“Joel’s relationship to Choir Practice happening inside his church is what he’s struggling with,” says Hannah Bos, who co-created the series with her long-time collaborator Paul Thureen.
He calls it that because he hosts the party in his church, and he doesn’t want his pastor to know what he’s actually doing when he signs out the room. He’s so out, in fact, that he hosts a regular event called Choir Practice, where anyone from his local Kansas community can sing, perform, or let their freak flag fly.īut the name “Choir Practice” points to Joel’s secret. When we meet Joel (Jeff Hiller) in the HBO show's pilot episode, he’s already out of the closet. It’s a little rare.” (Everett cracks that she just wanted extra time in her trailer.There’s a coming out scene in the first season finale of Somebody Somewhere, but it doesn’t involve being gay. “That says so much about Bridget,” Hiller says, “that she would be generous enough to let me and Murray and Mary Catherine and Mike and everybody shine also. In Hiller’s hands, that person is fully fleshed out. “When I read this character, I was like, Oh, the queer person who’s still a member of a faith community, who didn’t leave their hometown - I completely know that person, I’m friends with that person from college, I love that person, I respect that person, and I’ve never seen that person on TV,” he says. Hiller taps into his own upbringing in Texas and jokes that his theology/theater double major has finally come in handy. “I’m usually the person who’s telling the main character, ‘No, you don’t have a reservation,” he says. The series is a stealth musical, with songs sprinkled naturally throughout daily life, as well as at Choir Practice.įor Hiller, the role of Joel is a departure from the unfriendly customer service representatives that he played for years. So as we developed the first season, we kept trying to make it very personal, because it felt like that’s the most organic and best way for me to deliver an honest portrayal.” She also gets to show off her pipes, and they are mighty. “The best luck I have when I perform is when I tell something that’s true to me.
“Cabaret is not cool, but you do learn how to tell a story,” she says. Her cabaret experience came in handy as well. “I just thought, ‘I’ll get in the scene and talk to the other person and hope for the best.’ The thing that was so special about doing this show was that we were all kind of in similar places in our careers, and none of us are big stars, so I just felt like I was talking to friends.” “I honestly didn’t know what I was doing the entire time,” she says. In “Somebody,” as funny as she is, she also mines more tender territory. As Joel invites her into his world, and a little underground performance space known as Choir Practice, he lures her back to herself - with decidedly zero romantic intentions.Įverett, also an executive producer on the series, is perhaps best known to New York fans for her ribald cabaret acts. We find Sam sitting in grief and disconnection, at a miserable job with miserable lighting, when she encounters Joel (Jeff Hiller), a tall drink of wry kindness. Sam had come back to care for her sick sister Holly, who died six months before the show begins. The comedy-drama’s setting is Manhattan, Kan., Everett’s hometown. That starts with Bridget Everett, a comedian not previously known for her dramatic chops, and creators Hannah Bos and Paul Thureen (“High Maintenance”), who wrote the role of Sam based loosely on Everett. But in masterful hands - from the creators to the cast - HBO’s “Somebody Somewhere” becomes something entirely different. A woman returns to her provincial hometown and her dysfunctional family and feels like she doesn’t belong, until new love helps her find her voice.