Connecting the Ensemble Thematically: A Conversation with ‘The Four Seasons’ Co-Creators and Showrunners Lang Fisher and Tracey Wigfield

Coming off a hard year, our group of friends carries on their tradition of vacationing together — now with a baby in tow. The Four Seasons picks back up with the core group — Kate (Tina Fey), Jack (Will Forte), Anne (Kerri Kenney-Silver), Danny (Colman Domingo), Claude (Marco Calvani), and Ginny (Erika Henningsen) — as they journey from the familiar comforts of the Jersey shore and upstate New Yorkto the stunning landscapes of Italy. With warmth and wit, personal blind spots surface for the group as they each grieve their late friend and embark on new adventures. Co-created by Tina Fey, Lang Fisher, and Tracey Wigfield, The Four Seasons remains a heartfelt and hilarious tribute to long-term relationships, while continuing to explore the highs, lows, and humor of enduring friendships and love.

There is emotional satisfaction and immediate denial when you find yourself relating to a singular fictional character or in the case of The Four Seasons, multiple characters. You find yourself asking yourself questions while a character makes a life-changing decision that you may or may not agree with, ‘you can’t be that obtuse, right?’ or ‘do I sound like that to my partner?’ Most of the time the answer is a loud resounding yes. And that’s what makes this show, especially season two of The Four Seasons so damn good.

I’m sure it helps that the show has some incredible heavy hitters behind the scenes (and one carrying some of the best comedic bits and eye rolls on-screen) – Tina Fey (30 Rock), Lang Fisher (Never Have I Ever), and Tracey Wigfield (Great News).  This trio has also put together a top tier voices in the writers’ room to top crew key departments behind the scenes, and I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the stellar cast with the likes of Will Forte, Kerri Kenney and the multi-talented Colman Domingo. But their main focus and goal is to find that thematic emotional throughline for their ensemble, that feels earned, lived and real - and how that carries over from season one into two, and how that progression moves into season three.

Tracey Wigfield and Lang Fisher discussed with Script the challenges of writing for an ensemble, diving into grief, the collaborative nature of writing and directing, and establishing thematic consistency.

This interview has been edited for content and clarity.

Sadie Dean: When it came to establishing the foundation behind the tile of Four Seasons, and dividing each season into two episodes per season, and essentially, focusing on a specific character or a couple, either romantic or a friendship – what was the process behind mapping all that out?

Lang Fisher: I think when you have an ensemble, you have to find ways to make sure that each person in that ensemble has their own arc, but also as a collective, you see how the group kind of evolves and changes. What's always nice about a season two is you know who the characters are, and you know how the actors play them, and where the actors really score, and what's really fun to see about it.

So, coming into this season, I think, obviously we were missing Steve [Carell], and we love Steve, and so what is this group without the character of Nick, and how do we write to that. And I think it was a fun challenge, because he was such a connector of the group, such a large force in the group. But it was nice to kind of be like, OK, in the first season we were following a light blueprint from the movie, and in the second season, we obviously deviated from the movie by having Nick die. But it was now that we know who our characters are, what do we want to see them do, where do we want to see them go, and what are some interesting pairings that you haven't seen from the first season, like Anne and Ginny, or Jack and Claude.

Sadie: Yeah, and it works so well. In the first two episodes of the second season, there's a great line, “the heat and pressure boiling under the surface,” and that felt like such a perfect yet subtle way to give us emotionally what's going to be happening with all these characters and how they're handling their individual grief over Nick - especially their anger issues, like with Jack. How were you mapping out those character arcs and journeys through their grief?

Tracey Wigfield: When Nick dies at the end of season one, we wanted it to affect everyone differently, and kind of send them off on different story arcs in season two. And so for Jack, and this was a little bit something that we took from the original movie, there's a bunch of scenes with Alan Alda's character and where Carol Burnett complains, "You never get mad," and that seemed like an interesting and true thing about our version of Jack, and a lot of super nice people that I know, that it's like they're nice, they're nice, they're nice, until one thing snaps, [laughs] because they're holding other darker emotions below the surface.

We liked that idea of Jack's grief, because also, we didn't want the whole season to be about grief, and also grief manifests in so many different ways, and so we liked that idea for Jack that he is sort of holding in all this anger over both Nick, but also, what's going on in his marriage and his friend group, and trying to keep it all inside.

That naturally kind of gave us stuff to play for Kate, which also felt really relatable in marriage, that it's like when your husband or your wife is going through something, and maybe you're struggling too, it's like, how do you show up for them, and it's so easy to feel like I am only ever making it worse, [laughs] and how do you balance that with your own stuff that you're kind of struggling with?

Sadie: Much needed levity but this season is dealing with really heavy stuff too. When it came down to directing episodes and sharing those creative duties, how did you, Tracey, and Tina [Fey] choose who was writing and/or directing which episode? Did it come down to an emotional connection?

Lang: Some of these episodes, it's like 'you have to write this, and you have to direct it.' Tracey is a New Jersey girl through and through, and it was like, 'you have to write the New Jersey episode, and you have to direct it, because you know this world so well, and you will be able to pull out the funniest parts of it, or the most interesting parts.' I'm not from Italy, [laughs] but I do, really enjoy... I might be, out of the three of us the biggest sap or something...

Tracey: [laughs] That's a bad way of putting it... I think, in your writing you just connect to things emotionally really well.

Lang: I love writing a finale, and I like directing them. I like having… I don't know... there's that emotional catharsis that I really enjoy. I've directed both finales both years, and I think I just really enjoy that kind of pathos. [laughs]

And then I think, Tina… I don't really understand how these actors can direct while acting, it just feels so hard to me, but both Tina and Colman [Domingo] are extremely gifted at it. And Tina has been on 8 million sets, and there's no one as good as her in terms of comedy writing, and so, I think she chose one that had a lot of joke density, and also, I think, one that she felt excited about, in terms of just the relationship dynamics for these characters. Now that we've been renewed, we're talking about what do we want to do this next year...

Sadie: One of the most enjoyable character arcs from this second season was with Claude, and watching him come into his own back home in Italy. And then, for me, I felt so devastated that he made that decision to go back to Philly, and maybe losing that strength he got back while in Italy… Was that something you and the writers’ room always saw for his trajectory?

Tracey: Well, two things: one, if you interpreted it that way, then that's true too, but I feel like, yes, he went back to an old role, but it was out of more of a place of power and choice, where he is making a sacrifice for someone that he loves, and seeing Colman so emotional in that moment, and he's seeing this man he loves torn between his mother and his husband, and out of a place of strength, ‘I'm doing this for him.’ Did we know that from the beginning, Lang? We knew they wanted to go to Italy from the beginning.

Lang: We wanted to understand that Claude living in America has not just been easy breezy. It's hard to move to another country and be a part of another culture, and because of that, I think they've effortlessly kind of fallen into these roles.

I think what we were hoping to do is at the end of the seventh episode in the last season, he's like 'I don't want to go back to America' because he's afraid of returning to the version of himself that's in America, but then he finds a way to be Italian Claude in America. That's what we were hoping to achieve at the end - that's why he's like, 'I am Claude, and you will do as I say,' he now knows how to be a more powerful presence, even when he's not on his home turf.

Tracey: A thing that I think, we were talking about this yesterday in the room, that is interesting about this show, and shows that are about these long relationships and long marriages, is like it isn't exactly on most television shows, where it's, 'now he's working his way up, and he's the CEO,' is that how it is in your marriage? [laughs] How it is in mine is like we work through something, and then it's like, OK, we're good, we're good, and then we're like, ‘wait, we're having the same fucking fight again.’ [laughs]

The dynamic between Danny and Claude, I think, in this season, and in season three, as we're writing it now, we want there to be a change, and they are better and have evolved from season one, but it's also like they were in that dynamic because both of them were getting something out of it - so it's very easy.

Lang: And they're still the same people.  Sometimes we will get notes that are like, ‘we want to make sure not to go over the same territory,’ and it's like, got it. Yes, everyone should evolve, for story watching purposes, yes, we want to show something fresh and new, but at the same time, you're like, that's not how people are.

Sadie: Oh, 100% agree. I’m excited to see where Kate’s character goes in season three, especially after her emotional release on the last leg of the marathon with Jack – and so incredibly relatable, all of it. Another thing that stood out to me - the two donkey metaphor. I love how it comes full circle in that last episode. Was that something you and the other writer’s had planned out?

Lang: Some of that is like hive mind or something. It's like you pitch something initially as a joke, and it's like well, now Anne owns two donkeys. When we decided we wanted to do a flashback episode, it’s like, what are the bills we need to pay?

Obviously, Claude and Danny have this fight that they have misremembered, and they both kind of misremembered it a little bit, and that's sort of how it is in life, nobody quite has the accurate version of the story in their brain.

And then it's with the donkeys. What if Nick is the person who said the two donkeys. It became this theme that's about couples, and what if at the end Kate and Jack, say kind of without knowing or remembering that they're saying it, compared themselves to two donkeys, and they're sitting next to two donkeys...

Often with these kinds of things where you're making a little thread and you're referencing things, it comes out organically, it's rarely the plan from the beginning. It's usually a thing where something you know funny and interesting in the beginning, you remember later, and you're like, ‘well, what if we tied that together?’ Especially because our show, just the premise of it deals with time, and so we you're seeing people in different areas, in different places in different seasons - how do we connect these thematically to each other? So it's nice sometimes to call back things that you brought up before.

Sadie: Having worn multiple creative hats this last season, and now also having two seasons under your belt, as you embark on writing season three, what was an experience or moment that you've learned from that will carry over for you as both writers and directors?

Tracey: I think the show has made me a much better writer. In part because the room is so good, and I've never created a show with anyone before, and Lang's so good, and Tina's obviously so good, and I trust them both so much. It's that, but it's also I think just doing something different tonally than I've ever done before seemed scary, and I'm like, ‘Oh, this is just gonna be not funny and quiet,’… you can kind of cover bad writing with a million jokes, and I think Lang and Tina and I all feel very confident in our ability to write lots of jokes, but this is harder in a way - and  I mean harder to make things that feel real and feel funny. It's just a different skill that I think even if my next show was more of the 30 Rock kind of shows I've written before; I think it's just something I'll take with me.

Lang : I echo a lot of those feelings. I've learned a lot about just story. I think when you're in a hard comedy, like Tracey was saying, especially episodic comedy, where each episode is sort of contained and can you come up with sort of wacky, silly things. This one, it does feel like more of a math problem, but it feels like it's training a different part of my brain in a way that's great. It is always nice to stretch your wings and try new things, and I think I felt that way when I was like, ‘OK, I'll do a YA show with Never Have I Ever,’ but then once you do that, everyone's like, ‘Why don't you do more YA shows?’ [laughs] And you're like, ‘No, I want to do something else.’

This is sort of a tone I don't think I would have come up with on my own, and I'm very grateful to Tracey and Tina for allowing me to partner up with them, because it is very difficult, subtlety is difficult. It's very easy to be boring, and so I think we are always trying to make sure it's not boring, but it's grounded, and that people really relate to it.

Watch Season One and Two of The Four Seasons on Netflix.