When looking back at cinema’s comedy canon, the 1981 cult favorite The Four Seasons might not be the first film that comes to mind as ripe for reimagining. But for Tina Fey, who created, wrote, and executive-produced a new series inspired by the movie — alongside fellow 30 Rock writer-producers Lang Fisher and Tracey Wigfield — the niche classic has always been at the top of her list. “I was a huge fan, even though I was only 10 when the movie came out. It was a movie that played a lot in the early days of cable TV, and that’s how I would see it so frequently,” she says of the original, which starred Rita Moreno, Carol Burnett, and Alan Alda, who also directed the film. “It just felt very cozy and aspirational.”
Co-Creator/Executive Producer Lang Fisher, Toby Huss as Terry, Marco Calvani as Claude, Colman Domingo as Danny, Kerri Kenney as Anne, Tina Fey as Kate, and Will Forte as Jack behind the scenes in The Four Seasons
JON PACK
The romantic comedy focused on the ups and downs of three married couples across spring, summer, fall, and winter. Fey’s version remixes the idea into a warmhearted comedy series that follows a group of longtime friends over the course of four vacations. It readily earned Alda’s blessing. “[Lang, Tina, and I] started talking about ideas kind of generally, and we all knew we wanted to do a show that was different in tone than the comedies we had done before,” reflects Wigfield. “We kept saying we wanted it to be something that felt grounded, and a story about friends, and about marriage.”
Bringing this eccentric and enviable clique to life is a knockout ensemble of breakouts — Erika Henningsen, Marco Calvani, and Kerri Kenney-Silver — alongside acting legends including Oscar nominee Colman Domingo, Emmy nominee Will Forte, and Golden Globe winner Steve Carell. “I watched the original movie a long time ago, but I didn’t watch it recently because I didn’t want to have that in the back of my head,” says Carell. “Tina Fey, for me, was the first and foremost reason I was attracted to this project. I love her.” Fey also stars as one-half of the three couples, which the series follows as they traipse around on group trips from sandy beaches to snowy mountains. “It’s two episodes for each season. And you only ever see people on vacation, which I also like,” says Fey. “You don’t see them at home; you don’t see them at work. It’s just these friends on vacation.”
Despite the breezy hijinks and laugh-inducing adventures that come with holidays away, the series also deals with the thorny issues that almost every couple and friend group experiences throughout the years. “It’s so easy, when you have known someone for so long — whether that’s your spouse or your best friend — to take that relationship for granted and say, Well, it’s there. It’s always there, and there’s nothing new and exciting about it,” says Wigfield. “What we hoped for the show was to drive home this little perspective shift — that if you just looked at your husband or your best friend in a certain light, it’s like, oh, this is the most precious thing in my life, and something that you should be grasping on to with both hands.” The series acknowledges the ways platonic relationships often require just as much care as romantic ones. “At a certain point, when you’ve had these very long friendships, they are your family. They become people who have watched the ups and downs of your life, know you through and through,” says Fisher, who also directs the last two episodes of the season. “In addition to having a spouse whom you love, you also need this group of old friends who can tell the story of your life and where you’ve been.”
The first couple we meet is Kate and Jack, played by real-life friends Fey and Forte, who worked together on Saturday Night Live in the 2000s, where Fey was both head writer and cast member. “Tina has always been like the senior when I was a freshman. She was pretty much always my boss, even though we’re the same age. There was a part of this coming in, going like, ‘Oh, now we gotta kiss each other and stuff like that,’ ” Forte jokes. Fey knew Forte had the kind of everyman relatability that the — sometimes slapstick, sometimes heartfelt — role required. “We wanted someone that had real warmth and intelligence but also could be funny. We have a scene with Will coming back into the room being like, ‘Someone just saw my penis.’ He really nails earnest concern and panic, and then the sort of weird, physical demonstration of those feelings,” she says. “Kate and Jack are sort of the template. They are the Alan Alda and Carol Burnett characters in the original movie in some ways. In the beginning, they might think that they’re just this much better than everybody else at being married. They need to be just taken down a peg.”
Then there’s Nick, played by Carell, and Anne, the kind, cautious heart of the series played by Kenney-Silver. Celebrating their 25th wedding anniversary, the couple is facing the existential matter of whether to keep the relationship going. “There is a moment where they look at each other and say, ‘Who are you and who am I?’ ” Carell says. “The audience will find that there’s an imbalance in the relationship and an enormous disconnect between these two people. I don’t think they’re even aware of the chasm that exists between them.” Kenney-Silver reveled in the opportunity to deal with midlife issues, which often get overshadowed by film and television’s focus on young romance. “This show is a love letter to all kinds of relationships. But I love that it’s told through the eyes of our generation,” she says. “I think everyone will appreciate it, but there’s something lovely about it being told through a lens of people that are at that stage in their life where they’re recent empty-nesters and in long-term relationships. It’s nice to see a story like that for a change today.”
Finally, there’s Danny, played by Domingo, and Claude, played by Calvani. “I love that they’re based on characters in the original film, but tweaked. It was a male-female relationship, and now it’s a gay couple in the series,” says Domingo. Danny and Claude are dealing with grown-up responsibilities while trying to maintain a sense of lightness within their bond. “I remember watching the 1981 film with my parents. It was about adults dealing with adult stuff. I was one of those weird kids that always wanted to be an adult, so maybe I was looking at how to be,” Domingo says. “When Tina Fey invited me to be a part of this, I’d been doing a lot of heavy lifting, soul-aching dramas. I felt ready for some comedy, to have fun and wear sweaters and talk about sweet things and hard things about relationships.” Calvani plays Claude as a firecracker with a heart of gold, imbuing him with a sense of both forcefulness and vulnerability. “I couldn’t have been luckier to have stepped on the set with someone who cares so much about the partner he’s playing with. He cares about me as a person,” Calvani says of working opposite Domingo. “Those moments when we were playing together — to be able to get in and out of the characters with so much freedom and so much safety.”
The series reinvents, and in some cases entirely revolutionizes, certain romantic comedy clichés. After Nick leaves Anne for a much younger woman (Ginny, played deftly by Henningsen), the group expects his new relationship to be silly and shallow — but that doesn’t turn out to be exactly true. “What this team has done so beautifully is [they’ve] made Ginny a whole person, and made her affection and love for Nick something real and substantial. It doesn’t feel like a rebound or something that is going to quickly fade into the ether of both of their lives,” says Henningsen. “I was so excited by that, and to explore what it looked like for people with a generational difference to be together.” Meanwhile, while Danny and Claude are in an open relationship — and even scroll through hookup apps together — the non-monogamy is the least of their issues as a couple. “We wanted to explore that dynamic: an open relationship which is not the source of their marital strengths or weaknesses,” says Fey. “That’s their agreement, that’s how they live, but they have other marital problems. There’s no setup in which you can really escape some kind of struggle within a relationship.”
Colman Domingo, Marco Calvani and Director Shari Springer Berman behind the scenes of The Four Seasons
JON PACK
In a character study like this, the cast carries so much weight, meaning finding just the right actor for every role was absolutely essential. Sometimes, the answer came from unexpected places: Calvani is an Italian industry vet, but he’s best known as a playwright — and he hadn’t acted in 16 years before Domingo suggested he audition for the part. “We owe that to my husband, Raúl. He really saw the person who would play my husband,” says Domingo. “Because we have a friendship — coming over to the pool and having barbecues and being very familial with each other — it’s catered to us being comfortable with each other physically and affectionately.” Kenney-Silver, a new presence for many viewers, similarly surprises and delights at every turn. “She has this amazing face that makes you go, That’s my friend, and she’s an assassin in terms of being precise around a joke. But she also shows so much vulnerability and heart,” says Fey. “She’s heartbreaking in a lot of these scenes where she is a woman who’s struggling in the face of extreme change. She has to ask these big questions, like, ‘Is it just going to be me by myself now forever? How do I dig myself out of this?’ ”
Of course, Fey, Forte, Carell, and Domingo (who also directs an episode) bring their own signature brand of soulfulness to their roles. “We still can’t believe Colman wanted to do the show. He is so funny,” says Wigfield. “But then there’ll be moments where you’re just like, oh, that’s why he’s an Oscar-nominated actor.” The opportunity to direct was incredibly attractive to Domingo, who takes on Episode 6, set in autumn. “The showrunners chose the episode for me, and I like to think it wasn’t just logistics, but also the content. It felt like it was in my wheelhouse. It wasn’t this snappy, comedic episode. It was more about relationships, character, and story,” Domingo says. “My approach was, ‘OK, these are all comedians at the top of their game. That’s wonderful. We’ll get there. But what I’m going to do as a director is guide them to go to their emotional core, and put them in some uncomfortable spaces.’ We were all challenging each other to just let it sparkle.”
Carell gamely took on the difficult task of engendering empathy for a man who wrongs his lovable wife. “Steve Carell is an American icon. He’s really great in situations where his character is so happy that you want to punch him in the face. And that’s where Nick is, emotionally, for most of the series. It takes a really great, beloved actor to get away with that, and for the audience not to be like, eff you, dude,” says Fey. “Steve Carell, to me, has that Jimmy Stewart quality — even if he plays a guy who’s kind of a jerk, you know that the actual person behind the character is such a good person that you still love the character. Steve just has that quality to him.”
Through the eight-episode season, the journey of this group of friends unfolds with its fair share of playful pranks, passionate bickering, and surprising realizations, but ultimately, the co-creators just want the series to offer as much comfort and comedy for a new generation of viewers as the original film did for a young Fey. “I hope audiences feel like they are inside a big sweater with us, and also having a dinner party with us,” she says. “And I hope that the joy and warmth that we all feel for each other transfers to them, and that we are a comfort and provide some laughs for them in their homes.” Listen the actors and creators talk about The Four Seasons below, before being enveloped by the series when it launches on May 1.
A version of this story appears in Queue Issue 20.
Tina Fey, Steve Carell, and More Discuss the Couples of The Four Seasons
