Break out the tini-tinis and get some French toast for the table! Somebody Somewhere, the Peabody-award winning HBO comedy starring, written, and executive produced by Bridget Everett — about a middle-aged woman who moves back to her Kansas hometown to care for her dying sister and ends up staying, and how music and her chosen family there ultimately save her — is coming back for a third and (muffled crying) final season starting on Oct. 27.
At the heart of this quiet, sweet and yet bawdy, laugh-out-loud hilarious show is a love story between two friends — Sam (Everett) and Joel (Jeff Hiller.) When Season Two ended, Sam was grappling with some big changes. Joel had fallen in love. Her other pal, Fred Rococo (Murray Hill), got married. She is trying to forge a closer relationship with her sister Trish (Mary Catherine Garrison), newly divorced and — with inspiration from Sam — launching a business crafting throw pillows festooned with creative uses of the word cunt.
“It’s always about figuring out how to force Sam to grow because she’s so reluctant to,” says Everett, who, along with co-creators-slash-executive producers Paul Thureen and Hannah Bos, recently spoke to Rolling Stone to preview Season Three. “I feel so connected to Sam and when she grows, I feel like I grow too. And growth is change, and that’s overwhelming for Sam — and for the woman who plays her.”
Somebody Somewhere is unlike most shows on TV. There’s no mystery-box plot devices or dystopian nightmares or wild spectacle. “HBO sort of took a chance on us three Midwesterners to tell this Midwestern story about characters that often don’t get to get centered,” says Thureen.
But the characters’ evolution over the three seasons of this small show full of big feelings is undeniable. “When we were shooting this season, there would be moments where we were thinking about the pilot and were like, ‘Wow, isn’t it fun to think how much this person has changed in these subtle ways?’” says Bos.
As the new season begins, Sam is working in a local bar (in an early scene she’s on the floor cozying up to a big hound dog — more on dogs in a minute) and helping Trisha with her event planning business —Trish Upon a Star — as well as the now-wildly successful cunt-pillow enterprise (best Season Three pillow: “It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like You’re a Cunt”). Sam is wrestling with loneliness and where she fits into the lives of her busy, coupled-up friends. But she’s also trying to show up for them — and take care of herself in a way that she has not been able to in the past.
Sandy Morris/HBO
As she wrestles with these feelings, Sam flirts with adopting a dog from the local shelter and carries around a photo of a little fluffy white Pomeranian played by Everett’s own dog Lulu. Everett says it was a happy accident. “The other dog wasn’t really doing what we needed it to do,” she says.
Though she was the one who suggested trying Lulu for the part, Everett says she initially thought, “There’s no fucking way this is going to work.” She explains, ”Lulu is a very spirited young lady and likes to talk to everyone she meets. Lulu is a world-class beauty, and nobody’s ever going to believe that she’s a rescue. But guess what? She is a rescue.”
Everett’s first dog Poppy also makes a cameo in an early episode this season: Her photo is hanging on the wall of the animal shelter. “When I got my first dog, Poppy — rest in peace Poppy, love of my life, baby girl, honey angel — when I brought her into my life, she fully changed the trajectory of my world,” Everett says. “Made me able to access emotions and feel things in a deeper way.”
“If there was no Poppy, there would be no Somebody Somewhere. I’m telling you that right now.”
With the series coming to an end, Everett, Bos, and Thureen say that they are grateful and somewhat shocked that they were able to do three seasons of Somebody Somewhere. “We would make this show forever,” says Bos, “but I feel like we’ve been so lucky in this climate to get these three seasons.”
“I keep thinking, how the fuck do we have three seasons of this show on the air?” says Everett.
True to the spirit of the show, there is no neat and tidy ending to the series where all problems are resolved and everyone lives happily ever after. “I know this show is a very personal show to a lot of people, so I would never want to wrap anything up with a tiny little bow,” says Everett. “I think you’re just sort of like, ‘This is where they are in their lives. It’s what’s happening now.’ And to me, these people are going to exist forever and I’ll never be done with them.”
So what’s next?
“I mean,” Everett jokes, “Murray’s like, ‘Come on, kid, we got to do Somebody Somewhere live on the road!’”
