“Dead to Me” drops twists at breakneck speed, but don’t think the comedy adheres tightly to the script because the stars get to improvise. A lot.
“When we improv … it’s just so much fun, and Liz [Feldman, the creator] lets us be so loose. I don’t ever really get the opportunity to really improv with another woman,” Linda Cardellini tells Christina Applegate in an exclusive clip from their chat on Netflix’s “The Callback” (watch above).
Applegate concurs that all-female improv opportunities are diamonds in the rough, though she’s worked with “improv masters of the world,” which she found “really intimidating.” But it’s a completely different ballgame on “Dead to Me” because she believes she and Cardellini instantly connected with their characters, Jen and Judy, respectively, “on such a cellular level” that made the improvisation effortless. “It’s comfortable and it’s non-judgmental,” she says. “It’s an extension of the thought process throughout the whole scene and where else can we go.”
Adds Cardellini: “We always find something. That, to me, is the part that gets my juices going. I just love it when we find something and we sort of go down the road.”
Season 2 of “Dead to Me,” which premiered earlier this month, certainly offered more opportunities for the actresses improv as it picks up with them having to literally clean up (and hide) the mess from the Season 1 finale — Jen killed Judy’s ex-fiancé Steve (James Marsden) — and growing closer together in the process.
The full 20-minute conversation between Applegate and Cardellini will premiere on Monday on Netflix’s FYSEE TV site.
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