twenties, and it wasn’t a big deal. They’d hang out together. They’d go on trips to Las Vegas. And it was never a big deal and there was no sexual undercurrent. But that seemed to change almost without Delbanco noticing it after she married Nicholas Stoller, who became not only her spouse but her production partner as well. “My friends started getting married too,” Delbanco recalls. “Suddenly, I was friends with all my guy friends’ wives, and Nick was friends with all of my guy friends, and something was happening that was sort of a gender division akin to when kindergartners all play together and then by the fourth grade they never speak to each other again. There was something strange about it that was mysterious but intense. I no longer went out to dinner with my guy friends, but with their wives. There was suddenly like a rigidity and a hardening of the separation of the genders that I hadn’t anticipated in my own life.”
This phenomenon of platonic friendships morphing as if by osmosis into same-sex hanging didn’t have a name, but Delbanco thought it “would be fun to try to excavate that in a show.” Adds Stoller: “The whole idea becomes more complicated. If you look at the schoolyard, it’s not just the kids that are separated by gender. The dads are talking to the dads and the moms are talking to the moms.” The result of this awareness is the Apple TV+ comedy series “Platonic” starring Seth Rogan and Rose Byrne as former childhood best friends who reconnect as adults and try to get past the rift that led to their falling out years before. We spoke with Delbanco and Stoller – who are the show’s creators and showrunners – as part of our “Meet the Experts” TV Showrunners Panel. Watch the exclusive video interview above.
Delbanco still seems mystified by the idea that there should be an unspoken disapproval about mature men and women having a non-romantic friendship, the perception of a certain inappropriateness. “I feel that I am a feminist and I am enlightened,” she emphasizes, “and I work in a coed environment and I live my life that way. And yet somehow, oftentimes I’ll be at a dinner party, and for some reason the men are all sitting on the couch talking about X, Y and Z, and the women are all in some different huddle. And I don’t really know why.”
The good news is that it gave rise to a hilarious series starring Rogen and Byrne, whom Stoller had directed in “Neighbors” (2014) and “Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising” (2016). He also worked with Byrne while directing 2010’s “Get Him to the Greek” and found her to be “a comedy genius,” Stoller says. “I say she’s like a female Peter Sellers. And then she and Seth had amazing chemistry in both of their movies with me, which is a rare thing that only the great, great comedy duos have.” As Delbanco and Stoller were developing the series, he approached Byrne to portray Sylvia “and I asked her who she wanted to do it with, and she said Seth.”
At the time, Stoller admits he wasn’t certain Rogen was even interested in doing a TV series. “When (he learned) it was us and Rose, he very quickly said, ‘Yeah, I’ll do it’,” Stoller recalls. “Then we pitched it and set it up at Apple and it all went very quickly. And then the pandemic hit.”
The pandemic did eventually end, and “Platonic” was a hit, renewed for a second season. But it wasn’t easy. “It’s really hard,” reasons Delbanco, “because you need to create characters who are real and stories that are real and have you believe and invest in those relationships exactly as much and in the same way as they do a drama. And then you need to have it also be funny. So there’s just an extra onus and it’s really challenging.”
“Platonic” streams on Apple TV+.
PREDICT the 2024 Emmy nominees through July 17
Make your predictions at Gold Derby now. Download our free and easy app for Apple/iPhone devices or Android (Google Play) to compete against legions of other fans plus our experts and editors for best prediction accuracy scores. See our latest prediction champs. Can you top our esteemed leaderboards next? Always remember to keep your predictions updated because they impact our latest racetrack odds, which terrify Hollywood chiefs and stars. Don’t miss the fun. Speak up and share your huffy opinions in our famous forums where 5,000 showbiz leaders lurk every day to track latest awards buzz. Everybody wants to know: What do you think? Who do you predict and why?
SIGN UP for Gold Derby’s free newsletter with latest predictions
