You're the
Worst is an
American single-camera comedy series created by Stephen Falk for the FX Network.
Throughout the course of
its ten-episode first season, FX’s unconventional romantic comedy You’re the Worst has followed the strange, funny, and
undeniably twisted relationship of two love-averse narcissists who
reluctantly fall for each other while navigating the sketchy fringes
of adulthood.
It is centered on Jimmy, a
self-involved writer, and Gretchen, a self-destructive Los Angeles PR
executive. These two toxic personalities attempt a relationship.
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With each episode surpassing the last, it became the summer’s
best comedy by balancing an unwavering belief in love with its exploration of
the more cynical side of romance. Flavorwire spoke toYou’re the Worst showrunner Stephen Falk (Weeds, Orange Is the New Black) by phone
about likable and unlikable characters, finding humor in serious topics,
and what he learned from working with Jenji Kohan.
Flavorwire: How did you pitch You’re the Worst? The marketing was very,
“Watch two people be awful to each other,” but that’s not what the show is
really about.
Stephen Falk: I’ve always liked romantic
comedies and always wanted to do something in that area, but it always felt
like you were at the throes of the cycle of old romantic comedies. I really
admire British comedies because they get away with more. They can show characters
who have some bad attributes, or bad behavior, and it didn’t feel like there’s
this need that American television had, to focus on likability — even if
characters are flawed, they’re flawed in very benign ways, like the girl is
clumsy or the guy forgets to clean up after himself. In American romantic
comedies you didn’t get to see genuine bad behavior, and so I took those two
ideas together and came up with this idea to do an updated Mad About You with characters that are a little more
reprehensible — or, I wouldn’t say reprehensible, but who exhibited actual bad
characteristics at times. But, at its heart, I stressed that I really did want
to make a very typical romantic comedy but in sort of new clothes.
There’s always discussion about how you can’t like or relate
to a show if the characters aren’t likable, which I think is false, but were
you wary of this going in? That maybe people wouldn’t connect because they
didn’t like the two characters?
I wasn’t
wary of it because I had started working in TV on Weeds, and that
was never a thing we thought about. Then I did a TV show that didn’t air, that
was a network show, so there was that
constant worry about likability. I found it difficult to do what I wanted and
to write the stuff that I think works best for my voice, which tends to be a
little edgier — I hate that word, “edgy,” but I guess that’s the way to say it
— and it was sanding the rough edges down.
When I went in to pitch this for FX, I was very much in the
mindset that, well, look, they’re either going to like it or not. This is what
I want to do and if they don’t like it, that’s fine. They don’t have to do it
at all. I’d rather do nothing than not make the show that I really wanted
to. I didn’t want to do that again. It wouldn’t have been good for anybody
— myself or the network.
But what you say about likability is absolutely true. Characters
don’t have to be likable. They just have to be interesting. [With] Jimmy and
Gretchen, there does have to be some audience connection to them. They can’t be
monsters. And I don’t think they’re that at all. I just think they’re honest
and flawed.
They’re not reprehensible. They have some bad qualities, but
they’re real bad qualities: narcissism, drinking too much, stunted
growth — all normal things, but taken to the extreme.
Exactly.
Most of us have people in our lives who exhibit these qualities. They just have all of them, and to big measure. But I think
that’s what makes it funny, I guess.
Did you base them on real people?
A little bit. A little bit on me, in ways, a little bit on a
couple people I know, a little bit on characters I’ve enjoyed in plays and
movies. It’s an amalgam. But nobody is one person I have in my life. I
think it would be frightening if I had someone like Jim in my life.
In the breakup episode, the devastation sneaks up
on you, because you don’t realize how much you’ve come to care about these
characters until the end. It’s this weird trick to get us to care so much
despite them being, well, the worst. Was that a conscious decision, to have the
breakup be so devastating, out of nowhere? The series premiered on July 17, 2014.
