There are enough twists and turns in Apple TV‘s Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed to give viewers whiplash. Tasked with unraveling the murder mystery is Detective Sofia Gonzalez, played by Dolly de Leon. Sofia isn’t going to back down until she finds out what Paula is hiding, no matter how out of control things get.
But off-camera, it’s an equally fun story. Fangirlish spoke to de Leon about how excited she was to work with co-star Tatiana Maslany, as well as her reunion (of sorts) with Nine Perfect Strangers colleague Murray Bartlett. And how would she describe working on this strange, unpredictable and constantly entertaining show? Here’s what she had to say.
Brittany Frederick: What was it about Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed that got you excited? Where was the hook?
Dolly de Leon: Tatiana Maslany—I’m a huge fan of hers. I’ve been a huge fan of hers for the longest time. Knowing I was going to work with her, I don’t even have to read the script; so long as I work with her, I’m happy. [Laughs.] And on top of that, got to work with David Rosen, who’s our creator, from I Just Want My Pants Back. I was always a huge fan [of his], and [of] everyone, actually, in the cast.
Speaking of castmates, you had a wonderful dynamic with Murray Bartlett in Nine Perfect Strangers, and here you are working together again but playing two very different characters. How fun was that for you?
There is nothing like seeing an old friend when you’re at work in a new place. It’s a new show, so technically we’re all new and we all just met. So to be able to see Murray there—a familiar face who I was with for six months—felt so good. He was so supportive, and he was so helpful. I would go to him for advice; he gives really great advice.
We have a scene where we’re on the phone with each other, and he was actually there on the other line. Usually when you do scenes like that, the other actor you’re talking to usually isn’t on the other line. It’s just someone else giving you the lines, but in this case Murray was actually there. I love him. He’s the best.
Obviously, Sofia doesn’t know right away what’s going on with Murray’s character Frank or anyone else. Did you want to learn the season’s reveals as she did, or did you want to know anything in advance?
I really work with full and complete trust [in] the writers, whatever they think I should know or shouldn’t know. I completely trust them. I don’t need to know what’s going to happen in the future, because technically the character doesn’t know what’s going to happen in the future. So I don’t really want to know; I like everything to be a mystery.
Did you have a favorite scene in the chaos of Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed that you loved doing?
There’s this one scene I really loved doing, because it was so much fun. It’s when Jon [Michael Hill, who plays Detective Baxter] and I break into a place, and we’re acting like real cops. I’ve never played a detective before, so that was so much fun for me to do.
But I think my favorite scene was my scene with Tatiana, because I love working with her. She’s so in the moment, it’s she’s such a great scene partner, and I just had fun doing it with her. Sometimes when you’re working in a scene, you know you’re acting, but with her it didn’t feel like that. I felt like we were really there and it was really happening. She’s such a joy to work with. So I think that’s my favorite—the scene with Tatiana and I inside [Paula’s] office.
How do you think Sofia perceives Paula, in general? Because she looks really guilty at points, but she also looks really in over her head a lot, too.
The only thing Sofia is really concerned with is the truth, and she’s really having a hard time getting that from Paula. That’s what frustrates her. If she could just get the truth from Paula, even if she looks like she’s just this helpless victim… She just really needs to hear the truth, because that’s the only way she can help her.
You mentioned never having portrayed a detective before. Was that the biggest challenge for you in Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed, or what did you learn through this whole experience?
I think my biggest challenge, to be honest, was the humor. It’s very, very New York, very American humor. I’m Filipino and I grew up in the Philippines, so it was really a challenge for me to understand the humor. But the good thing is I had David Rosen to help me with that. I really had a chance to talk to him about it, and also [executive producer] David Gordon Green, and the director of the first episode, Dan Sackheim. They were really able to help, but that was the biggest challenge—the humor.
The show is obviously Paula’s story, so was there anything about Sofia that you wanted to know, that the season just didn’t get to?
There were actually a lot of questions I had about my character. I asked, first of all, is she married, is she divorced? She talks about it in the first episode—that she’s divorced—so that’s a little gray area there. We don’t really know—is she married, is she lying, is she telling the truth? Does she have a family?
What does she do on the weekend? Does she even have weekends? She talks about, love isn’t about getting yelled at all weekend, but was she even in a relationship? It’s really more about her personal life, Even when Baxter asks her out, tells her that hey, we have to eat, let’s have dinner, she doesn’t even want to do that. What’s her social life, I wonder?
Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed streams Wednesdays on Apple TV.
