At the end of a stressful day, many people want to come home and watch their favorite sitcom to relax. For showrunner Liz Meriwether, that order of operations has been reversed since she created “New Girl.”
“I was in a comedy room for years with some of the funniest people I’ve ever met. So I was laughing constantly, but stressed out, like stress-laughing for hours,” she explained to TheWrap. “And it was like, ‘What am I going to watch when I come home?’ And then I would just find myself gravitating to usually British, very dark murder shows.”
That’s why when the opportunity to write a show like that came around, Meriwether jumped on it. As a result, “Furious” is now streaming on Hulu — and it’s arguably her darkest project yet.
“Dark can mean a lot of different things. You know, I’m sure there’s some moments in ‘New Girl’ that, looked in a different light, could be really dark,” she joked with a laugh, before agreeing.
“Furious” follows FBI agent Alice Black (Emmy Rossum) as she hunts down a prolific and calculating female serial killer (Lola Petticrew). “Both walk their own paths toward justice, and as their lives start to intertwine, the line between right and wrong begins to blur,” the official synopsis reads.
It may seem like a departure for Meriwether, after writing films like “No Strings Attached,” and creating series like “New Girl,” “Single Parents” and “Bless This Mess.” But to her mind, “Furious” falls squarely into what she’s always been drawn to writing, with a throughline of “complicated, messy female characters that surprise you.”
“I’m interested in — and I think with ‘New Girl,’ it was in the comedic sense — but I’m interested in characters pushed to their breaking point,” Meriwether detailed. “I’m interested in human beings at the edge of their humanity and the dysfunction of that.”
The TV creator is nothing if not consistent. Back in 2010, she noted in an interview that “dysfunctional, codependent relationships always appeal to me.” Even as far back as 2002, when Meriwether was still attending Yale, she told her college newspaper that “I like in-between stuff where you’re not sure whether it’s funny or sad.”
“Wow, what an articulate 19-year-old,” Meriwether joked with a laugh when reminded of that quote.
Nonetheless, she says her teenage self remains correct. It’s part of what brought her to creating “The Dropout” and “Dying for Sex” prior to “Furious” — both of which were decidedly not outright comedies but not outright dramas either, and effectively serve as a bridge to “Furious.”
“I did really enjoy writing ‘Dying for Sex,’ because it felt like this impossible place to find comedy,” Meriwether recalled. “And I liked finding comedy in [‘Furious’] as well, because I think that, to me, it opens you up as an audience member. I think if you’re just getting hammered constantly by drama and pain, it just all starts being white noise.”
“So it’s like, you need those moments of laughter and release to actually listen again, to actually get invested again in what’s happening in the character,” she explained. “So I think it’s really important.”
“Furious” provided the opportunity for Meriwether to take on something new, which she was “honored” to be given the chance to do. But, it was also immediately humbling.
“I sort of naively thought, ‘Well, I’ve watched [crime shows] for years, I can do it,’” she admitted. “And then found myself in the middle of it, being like, ‘Oh wow, these are really hard to do.’”
In an ideal world, Meriwether hopes to see more seasons for “Furious,” bringing her back to the world of ongoing, rather than limited series. It’s a muscle she hasn’t stretched in awhile, and she was immediately reminded of the challenges of making that possible in the story.
“It was like ‘OK, yeah, I have to find an ending where we feel satisfied, but that we can go on,’ ” Meriwether said. “And I remember that being a very challenging thing with ‘New Girl,’ getting to the end of the season and being like, ‘We have to wrap up some things, but not all things. We need to create more problems.’”
“But it’s good. It’s interesting, and I do feel like one of the best things about TV is getting time with characters, and getting years with characters, and being able to dig in,” she continued. “So I’m hoping that we get more seasons of [‘Furious’]. And as a huge fan of SVU, I feel like this show kind of exists in that world of like, there’s other cases they can tackle.”
Of course, in the age of reboots, revivals and sequel series, many fans long for the possibility of Meriwether bringing “New Girl” back from the grave. But the truth is, that’s not something the showrunner is jumping at just yet.
“I feel like everybody who was involved in that show is doing such interesting work right now. And I don’t know, I don’t fully get the reboot thing,” she said. “I kind of am like, what is the purpose of this? I don’t know if there’s more, in my mind, of things I want to say.”
That said, she’ll never say never. Meriwether loves the “New Girl” fanbase, and certainly never expected it to form. The legacy of the show “is so important” to her.
“If I had another thing that I felt like I had to say, I would say it. But I think that it’s also not totally up to me,” she added.
After this season of “Furious,” Meriwether is also headed back into the world of film, as she’s set to write the Britney Spears biopic based on the singer’s book. Meriwether said it’s far too early to tease anything in that realm, but noted that she is excited to write her first film since 2011.
Similar to taking on “Furious,” the move is about taking on an exciting story, rather than diving back into any one medium or genre.
“I definitely just think about the actual individual project. I approach showrunning like this too, I feel like,” she said. “Just moving one step forward, without kind of seeing a big picture. If I’m really excited about a story, or a character, I want to do it and I want to write it.”
“I don’t have a grand strategy,” she continued with a laugh. “I think there’s a lot of back and forth between TV and film, obviously, these days, and I do like to just keep doing new things. I think that’s been really fun for me, and keeps me on my toes. I like being really scared of something.”
“Furious” is now streaming on Hulu.