Hurt people hurt people. Cursed people take hurt to a whole new level. Such pain is on full display in The Curse, the Showtime drama series from creators and stars Nathan Fielder and Benny Safdie, with Oscar winner Emma Stone rounding out the core trio.
The Curse centers on Fielder and Stone as Asher and Whitney, a married couple in Española, New Mexico. The series follows the pair as they team with filmmaker Dougie (Safdie) to turn their home renovation business into a home renovation reality TV series. It’s an increasingly difficult prospect as Asher suffers the consequences of a curse put upon him by a girl selling candy in a parking lot — leading to casino heists, cherry tomato turmoil and other forms of unbearable (and unbearably funny) drama.
Trading on the high anxiety prevalent in the separate work of both Safdie and Fielder, The Curse is much more than Uncut Gems meets The Rehearsal. And yet, that’s a fair shorthand for what to expect tonally: a deeply uncomfortable examination of broken people that somehow feels entirely impossible and altogether too real. THR spoke with Safdie about how The Curse came to haunt TV this season.
What were your first conversations with Nathan Fielder like?
We were out to dinner, and it came up that when he first moved to L.A., he was going to buy a new cellphone. On his way there, a person asked him for some change. He said, “Sorry, I don’t have anything.” The person looked at him and said, “I curse you.” He just laughed it off and went to get the new phone, but as he was at the store, he thought, “I don’t need that in my life.” So he went to an ATM, took out 20 dollars, brought it back to the person and asked, “So is the curse lifted?” She said yes. But I asked him, “Well, if you had sprained your ankle on the way into the store, was that because of her?” You’d never know! For the rest of your life, you would be kind of screwed. That’s where it started — there was an idea here.
Where did the idea for the home improvement series come from?
I’d been going to the OB-GYN with my wife while she was pregnant, and the only thing playing on television was HGTV. I’m in this fluorescent-lit box with no windows watching House Hunters. I got deeper into it, watching more HGTV, and there’s this slogan: “If you don’t like your neighborhood, change it.” I couldn’t believe it. What is all this stuff doing to society? We researched these series and saw all this drama that’s never addressed in the actual shows, but does exist. What are the people’s problems? What are their lives like? That opened up everything.
How did the Española setting in New Mexico affect the series?
We wanted it to be as realistic as possible. We only wanted to cast people from the neighborhood. We wanted the real place to be in the show with us, so there would be a dialogue between us. When you speak to somebody about what they want, the issues they have [in their communities], they feel more comfortable being in the show, because they feel heard, and their acting is better. Everything is compounded when you’re all working together. It meant we could add and change things all the time throughout the scripts. For example, we’re doing location scouting, I see a guy renovating his house — the perfect location — and he tells us he knows this person [for casting].
You took a home improvement TV series approach to your TV series about a home improvement TV series.
Yeah! (Laughs.) Even though everything is fiction, of course. Everything is scripted. But by treating it as we did, and by being open with everybody in the community, everybody wanted to be a part of it and everyone wanted to tell their side of it. The cashier in episode one actually worked at that place. We literally were just including everybody, and all of a sudden, you had a portrait of the place, as well. That’s something that doesn’t happen when you watch [home improvement shows]. You never learn anything about the neighborhood. Now, you get that view of the neighborhood in addition to the show. It completely changes how you process the information.
Helping you to commit to the reality are the stars of your series, including yourself, Fielder and Emma Stone.
I texted [Stone] the other day that she created such an incredible, realistic fake person. Every minor movement of her face is so perfect. I watched her in awe. There were all these conversations about Whitney and who she is, and how does she deal with her privilege? Is she afraid of it, or is she running away from it? All of these questions were very important. Once you delve into the psychology of people, it really tells you what and how they’ll react in any situation. With Nathan, I always knew he had this inside him. There’s no way he could do Nathan for You or The Rehearsal without having a certain level of self-control and instincts for how to react in a specific moment. We always pushed each other to be the best that we could be. There’s a specific moment coming up where Nathan and I really get in it, and it was a very meta experience, where there were things that I knew about Nathan and he knew about me that could really push each other’s buttons. It was an amazing way to work together.
Is the titular curse real, or is it just in Asher’s mind?
My question to you is: If the end result is the same, does it matter? At the end of the day, it’s still the same thing. The idea that something is happening, whether it’s because of the curse or not … These characters are doing some things in this world that would very easily elicit these kinds of reactions anyway. A lot of this might be their own psyches. But maybe not. And what is the curse, right? That’s what you’re supposed to figure out.
This story first appeared in a December standalone issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.
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