Sometimes you hear about a television show and all you can think is that the premise is your worst nightmare. LAID definitely sounds like my worst nightmare. Having to revisit exes? Well… not something I would want to do.
But the way that LAID lays out relationships and friendships, makes it so relatable.
Sitting down at the LAID press day, I had the pleasure of talking to Sally Bradford. She EP’s and creators of the show, she brought new insight as to why revisiting your past may not be a bad thing.
Fangirlish: This show sounds like my virtual worst nightmare. Revisiting past loves, having to talk to them, and get their opinions on me, not having to deal with them anymore, not that I want them dead but not having to deal with them anymore.. pass? Can you talk a little bit about how you came up with a show? What made you bring in this– it’s a dark twist, but it seems like it’s going to be great.
Sally: Yes, so this is based on an Australian format that this– we first heard this premise. It felt exactly like a fresh unique spin on the rom-com that we’ve seen before. It’s interesting that you say that because Nahnatchka Khan, who’s my co-show runner in this, she once told someone the premise of the show, and it’s this girl looking for love and all of her exes are dying. She was like, “Oh, that sounds amazing. That sounds like a dream.”
It’s interesting that people have different takes, but yes, having to go back and confront all that in any form, it definitely feels like a nightmare, too, I think, to a lot of us. I think when we first heard it, we were so intrigued by the idea of a rom-com telling a story about looking for love and trying to find the right person, and wondering like, “Is there something wrong with me?” Like, “Why can’t I do this?” Then also having this dark kind of backdrop of death to punctuate– we all have to look at the wreckage of our past. We all have to look at, “Where am I coming from in order to move forward?” We love the metaphor of like having to look at her actual body counts in order to be able to move forward with her present love life.
Fangirlish: As somebody who’s recently gone through a breakup, it sounds like my worst nightmare, but it also sounds like a great show to watch for somebody who’s going through that because you get to question it, but you’re also like, “Ah, you know, maybe it’s not me. Maybe it’s them.”
Sally: That’s a great point. No one’s brought that up. We haven’t really thought about it that way. I think it would be a cathartic watch, and also, just to see it doesn’t matter. I was this person in this relationship, but then I was this six months later. Just to be able to look at your whole history and just the highs and lows of it, and just see that there’s ebbs and flows of everything. Where I end up is really the product of all those things that came before it.
Fangirlish: They all have that really great perspective of it, which absolutely I’m excited for, but I’m also excited because there’s so many great guest stars. I was reading your list of guest stars, which one were you more– how did all these people come to be? Because it’s such a great list.
Sally: It’s incredible, and we got so lucky. From the beginning, it was like we just put up day one of the writer’s room, we put up a wish list of all the people we wanted to work with. We got a lot of those people, crazily enough. I think when we assembled our main cast, especially with Stephanie leading everything, people want to work with her, so she was able to draw in other actors that we wanted to work with. Then once we had our main cast, which was already so impressive, I think getting the guest cast, which we knew like this show was such a good casting opportunity to have fun guest stars come in. Not even so much as cameos, but just be able to come in and do a part that maybe isn’t the biggest thing but is going to be fun. Like you know it’s going to be fun.
John Early, I think, for me, day one was like he’s my number one on every list I put together. I had to lie down after we first met with him. Everyone made fun that I had to take to my couch because I was not okay because I love him so much. We get him, and then you get Kate Roland and we got Chloe Fineman. We got just so many incredible actors to come and help us out.
Fangirlish: I love that you had to lay down because it shows that you don’t ever take anything for granted, that this is your baby, and you put your heart and soul into it, which convinces me even more that this is amazing. This is going to be amazing. Last question, without any context to the episode, what was your favorite episode to film?
Sally: Oh, without any context. Okay. We did them all in one giant chunk, so it’s hard to– I would say the pilot was the most exciting, personally for me. I love that script. We lived with that script for so long. That was a piece of material. We had to change to pop culture references because they became outdated.
We started this in 2020. Yes, I think just seeing that finally become something and we’re actually putting it up on its feet and we have these incredible actors doing it, you hear it all the time, people are like, “How did I get so lucky?” But it really did feel like this is very gratifying, very fulfilling.
LAID is streaming now on Peacock.
