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It is really a show about grief and friendship.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
It is also rife with spoilers.
You and I talkedat the end of season two, which was 500 years ago.Approximately, yeah.
I want to read something that you said to me then and ask you to expand on it now.
This was referring, obviously, to the pandemic.
I just ended up telling it in a different way.
The truth is that Judy was inspired by a dear friend of mine who we lost at 38.
It was almost subliminal in my work of writing the show that I carried her with me.
And then when I thought about how to really properly end it, she came up for me.
It was really about wanting to bring closure and healing to these two characters, Jen and Judy.
If you live long enough to love someone enough, you will experience grief.
Because the truth is season one didnt even end the way that I originally intended it to.
He was right, and Im so glad we did that.
Because we did that, it changed everything I thought season two was going to be.
I knew that from the very beginning.
That is all very deliberate.
I knew that I didnt want to go fullBeaches.
So thats what I was going for, but also, this isDead to Me.
So did she die?
Jen seems to feel certain that she did die.
She doesnt seem to have any doubt about it.
Obviously, Judy sailing off on the boat echoes what she says happened to her uncle or possible father.
It almost feels to me like shes giving Jen the gift of shes gone, but maybe shes not.
And that will allow Jen to feel Judys presence.This is exactly what I want.
Shes obviously not present.
Ill just say that I very specifically never said that Judy passed.
Nobody talks about her death.
You dont see a funeral.
Because of what we all went through, I didnt need it to be stark.
I really wanted it to be a softer landing.
I wanted it to be more of an ellipsis rather than a period.
When I say entirely out of order, I mean our production started with all of James Marsdens scenes.
Because of all the delays from the pandemic, we were really under the gun in terms of schedules.
We had shot all ten episodes, but only pieces of it by the time Christina received her diagnosis.
I dont think we changed anything.
It remained exactly intact to the original intention.
So Jen getting pregnant was always in the story?Yeah.
We had already come up with Judys story line in terms of her dealing with illness.
And we were thinking,Okay, well, then what is the cosmic balance there?
What is the yin to that yang?
We cant do that.
Then I think about it for a little bit, and then I cant stop thinking about it.
So much of Judys fertility struggle comes from my own life.
It was actually the day after my 40th birthday, my cousin had passed away on my birthday.
The day after, my best friend was like,Im pregnant.
And I was like,Thats amazing.
But I truly did that.
I put on this happy facade ofThats amazing, because I really was happy for her.
I was really happy for her and I love that child with my whole being.
Obviously that was many years ago, and a lot can happen in five years.
And in fact, I now have a 1-month-old.
Oh, congratulations!Thank you.
So closure can come in many forms.
From the moment Ben and Jen become a romantic partnership, that is weird for Judy too.
Just the fact that shes looking at the same face but that person is now with her best friend.
These are the things that are really fun to write.
In some ways, its heightened.
Maybe there are more layers of dramatic irony than life sometimes has, but not always.
It was more than a real possibility.
Christina and I are very close and we are a real creative partnership.
I was like,You dont need to do this for me.
We have two beautiful seasons of television Im really proud of and if thats it, wonderful.
I just cared about her first and foremost as a human being.Lets not think about this as work.
Its a TV show.
This is your life.
It was all Christina, and Im very grateful.
If youve lived long enough, you know somebody who had cancer.
Cancer hit really close to home for a lot of different people on the show.
My own mother was diagnosed with cancer during the production of season three.
Okay, Im going to just describe one week to you.
Oh my God.Literally she got the keys on a Friday, her house burned down on Monday.
Two hours later, I found out my wife was pregnant.
Two days later, my mother was diagnosed with cancer.
Thats just a week in the life of aDead to Mewriter, what can I tell you?
I asked her, What do you wish people knew about?
And she told me about the cold cap.
She was an adviser to me about just how to approach the subject.
I had never heard of a cold cap.
I didnt even know it existed.
I have a few questions about the ending of the show.
But of course we discussed, well, what if Jen does have to pay the price?
What if she is implicated?
What if she does strike a plea?
We went down every single possible road.
It is really a show about grief and friendship, so that always informs the storytelling.
To that point, theres a really beautiful scene where Jen and Judy say good-bye to each other.
It made me cry.
The writing process is very collaborative on a TV show.
We wanted it to have that impact and for it to say a lot without saying a lot.
So much of Jen and Judy is really inspired by our friendship.
We were just standing there at the monitor, arm and arm.
It felt like there was sort of a scene happening on top of a scene.
They are just so in the bones of their characters.
There wasnt one bad take of it.
They just didnt want to say good-bye.
I turn around and every single person on the crew is crying.
It was just beautiful and sad.
It was this incredible culmination of love.
Hopefully thats what youre feeling when youre watching it.
You definitely feel that watching it.
I thought it was significant that Judy leaves Jen her bracelet.
Shes worn that throughout most of the show, and theres a bird on it.
In that episode, Jen says, You left your bracelet here.
Unless it was just an excuse for you to see me again.
And Judy says, Did it work?
I thought about that as we were bringing the show to a close.
Its a way for Jen to keep Judy close.
Jen gets kind of a happy ending, all things considered.
Then at the end of the episode, you do another cliffhanger!
It is a specific tone and we do like to pull the rug out a lot.
For me, I didnt need there to be a happy ending.
This seems like a happy ending.
So I thought,Okay, well, heres a good way to really drive that home.
I really, truly wanted to give the audience closure as much as you could get.
So its not something Im planning on, but Ill just leave that as an ellipsis as well.
