Tatiana Maslany and video calls don’t have the best track record these days.
In the opening moments of the new Apple TV series “Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed,” her character Paula, a recently divorced mom with a mysterious past trying to keep her life together, is in the middle of a late-night venting session on her laptop with a camboy when things descend into chaos. The ease in which he toggles between listening to her problems and offering her cyber pleasure, it turns out, is all part of a ruse to scam her out of money with a kidnapping she witnesses unfold on camera and a subsequent ransom. But the plan gets thwarted when said camboy is murdered in the process, setting Paula off into a spiral to uncover what happened and clear her name. Adding to her emotional chaos is a fed up ex-husband named Karl, played by Jake Johnson, and the custody battle he’s exacerbated with his decision to move from Brooklyn to Boise, Idaho.
In real life, on a recent weekday, Maslany is seated next to Johnson in a West Hollywood hotel room with one of her dogs, Earl, on her lap (the other, Devo, is nearby) as they settle in for a video call to discuss the dark comedy thriller, created by David Rosen (“Sugar,” “Us & Them”), premiering with two episodes May 20. But less than three minutes into the conversation, Earl leaps off Maslany’s lap, freezes in place and stares ahead.
“That could be weird ghost stuff,” Johnson says, pausing to give a play-by-play of the dog’s behavior offscreen. “Nobody entered [the room].”
“It’s like he can see something,” Maslany says.
After observing Earl for a moment, Maslany attempts to keep the conversation going before Johnson interrupts: “I have to say, the dog is now growling at nothing. And it’s truly scary.”
The video call, before long, freezes until it drops completely. Is this an elaborate way to lean into the show’s premise? It turns out, a power outage hit the area, affecting the hotel’s WiFi. The Times reconnected with Maslany and Johnson moments later over speakerphone. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.
I read a description of the series that summed things up like this: A divorced mom gets caught up in a perilous web of blackmail, murder and youth soccer. How would you describe it?
Maslany: Those are the main points, but the thing that I love about it is the domestic stuff. The attempt by Paula to stay in her life and just pursue, very simply, what it is to have just experienced an intense divorce, a huge life change, be moving out of the house that we had together, and be starting fresh. Like, who am I now to me? That is a really crucial part to it.
The show opens with Paula venting — we think it could be to a friend or a brother or maybe even a therapist. And then it becomes clear, that’s not it at all. What do you remember thinking when you first read the script? What did it reveal to you?
Maslany: The thing I felt immediately reading the pilot was: I don’t know who she is. Even when I was auditioning, I was like, “I don’t feel like I know who this person is.” That was a thing that really hooked me, made me want to audition and made me excited to get this part was that I was like, “I can’t get a grasp on her.”
Johnson: The show shot in New York, so my agent sent it to me, saying, “You’re probably not going to do it” because I like being in California so much. But I felt the script was so well done. And Tati and I discussed it at times — when she said she didn’t know who Paula was as she was reading, I didn’t know what the relationship was [between them]. I didn’t know what was happening. And not in a bad way. You could tell David Rosen knew what he wanted and where the thing was going, but it felt a lot of times for us as actors, at least for me, like I was playing catch-up with the material because something new would be revealed, and I would go, “Well, that really changes a lot. If they’re the kind of people who do that, then that is different.” It felt really exciting.
Tatiana, how was it having to do a lot of acting with a phone and a laptop?
Maslany: Here’s a cool thing — a lot of the stuff that we shot on phones, even if it was a FaceTime thing, or the Zooms that I did with Brandon [Flynn, who plays camboy Trevor], [director] David Gordon Green had set up this thing where we had two sets running at the same time. We had Paula’s set and Trevor’s set happening at the same time, and we could Zoom and actually be talking.
Jake, your character is trying to move on with his life post-divorce. He has a new partner, Mallory. They want to move to Boise and he’s trying to get the custody situation resolved. How did you come to see him?
From Karl’s point of view, he’s a stand-up guy who was with a woman; [he] changed when they had a kid and she didn’t. She did some moves that were pretty irrational, and she would have times where she would act on impulse, and it became more and more unstable and unsafe. He made a decision to try to better his life and his daughter’s life. And he was trying his hardest. I just don’t think he necessarily knew all the rules to the game and wasn’t winning.
Paula is a fact–checker at a news organization trying to land a promotion because she’s in this custody battle. And we come to discover that she has a past in Portland, Ore.
Maslany: The complexity of her life and the ways that she’s holding a lot of secrets from different people, she has to put a certain face forward at work that she doesn’t put forward when she’s at home with her daughter, that she doesn’t put forward when she’s in front of Karl and Mallory. She’s not skilled at it, but she’s attempting to be what everybody needs her to be. And she’s failing at all of it, in a way that I really love about her. Like Jake was saying, the spontaneity of her choices, the irrational choices that she makes, even though she’s incredibly logical and she has a lot riding on her, has to be responsible for a lot of things, she also does things that absolutely sabotage that. She’s very much a bundle of contradictions.
And just the idea of a woman’s pursuit of sexual desire and fulfillment and pleasure being this thing that ends her up in this mess, whereas Karl has [his own personal mess]. But Paula’s sex life becomes incredibly questioned, judged and dangerous. That dynamic was interesting to navigate.
This whole thing was meant to be a simple scam by Paula’s camboy, Trevor, and it takes a deadly turn. If you’re in this situation,what would Tatiana do when she starts getting the calls? What would Jake do?
Johnson: I wouldn’t do what Paula does. But I’d make some calls to some people, and I definitely wouldn’t just start sending money, I’ll tell you that.
Maslany: “Make some calls to some people” — it sounds like this has happened before.
Johnson: There’d be moves that could be made that some little cowboy hustler is not gonna necessarily just rob you in the corner, but I definitely wouldn’t be chasing him down.
Maslany: My instinct is to curl into a ball and pretend it never happened. [Johnson launches into laughter.] Just go fetal. Absolute possum on it.
Who do you think is most likely to be scammed? We all get the scam calls. Jake, what’s your tactic?
Johnson: I actually really enjoy it as a guy who likes to talk and gets really bored in my car in L.A. traffic. I do whole stories, especially if my kids are in the car. Now, they’ll sometimes chime in. I try to pressure them [the caller] to see how bad my situation is. A lot of times, I’ll try to bring God into it and talk about family members and the sickness that we’re dealing with and what a grace of God this call was and really keep heightening things. I’m like, “Man, you have no idea. My last cent has just been spent. Thank you for this.” And you just get to see what rats these people are.
Tatiana, I imagine you don’t engage.
Maslany: You know what, I don’t. [Both laugh] Especially not like that. Incredible.
Johnson: The whole commute, I’m trying to get them to eventually hang up.
Maslany: I think I have been light scammed a few times.
Johnson: When I was in high school, my uncle Eddie came and lived with us. We used to hang neon signs and up and down Clark Street, and we scammed some people. He would say he could make you a beautiful sign, [saying,] “What you need here is you need this.” And he would oversell the ability he and I had. And when we would hang these janky ass signs, they would be so mad and he and I would have to run to the pickup truck. It wasn’t an official hustle, but it was pretty close it. They did not get what was pitched to them.
Maslany: Wait, you were making the neon signs?
Johnson: He would make the signs. I was his little apprentice.
Maslany: Like welding?
Johnson: Kind of — moving glass.
Jake, there’s something that Paula says to Mallory in reference to Karl that really struck me. And I’d like to know how you reacted when you read it and maybe tell me what it told you about Karl.
Johnson: I think you know what I mean. “He’s 6 feet with 8% body fat.”
No, not quite that. She says to Mallory: “Let Karl crawl all over you with his big, sweaty chest bush and grind away like he’s trying to dislodge a bag of Doritos.” I was like, “Did Lamorne Morris, your friend and ‘New Girl’ co-star, write this line?”
Johnson: That seems like something Lamorne would write, for sure. That’s really funny. Sadly, because I know my body, I didn’t give it any thought. It didn’t offend me. I was like, “Yeah, makes sense.” I just didn’t know if it was a compliment or insult. I read that as Paula saying she was sad on what she was missing out on. She’s like, “Aw man, we did have some good times.” I was just shocked how Tatiana played it. She’s a great actor.
Maslany: Yeah, you’re like, “I thought she’d be crying as she said it.”
I also feel like all the talk about Boise in the show is going to be a big moment for Idaho.
Johnson: Huge.
Maslany: Putting her on the map.
Johnson: Boise is freaking out. The people in Idaho are going nuts.
Jake, I want to return to a point you made earlier, which was the show was shot in New York. How are you feeling over the attention swirling about trying to rebuild Los Angeles as a production hub?
Johnson: It’s a huge issue. It’s also coming back. The last few projects I’ve done have all been here. We just got a tax incentive. We got a break for the pilot I did at NBC, and I just did a movie with Jessica Williams and Kevin Bacon. Filming in L.A., to me, is the most special place to work because this is where it was all meant to be. When you film elsewhere, it’s beautiful and it’s unique and it’s cool. But when you’re here, I do believe you get the best crews. This exodus away from L.A. has felt very unnatural, and I’m really glad the tide is turning back.
Tatiana, you’re Canadian and there’s a whole production system there. Do you have thoughts about where TV or film is being made or how?
Maslany: I see shifts elsewhere in terms of just the way things are made or cast. The biggest thing that has gone away, that I wish would still happen, is in-person auditions. I remember coming here for pilot season and — to speak to L.A. sort of dying in terms of stuff happening here or whatever — you’d be auditioning, sometimes three times a day. You’d be learning new sides, you’d be going into room after room, you’d be really warm because you’ve been doing it for three weeks — just really consistent auditions and coaching and reading with other actors and trying on different parts and getting something, not getting something. But you had this connection to casting, producers and directors, watching an actor in the room take notes and redirect themselves — they’re not having to film themselves and be self-conscious about how they look, be self-conscious about which tape they pick. You could be excited to see an actor take a direction and be like, “Oh, Jesus. I didn’t know they could do that” or “I didn’t even think that they would be right for this part, but then, when I asked them to do this, they totally go there.” That is a massive loss in our industry and it’s caused a lot of heartache to a lot of working actors who rely on auditions to get jobs. It’s really hard to get jobs. I didn’t audition for this in person.
Before I let you go, in the spirit of Paula being a fact-checker, is there something out there about you that you would like to set the record straight on?
Maslany: No, because if I say anything, people will run with it. Any time I tried to do that, it makes it worse. It’ll add fuel to the fire.
Johnson: I’ll clear something up that’s really frustrating. Lamorne Morris came on my podcast, “We’re Here to Help,” and he said, “You’re not allowed to air this …” But he said he will never do a “New Girl” reunion because he hates the audience. He does not respect the fan base because he doesn’t think they’re smart enough to understand the high level of acting that he does. And I think that is BS. I think it’s a great fan base. For breaking news, you’ve got to come check out the podcast, “We’re Here to Help.” I needed to set the record straight because that really frustrated me.
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