‘Only Murders in the Building’ Boss on the Season 4 Killer, the One Star He Can’t Write Off and What Comes Next

[This story includes major spoilers from the Only Murders in the Building season four finale.]

Only Murders in the Building fans got a lot of answers to lingering questions in the season four finale. Is Loretta in danger? Who’s the next victim? And, why would Marshall P. Pope kill Sazz?

The final episode of the Emmy-winning series’ fourth whodunnit, now streaming on Hulu, began with Charles (Steve Martin) and Oliver (Martin Short) wondering why they haven’t heard back from Mabel (Selena Gomez) since texting her that screenwriter Marshall P. Pope (Jin Ha) was Sazz’s (Jane Lynch) protégé. Meanwhile, Oliver is worried that Loretta (Meryl Streep) will be their next victim, and Mabel is stuck in her apartment with none other than the murderer of this season, Marshall P. Pope, whose real name is Rex Bailey.

“Call the police or come anywhere near her door and I’ll kill her,” a text from Mabel’s phone to Charles reads. When the men look out their window, they see their friend trapped across the building with Marshall/Rex. When Mabel puts it all together — that Marshall/Rex is the serial killer they’ve been dealing with all season — she tries to find a way to buy time. So she gives him notes on his script, of which every draft is worse than the last, according to Molly Shannon’s Bev earlier in the season.

With some help from the Westies (played by Richard Kind and Kumail Nanjiani), Charles and Oliver make their way to Mabel, after walking along part of the ledge of the Arconia. Once there, the trio finds themselves in an enclosed space with a murderer who has no shame and can, quite literally, jump circles around them.

Marshall explains to them that he wanted to be a screenwriter, but had always struggled to write something good. When Sazz showed him her script for Only Murders in the Building, he immediately realized it was very good and claimed it as his own. After Sazz confronted him about it, he decided to kill her and keep it for himself. After shooting Sazz through the window, Marshall recalled that he could tell she hadn’t died, so he walked along the ledge to the apartment across the way, waited as she took her last breath and then threw her down the trash chute.

Back in Mabel’s apartment, it’s not long before the former stuntman gets the upper hand on the trio, but just as he’s about to kill them all, he gets shot by none other than Jan (Amy Ryan) from across the way in Charles’ apartment. The final moments of the Only Murders in the Building season four then see Oliver and Loretta tie the knot, as a mysterious woman played by Téa Leoni asks for the trio’s help finding her missing husband and Lester (Teddy Coluca), the Arconia doorman, becomes the season five victim.

“There are connections to be made with the very last beat of this season and that storyline, and I’m excited to go in that direction that feels particularly New York in certain ways,” showrunner John Hoffman tells The Hollywood Reporter about the next season, which was announced last month. In the chat below, the Only Murders co-creator also unpacks the Meryl Streep-Melissa McCarthy fight scene in episode seven, having to turn away actors who wanted to guest star in the season and how they decided on their next victim.

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I want to start with Jan (Amy Ryan) shooting Marshall (Jin Ha). Talk to me about that decision.

There are some decisions and some moments that happen that I get so excited about when it’s conceived and when it’s pulled off in a way that I wasn’t expecting. It just makes my complete year, frankly, and that’s a moment that I was so thrilled with. We were shooting, and Amy Ryan was there in that odd outfit she’s wearing, like stolen from some other tenant. She snuck in and grabbed some teacher’s best dress or something . I was like, “What’s she wearing?” And then when she did her little salute with that wink and smile, I wasn’t prepared for that. That was all Amy Ryan. So I was like, “Well, that’s the greatest thing I’ve ever seen.” I couldn’t believe she did it. And it was perfect for Jan. It’s the perfect button on that insane moment. But I genuinely was like, “Oh, wait a minute. Shouldn’t we get other takes without that just in case that seems too much? But then the more I saw it, I just said, “No, that has to be what we’re doing, and we’re not getting any other options.”

It was so funny and unexpected. When she’s being escorted out by the cops for killing someone else, she tells Charles that they’re endgame. Do you actually believe that?

Well, I think she does, which makes her deeply threatening, I know, but I do like Amy and the character so much in its madness and what she can do. So all of those things make me think like, “Well, I don’t ever want to quit her.” So why should Charles, at this moment?

Let’s talk about the murderer. I was fully thrown off by the reveal. How did you decide on Marshall?

It makes me so happy to hear that it worked for you that way. I get so palpitating about these things. It’s a balancing act, because some people are all over it, and they are looking straight at that person, and you never can tell who’s got what in their minds, and whether anyone will feel, “Oh, well, I knew this was coming,” or something like that. Everyone’s going have different reactions. The big surprise reaction makes me so happy.

That was decided very, very early on. When we start in the writers room, we really do have to figure out everything about what happened, and then start obfuscating and start hiding and twisting our way there. But seeding it along in a way where things feel true to the thing that actually happened, which we can’t reveal till the end. Like that tragic story around Sazz’s backstory with Rex, her sort of mentee-gone-wrong. I love Sazz so much, because, she has this big blow-up with him in episode nine about what he did on the set for Project Ronkonkoma, and still gives him a shot and wants to help him with his screenwriting dreams. With our victims and our culprits, we try to land a backstory for each of them that’s of human understanding, not forgiving anybody. This was the first time we ever took one of our killers out, but in many ways, due to the victim and due to what he had done, he was deeply deserving, I’m sorry to say.

You mention it was decided early on. How many options do you talk through?

We look for overarching thoughts about the season and knowing that we were heading towards this movie in the making, that we have a stunt double of Charles, we knew there was a close connection. But it is a stunt double. We talk a lot about the reflections throughout the season that our trio is going through, looking at their doppelganger trios, all that stuff. But more importantly, Sazz and Charles worked in the film and television industry. So that backstory for Sazz, when we started looking at her life, who would want to kill Sazz? While the set-up, for sure, of season four was, who would want to kill Charles and accidentally got Sazz?

So, there were all those twists involved. But once we decided, “No, someone was actually after Sazz,” then what could have happened to line up this idea of the apartment across the way, and who would be able to do that? All of those things have to be sorted out in great detail before you start writing episode one, and you know you’re not going to get to any of that until episode 10. I found it to be in line with her character. Who are the other relationships she’s had? She’s a deeply loyal woman, clearly through her relationship with Charles, which we’ve shown. She thinks the best of everybody and wants to help carry on the legacy that her father gave her for stunt people and build a trampoline park in Jersey. These are her dreams. So, I think the idea of doing all of that is a heartbreaker, and when you reach out to a person who’s deeply damaged, and you try to help, sometimes you get caught in the crossfire, as we do here.

The audience finds out about Marshall/Rex in the penultimate episode when Oliver and Charles track down Ron Howard, who was the director on Project Ronkonkoma.

And lots of other ones. (Laughs)

How did you decide on Ron Howard? I mean, why not Ron Howard, but also, why Ron Howard?

Ron is very good friends — and has been for a long time — with Steve and Marty. And I have loved Ron’s work for years. I happen to be working with Ron and Brian Grazer on a project they’re producing that I’m working on as well. So all of that lined up to: Where is Ron? Is there any world where he’s free and available to do this? And of course, the answer was, “No, he’s not at all. He can’t do any can’t do any of that.” This is like, “What are you crazy? He can’t come in and shoot a TV show. He’s not going to be available.” And then one phone conversation with Ron, he’s like, “I need to move things around. I’ve got to do that.” The greatest guy ever. We thought maybe we could get a day with him, and he gave us the two we were really needing. So, he’s just the greatest.

What were the conversations with him like about the part?

It’s always the dance. We have a lot of actors on the show who play themselves. He’s played himself a fair amount in various things, and more recently, in something I won’t spoil. So, it was more of a conversation about, “What are you thinking for me here? I don’t want to step over people, or have you looking one way or the other that way?” So it was very kind. And I love the other thing he’s doing. I was like, “Oh, I think we’re completely in a different direction.” And he agreed. So that helped a lot.

Last year when we spoke, the news broke during our conversation that you had been renewed for a new season. This year, we got a little more of a heads up. How did you decide on Lester as the next victim?

Oh, that’s a biggie. Many factors go into that decision, I will say, and that’s because it springs forth so many ideas about what the season wants to look at, what parts of the terrain of New York, or our trio’s lives, or the building’s life, do we want to e delve into that we haven’t gone towards before? We also very much like the connection of someone we know. It’s terrible in many ways, but many surprises yet to come around that decision. Of course, Teddy Coluca is a fantastic actor who’s been with us from season one, and I love him so much.

I, of course, meant to call him and tell him this news and have a conversation, and check in with him about it before sending him the script. And that was something I missed an opportunity for. So, I saw him in the hallway the day after he’d read the script, and I think he said he burst out crying. So I was like, “Teddy no! No, no, I love you.” I said, “As is the case with Jane Lynch, who I adore, our victims live on in very significant ways and have more work to do and many times are visible still in ghost-form or whatever in our show.” So, there’s no way he’s getting out of that building. But, as a victim, that was a potent choice, I think. It’s a surprise at the end, I know, and hopefully, it tees up very interesting twists to come in season five.

As per usual. Sazz’s final words were about Charles, and that warmed my heart. Did you always know what you wanted her final words to be?

I think that happened in the midst of developing the scripts. Episode two was very potent. Kristin Newman wrote a beautiful episode called “Gates of Heaven” that dealt really specifically with Sazz and Charles’ relationship in ways that we hadn’t really seen. It’s a great visual joke. It’s a delight to watch the two of them interact and mirror each other and all of those things. But when we got a little deeper with them, and when we started looking into stunt artists and their relationships with the people that they work with most intimatel over years, that idea of an actor being a stunt person’s number one — he’s my number one — it gets me choked up even thinking about that being her last words. Once I heard it, and knowing once we also landed on what she was writing on the floor, then it all connected that it would compel a story to her friend to say, “I believe in you again, still and always.” In that moment, it felt very potent to tell directly to her killer as her last words.

Mabel says at one point that Sazz essentially wrote a love letter to Charles with the movie script. This season was kind of a love letter to Sazz as well as to stunt doubles. What was it like telling her story — I know you were really excited about that last year — and this story of stunt doubles as a whole?

There’s the love letter personally between Sazz and Charles in the form of this movie. I think the inspiration for her to see the reinvention he had done for his own life, through podcasting with these crazy two people that he found in his building, really inspired her to say: “I don’t have to just keep pummeling my osteoporosis all the rest of my life. I can try something. I don’t know if it’ll work, but I’ll try something.” But using her greatest inspiration to do that, penning a love letter and film.

There was the stunt double world that, when you get really into all of that research on stunt doubles and the slang between them. In episode four, we go to that stunt person’s bar, and we hear about, “You’re just a face,” and the idea that a stunt double can be burned by exposing their own face — burned, meaning you can’t use them in other shots, because now you know that’s the stunt person. It’s a wild process, so much work and effort, so much that’s unsung, that they’re behind the scenes in every way, and everyone else is taking credit for their work. It’s incredible to me, the depth of those sorts of ethics behind how they work, risking life and limb for everybody else.

I wanted to honor that. Clearly, the whole season is a love letter to film and the cinema. Much in the way that we covered a lot of different territories regarding theater last season, this was a season of film in all of its aspects — sometimes homaging movies while we were in the middle of an episode; sometimes the entire episode carrying a spirit of one; literally film in itself being used; and then going into the backstage crew worlds here in episode nine; and watching Sazz at work for the first time, really, and seeing that at the top of [the finale] as well. All of that felt really exciting to honor.

That was one of my questions. It felt like every episode had a different era of movies in the undertones of it.

We were very conscious of that. I always say, “Each episode, I want to hold in my hand and say, ‘What is this one? What is it story we’re telling? What is this one that feels memorable?'” If you were just to say, “No, that was the one where blah, blah, blah,” and then someone goes, “Oh, yeah, that one.” That’s always nice to do. That’s how I feel about films. A lot of people have encyclopedic memories for films; I do not. But there are certain ones that if you describe it, I’m like, “Oh well, that’s the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen.” “That’s the most thrilling moment I’ve ever had in a theater.” “That’s the part I laughed at.” I’ve never laughed so hard in a theater in my life, as Young Frankenstein during “Putting on the Ritz.” That kind of thing.

In the final few minutes when it hadn’t yet been revealed who the new victim would be for season five, I was very stressed and worried it would be Loretta (Meryl Streep). Talk to me about that decision.

We imagined you, for sure. We all felt that way too. It was like, “Oh, the audience is going to be seeing this one.” And so when Oliver, right up top is talking, “Now, why would you say that? Loretta’s just on her way now for my wedding, of course, we’re going to kill her. That’s just so us.” (Laughs) I wanted to hold that, but I also knew, unavoidably, it would just be there. So there are certain things I just can’t do, and one of those things I can’t do is kill Meryl Streep. Granted, she has many other things she will be doing and should be doing, and yet, every time we even begin to have a discussion about anything like that, or her ending her time with us, I say, “Stop talking. I can’t talk about this.” I can’t promise that might be true, forever, but for this season.

Loretta is actually headed to New Zealand at the end of this season. Was that to give Streep an out if she wanted to do other things, but still have her in the storyline? Or was it more just to explore her on the other side of the world?

There are a lot of reasons. I’ll cop to that for sure, but I think, ultimately, I delighted in it, and we said yes to it because it felt like a funny, believable thing now. If you’re working in TV and film, again, it’s a little bit of a tweaking joke to the industry that overseas is cheaper, or overseas makes sense, or overseas is fresher. Things are happening like that all the time around productions that are either just getting going or are making a move, or whatever they can do to hold on to things and keep the costs down. So a little bit of that wink was a part of that decision. But also, I think that’s a beautiful scene, because I just love the two of them together, Marty and Meryl and Oliver and Loretta dancing and talking and Loretta realizing, “I don’t know how I do this. I don’t know how I take you away from this.” All that felt really sweet, and the whole idea of an unconventional relationship, and her sensing, “You’re going to come to New Zealand and this could very well be the end of this beautiful marriage,” and knowing that about him, and like, “Let’s roll with this.” It’s a beautifully sweet, heartbreaking scene, I think, and adult, very adult, to make a call like that.

Meryl Streep and Melissa McCarthy have a fight in episode seven.

Do they? I know there was one push. I’m not sure it went beyond that. Did it go beyond that? (Laughs)

What was that like on set? How did Melissa and Meryl react when they read that in the script? Give me a play-by-play.

So, before we started shooting season four, I made a date to talk to Meryl Streep about what she was going to be doing across the season. We knew we had her for three episodes, so we had to be parsing her out. And then she said, “Let’s have dinner with Marty, and we’ll all go out and have fun.” I’m like, “OK, good.” So we sat and had fun, and I said, “At this point, that’s when you have a big fight over Oliver with Melissa McCarthy.” And at that point, at the table at dinner, she raised her hands above her head, so excited, and she said, “I put my money on me.” I was like, “OK, she’s game.” And then when I talked to Melissa about this scene, she said, “I’m going to hang up the phone because I’ve never heard anything better than the sentence ‘I’m going to get the big fight with Meryl Streep.'” So it was like, “OK, we’re good with that.” They all are game.

Then, we got together with our stunt person, Chris Barnes, who had planned with two fantastic stunt women to orchestrate and choreograph and do this amazing fight, and it really was. So, I thought, “Boy, that’s maybe a little too extreme, but let’s see if they’re comfortable with it.” And we played it for rehearsal on set there that night, and Melissa and Meryl both watched it, and they said, “Oh, it’s very good.” “Oh, that’s very funny.” And then they both looked at each other, and they both basically simultaneously said, “Yeah, we kind of want to go way further.” And I was like, “Whaaaaat?” And she said, “Yeah, we kind of want to take it further.” And so like, “OK, let’s take a few minutes and just check.”

Then, when I saw what they were doing, and I’m like, “Meryl, we’re gonna shoot this a bunch of times, you’re flipping over a couch on your head. I can’t watch.” So, that was one of those nights that I just let them have the reins. And I was with the DP and our directors, Shari [Springer Berman] and Bob [Robert Pulcini], who handled this so beautifully. Everyone just jumped in, because everyone could feel how palpably unusual this whole night was going to be with all of the people on set that night, and then watching what was happening, they were unbelievable. And it’s both just throwing themselves in fully. When I could watch, because I was terrified something was going to happen, but when I was watching, I was like, “Look at how there’s the years of experience in both of those women that knew where the camera was,” and it’s a moving camera, someone’s handheld. So little adjustments they were making while still being in it, I could feel them making so we didn’t miss their face. So we didn’t miss the angle. The kick… It was like the biggest pro night ever.

In that same episode, Eva Longoria, Zach Galifianakis and Eugene Levy suggest to Mabel, Oliver and Charles that perhaps this murderer is someone who’s been around since the beginning of the show. While that wasn’t the case in this season, is that something you’d potentially want to explore in future seasons?

It’s been brought up before, and I do think there are some questions that are answered in episode eight around the suspicion about that and the worry that their podcasting caused in season one. But I think there’s plenty [that’s still unanswers]. In our show at the end of season one, the last episode, Mabel is up on the roof toasting with Charles and Oliver, and she says something like, “I still feel like there’s a few loose ends.” There’s no murder mystery that doesn’t have loose ends, and nothing is always tied in a bow. I like those things, so [we’re] leaning in and keeping open many theories we have about those things are alive and well.

Last time when we talked, you mentioned really wanting to bring Paul Rudd back in some capacity, and you did. How did you decide to bring him back as Glenn Stubbins? Also, I just want to note there’s something very ironic and hilarious about bringing Paul Rudd back just to kill him again.

I am fond of killing Paul Rudd, almost as fond as I am of having Paul Rudd be live and kicking in our television show and in life itself. I could not love that man more, and I think his love of the show and the experience and this sort of winking joke around his presence in it makes me so happy. So, who knows where it’s going if it goes anywhere else. But knowing Paul’s penchant for a revolving door joke, a la his clips on Conan O’Brien, that he likes a good, cyclical, circular joke. Then, I can’t take any sort of cards off the table as far as what’s coming next for him. But, yeah, it’s terrible. But it’s exciting also to see Paul go. I have to say this, in episode nine of this season, when we shot his moment in the hospital, we were all just laughing about some of the lines he was saying, and throwing a little improv here and there. And then this happens, and we’re watching it. When you do it, you have to believably do the whole scene, which we fade out of here. Watching the whole scene, it was terrible. He was so great and believable in it. And it was like, “Oh, this is hard to watch.”

When all of the casting announcements were coming out for season four, it was crazy seeing one after the other. How did you land all these major stars, and can we expect to see them again?

It’s kind of a multifold answer there, because the show itself is, once you have this lovely influx of incredible people who say, “I’d like to do that show,” then the world kind of opens up. So Meryl and Paul coming along in season three really changed things for the incoming calls we got for our show. Now, believe it or not, I had to say, “Maybe not this year to a lot of other people,” and I can’t believe it, but that is true. And then more calls have come since. First of all, I’m still a SAG member, and so I want all of the best actors to be working for us, whether they’re brand-name faces or not. If I find a part that feels really right and fun for someone incredible that we get the chance to work with, who wants to do the show, then that’s a gift. So more will come. But I think this season, particularly season four was all, again, built around TV and Hollywood, so it was its own cavalcade of stars. That’s where I went this season, but it might not look exactly the same next season. But still, I hope we can land some beauties.

Part of the teasing for the next season in the final episode seemed to be hinting at some sort of gangster, noir-esque storyline. Am I way off base? What can you say?

I’ll say this. There’s certainly… there are two beats in the end of the season, in episode nine and episode 10, again with the great Téa Leoni, who I love. There are connections to be made with the very last beat of this season and that storyline, and I’m excited to go in that direction that feels particularly New York in certain ways. But also, I’m really excited to explore, what does that look like today? And, what new thing can we say about all of that that will feel both fun and enlightening, and a little bit resonant in ways to actual events around New York and our world today in ways we haven’t done before? That gets me excited.

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Only Murders in the Building season four is now streaming its full season on Hulu.