What’s the opposite of a mistake? That’s what Netflix pulled off Monday night by taking over L.A.’s hottest restaurant, Max & Helen’s on Larchmont Avenue, for an intimate introduction of the streamer’s new crime comedy series Big Mistakes.
A typical wait to snag a table at the neighborhood diner by Nancy Silverton and Phil Rosenthal still stretches well past an hour (if not closer to two) but with Netflix taking over the host stand for the private tastemakers event, influencers, stars and select press glided through the door only to sprint toward a generous spread of Max & Helen standouts on the diner counter. The menu featured grilled cheese, tallow fries, sourdough waffles with maple butter, beef hot dogs, BLTs, cinnamon rolls and Silverton’s famous chocolate chip cookies, some with custom names to match the show’s characters and plot (like Trusted Accomplices, Sweet Regrets and Pour Decisions).
Bites aside, the main attraction was a delicious conversation between creators Dan Levy and Rachel Sennott. But even they acknowledged the feat of grabbing a seat. “Guys, how happy are we that we all finally got in here?” Sennott asked in kicking off the nearly 40-minute chat before praising the waffle while Levy called the grilled cheese one of the best he’s ever had in front of a crowd that included Dylan Efron, Grimes, Kerri Kenney-Silver, Lisa Rinna and Harry Hamlin, Natasha Lyonne, Sarah Levy, Zoe Lister-Jones and others.
Though they shared duties on creating the show, Sennott was tasked with moderating the Q&A and asking Levy about how he pulled off show running, executive producing and starring in the eight episode series, which marks his first under an overall deal with Netflix for his Not a Real Production Company. But Big Mistakes marks his second original scripted series after Schitt’s Creek, the cultural phenomenon that lasted six seasons and won four Emmys at the 2020 ceremony including best comedy series.
Big Mistakes follows Nicky (Levy) and Morgan (Taylor Ortega), two deeply incapable siblings who are in over their heads when a misguided theft for their dying grandmother accidentally pulls them into the world of organized crime. Blackmailed into increasingly dangerous assignments, they clumsily fail upwards, sinking deeper into chaos they’re ill-equipped to handle. Laurie Metcalf, Jack Innanen, Boran Kuzum, Abby Quinn, Elizabeth Perkins, Jacob Gutierrez, Joe Barbara and Mark Ivanir also star.
Sennott used Schitt’s Creek as a jumping off point for her first question by asking Levy how he came up with the idea for a crime caper coming off this “amazing, huge, successful and award-winning show.”
“Well, a lot of time had to pass,” Levy answered. “When the show ended, there was this immediate conversation of, like, ‘What are you doing next?’” Turns out he didn’t love that question, calling it “a horrible way of doing business.
“God forbid I nap,” he quipped. “For me, it was like, I needed to take a minute because I knew what the show meant to me and I knew what it meant to other people. And having a show of your own, you’re so proud of what you make and if you’re lucky enough to get, in our case, six seasons of a TV show, you walk away from that really proud of what you’ve done. To jump into something else, it almost does the new project a disservice because you’re constantly going to be comparing it to the one that came before. So, I needed the dust to settle.”
While that dust settled, Levy wasn’t exactly staring at the wall eating grilled cheese. He kept busy with other projects, creating and hosting the HBO Max series The Big Brunch, acting in projects like The Idol (with Sennott), Sex Education, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Smurfs, Unfrosted and Haunted Mansion. He also wrote, directed and starred in Good Grief, a Netflix film about grief and friendship. But he eventually turned his attention toward creating another comedy series by asking himself a question: What scripts am I not reading?
“Like, he’s gay. He’ll never play in an action movie,” he said of challenging himself to play against stereotypes. “So, I was, like, let’s do action. And let’s make it funny and let’s create a kind of genre that is both funny and thrilling and suspenseful and fun. I have always had a phobia of being blackmailed into organized crime. Don’t ask me why. I think it stems from a fear of being trapped.”
That developed further into an idea involving family dynamics, which he explored to award-winning results in Schitt’s Creek. “Well, why don’t we tell a new family story? And I knew I wanted it to be a brother-sister dynamic and you’re the only person I wanted to work on this with.”
They had formed a bond on HBO’s The Idol — when Levy mentioned the show’s title, Sennott jokingly said, “I remember that” and did not elaborate — despite their brief time together. “We only spent four days together, but I’ve been madly in love with everything you’ve ever done and I respect the hell out of you,” Levy explained. “I remember pitching you the idea and being like … So anyway, I thought like maybe we could collaborate on this and you were like, ‘I’m in.’”
Levy said they spent six months writing Big Mistakes together over Zoom, eventually getting together in person for about five days. They hammered out the pilot during a single day. “We got so much coffee, too, I remember, and I brought my weird granola bars to your house. But I just felt so inspired,” Sennott said. “And then we got towards the end of the day and we started playing music.”
Sennott said she was impressed and inspired by Levy’s influences and his detailed research of small town folk who found themselves blackmailed into organized crime. (She also loved his use of Katy Perry’s “Firework,” which Levy said they miraculously got cleared for use on the show.) To give the show an authenticity, they collaborated with a crime expert. “Having a professional is so helpful,” Sennott said. Levy finished the thought: “Not only did he say, ‘Yeah that’s plausible but here are three other ways this person could die.’ And you’re, like, ‘Well, I didn’t think of that but now that’s on the table.”
What Levy left off the table are bad manners. “The family ensemble is tough, too, because you want the right people for the job and part of it is the gut instinct of, ‘Do I like this person?’ Do I want to spend a long period of time with this person? Are they generous of spirit? Are they able to leave their ego at the door? Are they going to be disruptive on set?’ Even if that person is right for the job, if I get a whiff that they’re going to just make people’s lives a living hell on set, I will not hire the person. It is not worth It.”
It’s clear from the conversation that Levy came to Big Mistakes not wanting to make any of his own.
“I knew I wanted it to feel cinematic. I knew I wanted the score to be really intense and it was really just about tempering performances and making sure that we were earning our laughs and making sure that when the crime hit and the tensions were high and the thrills were there, that we went there,” he said as the conversation wrapped up. “How would you, in the darkest depths of your soul, react to this? Because that’s the greatest connection that the audience will have to this show, hopefully, like, what would I do?”
Find out when Big Mistakes debuts April 9 on Netflix. See more from inside Max & Helen’s on Monday night below.
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