A woman tries to figure out why her ex-boyfriends are mysteriously dying in dark comedy Laid
Like many single women in their 30s, Ruby Yao (Stephanie Hsu, Everything Everywhere All At Once) is used to finding herself at the centre of bad dating stories. In many of her relationships, the chaos is almost by design. But when she becomes the common denominator for men who suddenly start dying, Ruby has to figure out why having sexual relations with her is placing guys in immediate danger. And, if and when she finds the one, will Ruby have to sacrifice true love to avoid bloody murder?
If the concept of Laid sounds absurd, rest assured that in the hands of sitcom veterans Nahnatchka Khan (Don’t Trust the B—- in Apartment 23) and Sally Bradford McKenna (The Goldbergs) this exploration of modern love is both hilarious and relatable. “Because we have this high concept, we can play everything else against that,” says Khan. “[The deaths are] the big mystery, but, meanwhile, the characters and the relationships are the things that kind of sneak up and make you care about and root for these people. The high-low combo, for us, was key to being able to pull off these kinds of stories, and really have it feel grounded while this ‘supernatural’ thing is happening to her.“
In her quest to solve this lethal mystery, Ruby and her best friend and roommate AJ (Zosia Mamet, Girls) create Ruby’s sex timeline in an attempt to find the guys of her past and warn them. But the revelations that these interactions bring with them are a surprise to Ruby. “It’s not really about the partners, it’s about you having to confront the person that you were during all of that, and look back at your past,” says McKenna. “From the beginning, we’ve always returned to the idea of, ‘What if this big, crazy thing were happening to you?’ We did it in our pitch, even. We said, ‘What if you had to go back to the person you lost your virginity to, and confront them?’ But while it’s a big concept, we play it so grounded.”
For Hsu, Laid was also a story about finding love in a world that has been fed a certain image of what romance should look like. “This is a comedy, and Ruby is an ‘antihero hero’ who is a little bit of a mess when it comes to love,” says Hsu. “But I think the question that she’s asking [throughout the show] is a question that a lot of people I know are asking — especially people who are in the contemporary dating-sphere — which is: How do you know when you know? If everything that we saw growing up was the primetime era of Nora Ephron, that is just not how it is out there for everybody.” Khan concurs with her leading lady. “You still have this fantasy that you’ve maybe grown up with and have held onto,” she says. “[We were] really wanting to show the idea of, ‘The experience is not, necessarily, the one you thought you would have.’ ”
The series also delves into the relationship between female friends, a subject matter Mamet is deeply familiar with through her work. “Female friendship throughout your life, especially those that you’ve made when you’re quite young, is a really complicated, and also an important relationship,” she says. “Oftentimes, it can offer more than what your romantic partner gives you. It can also create — like with AJ and Ruby — this very co-dependent, overly tangled situation. And sometimes, when someone is either finding romantic love or being pulled away in some way, it can cause this fissure between you that feels very threatening, because you’re like, ‘Wait, this is my constant, this is my person.’ Because we don’t approach friendship in the same way that we do romantic relationships — like couples’ therapy — it’s a surprising thing to be faced with.”
Though Ruby evolves with every relationship she is forced to examine, her actions in the past and present make her an occasionally unsympathetic protagonist. But with Hsu at the helm, Khan and McKenna feel they can take the character on any journey and trust that the audience will follow. “We were huge fans of hers before, and when we heard she had read the script and was interested, we were beyond thrilled,” says McKenna. “We could not think of someone who could pull this off better. The character is inherently a little bit unlikable — likably unlikable — so, we knew we needed an actress that you immediately liked and immediately are rooting for. That’s exactly what she is. She’s able to be as funny as we need her to be and also pull off the more emotional, dramatic moments. She did it all.”
Laid airs Monday, March 31 on W Network