Steve Martin, Martin Short & Selena Gomez Stick To Scripts For ‘Only Murders In The Building’ – Contenders TV
10.04.2022 - 03:19
/ deadline.com
Steve Martin and Martin Short took turns ribbing each other at their Contenders TV panel for Hulu’s Only Murders in the Building. However, when they got serious about the mystery-comedy, the stars insisted they rarely ad lib.
“You’d be surprised how often the script gets our voices or puts new voices in our mouths,” Martin said. “The ad libbing is always through consultation with [co-creator and panelist] John [Hoffman] and with the writers. We rarely surprise because we’re not those kind of actors that try to throw off another actor. We do consult every line with John.”
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During the panel, Short said Martin gets mistaken for Murder, She Wrote star Angela Lansbury and called him “close to being” one of “the few people I truly admire in show business.” But when it comes to Only Murders, Martin also relies on the scripts.
“I think you start with a very strong script, and then you start understanding the character,” Short said. “Then you start saying to the writers, ‘He wouldn’t do that,’ because now you understand him more than you did the first episode.”
For his part, Martin, appearing via Zoom, did a joke where he pretended to turn his camera off and visibly took a swig of scotch. He also paused for 10 seconds before revealing he wasn’t frozen at all.
Fellow panelist Selena Gomez made Martin and Short’s duo a trio as the young neighbor who helped them solve a mystery. Gomez said she related to her character.
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“I genuinely felt very close to Mabel and a sense of she’s gaining this sort of independence and meeting these two weirdos in a way,” Gomez said. “They made me feel incredibly