Only Murders In The Building director Cherien Dabis breaks down that acclaimed silent episode
The first-time Emmy nominee talks about season 1's "The Boy From 6B" and her work to accurately represent the deaf community
No one expected Hulu’s witty whodunit Only Murders In The Building to deliver a gut-punching, riveting silent episode. Yet, that’s exactly what “The Boy From 6B” is. The first season’s standout installment shifts the spotlight from amateur sleuths and rookie true-crime podcast hosts Mabel Mora (Selena Gomez), Oliver Putnam (Martin Short), and Charles Haden-Savage (Martin) to one of their top suspects, Theo Dimas (James Caverly).
As a deaf character, the focus on Theo’s perspective results in no spoken dialogue from any of the actors, a creative decision that tightens the narrative and helps the audience become fully immersed in Theo’s point of view. That episode’s director, Cherien Dabis, whose past TV credits include Ramy, Ozark, and The Sinner, received her first Emmy nomination for Outstanding Director in a Comedy Series for it. And if she nabs the award, the Palestinian American will be the first woman of color to win the category. Dabis spoke with The A.V. Club about the challenges and joys of helming “The Boy From 6B,” how she wanted to portray the deaf community, and the significance of her potentially historic win.
The A.V. Club: “The Boy From 6B” was your first Only Murders In The Building episode, so what was the prep work involved as you joined the team and how was it different from, say, the other half-hour comedy you just worked on, Ramy?
Cherien Dabis: Every new show is a whole set of new people and a new language. Ramy was so in my wheelhouse in a way. It was like getting back to my roots. Hiam Abbass was in both of my features, so this was our third time working together. Ramy felt like family. And then moving on to OMITB was like, “Okay, here’s a whole new impressive cast and circumstances.” We got the scripts far in advance; they were running a pretty tight ship, which is amazing for a show in its first season where the writers are usually still finding the tone and voice of the show. With this one, they strongly knew what the show was right out of the gate. The only other time I’ve gotten scripts in advance was Ozark. It’s great because I had a chance to read “The Boy From 6B” very early and talk to the showrunner about early questions and concerns.
I wanted to ground the episode and make sure it felt authentic. This was a bit of a capsule episode, so there was more creative freedom, too. You get the privilege of steering a little away from the style of the show. I love doing those kinds of episodes that let me leave my stamp on it and leave a mark. This was a silent episode, so things needed to be more hands-on than normal. I got in touch with the composer, Siddhartha Khosla [nominated for three Emmys this year], very early. I connected with James Caverly, who plays the narrator, Theo, and got him involved. I needed to do justice to representing a community that’s not my own, but I understand to a degree because I come from an underrepresented community myself. I was allowed to commit to the strong direction choices I want to make. It’s rare, and the episode wouldn’t be as strong if it didn’t happen.
AVC: What were some of the things you wanted to ensure you were able to portray about the deaf community and how did you work towards it with people like James Caverly?
CD: I wanted to understand from James what he felt good authentic portrayals of the deaf community were and weren’t. It was an education for me to understand the misconceptions and what works. For example, I learned lip reading is not so easy; it’s really only effective like 30 percent of the time. The believability of him being able to lip read, we had a lot of conversations about that. I wanted to block all the actors so that it’s realistic when they’re moving about a scene, but Theo can still read their lips. I wanted to get it right and make it not feel staged. I also didn’t want it to seem like he was overly lip-reading or understanding all the words. Originally we were going to have the subtitles missing some words so the audience could only read what Theo picked up. But we experimented and tried different things out.
James said his superpower is he sees or notices things your average person wouldn’t. He has that ability to notice details, and I loved and wanted to portray that. It can really help us get inside Theo’s head, and we need to see the world the way he sees it. So we needed to be up close and in his shoes. So we shot his point-of-view subjectively with a long lens and looked back at him through close-ups to exaggerate his sense of disturbance at what was happening around him. I wanted to authentically communicate his world view, basically.
AVC: “The Boy From 6B” has two parallel timelines. What was that like, filming the past and present and tying them together?
CD: I didn’t want Theo to come across as a superficial villain and wanted to give him depth. I wanted to do it justice because that’s how it was written. The two timelines were interesting because, in the present, you could see Theo as more of a villain, but in the past, you come to learn a lot about his depths and the fact that he accidentally hurt the person he was in love with. You understand the pain he felt at wanting to be with someone who kind of laughed at him and mocked him. Your heart goes out to him, and you understand the isolation he feels in the present, and that’s really what I wanted to capture. He has only his father and no community or friends. The timelines allowed us to understand him and have sympathy.
AVC: The episode is very important in the sense of looking at season one as a whole because it has big reveals. Was that adding more pressure?
CD: It was, actually. The moment I realized this episode has the reveal of what happened to Zoe, as a director, I wanted ample time to film it and [make] the stunt of her falling off the roof to be believable. It had to really feel like an accident and be shocking. Siddhartha did such a good job with the score at that moment, and James’ performance is so gut-wrenching in particular.
AVC: Can you talk about what it was like to get the other actors to convey so much with their expressions instead of leaning on dialogue?
CD: It was great but very challenging. I was worried about the actors feeling like they needed to mouth words or do intense indicating things like pointing, to the point where it might’ve felt gimmicky. I wanted to find a way to ground the silence, especially with the hearing characters. When I first read the script, I understood why we’re not hearing anything from Theo’s point of view, but it was striking to see even the other actors not having spoken dialogue. What I learned in this process was I needed to give them permission and encourage them to speak and say, “Feel free to laugh or grunt or just say something if you want to.” The moment we decided we would always do a take with the freedom to speak a little, they kind of fell into it more organically because then it was like, “Oh, right, we can make sounds to express ourselves.”
The writers also found clever situations to put characters like Charles, Jan, Mabel, and Oliver in. We worked together to ground all of those scenes, like with Charles and Jan’s date. Those moments changed quite a bit as we got closer to understanding what this date is supposed to be. We’re supposed to see the awkward silent moments in between the dialogue we’re not hearing; that’s the concept. It took a little bit of improv, but it was an in-depth process.
AVC: What was it like to get that Emmy nomination for this episode? How’d you react when you found out?
CD: I was really shocked. My husband was the first to find out. He went looking for it on the website, and then I heard him shout it from the next room. I just kept saying, “No, no, no.” I was confused and stunned. The episode had gotten a lot of love and critical acclaim, but even still, there’s so much TV out there. I still thought it was a long shot for it to rise to the top and be nominated. I also just learned that if I were to win, I’d be the first woman of color to win in this category, which is jaw-dropping in itself.
AVC: I’m glad you bring that up because this category has five of seven women nominees, but only 13 women are nominated as opposed to 32 men across the seven directing categories. I wonder how that stat makes you feel?
CD: On the one hand, it’s shocking to go and ask, “How did I get to be the person who could have this historic win?” I’m baffled. And I’m baffled that in all these years, it’s never happened? Yet we’ve known this, and we’re fighting this. I’ve experienced things in my career that makes it clear we’re not there and why it hasn’t happened, especially for women of color. We’re maybe a bit closer for women in general, but not women of color. It’s baffling, but I get it. It’s part of the work we have to do right now to break down these barriers as communities that have been underrepresented or, at times, dangerously misrepresented. I have no desire to do work that isn’t about representing people who are often invisible to the screen and popular culture. We need change and [to] not just provide lip service, which happens a lot in this industry.