Character Study
Tracing the evolution of our favorite TV characters from script to screen.
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The Character:Alan Zaveri, the similarly time-loop-stuck companion toNatasha Lyonnes Nadia Vulvokov.
Essential Traits:Mannered and tidy, ritualistic and self-defeating, vulnerable and raw.
His loyalty and love are unconditional, but he needs to extend them to himself.
I remember us joking about theOdd Coupleof it all, Lyonne says.
Fred is such a tidy fellow.
Freds glasses are always very clean.
Fred and I are still close and love each other very much; we were together for seven years.
Its a focus, like an album; its not just turning the radio around every five seconds.
That idea was making us laugh.
That partnership historically works so well.
What he brought was such beautiful depth and soulfulness, Lyonne adds.
The material certainly did not change in his casting.
They are foils that push each other really far apart, Barnett says.
I am always pulling her back from the ledge, and shes always pushing me off.
She is that extremity in life we all know so well, and I am the other side.
They were always in tandem.
I related hard-core, he says) and more abstractly a layer of fungus growing deep in the earth.
(That is the largest living organism, and its interconnected throughout oceans.
I think about that and humanity a lot.)
Every script inspired new questions.
you’re gonna wanna take a step back and know that youre good enough.
It became this tug and pull on my heart, Barnett says.
Im not going to lie.
Horse in the season-one finale, Ariadne.
It was a really hard moment because it is so true.
I have tried to commit suicide in my life, and I have been on those ledges.
Natasha pulled me aside and said that.
I know youve been there, and Im not seeing that yet.
The camera can smell the truth, and it feels like the truth of his soul.
And so personalized elements made their way in.
No one has ever noticed, I think.
Thats clearly a connection they had: She designed the game, he appreciated the game.
When you translate inches to centimeters, you lose a little something, Lederman says.
But there was one suggested addition from a Budapest set decorator that Lederman vetoed.
And Alan certainly wouldnt do this amazing croissant display in a basket with some napkins.
This is not our character, but thank you.
It was part of his loop, Pontikos says.
The thing that stayed alive from that story line was Charlie as Clark Gable.
It was very challenging and sort of quite incredible.
It became something else.
The cactus grew a bloom.
