Only Murders In The Building cranks up the star power in fourth season trailer

Hollywood was always encroaching at the edges of Only Murders In The Building and its quirky New York world. Charles-Haden Savage (Steve Martin) is a semi-famous actor, and the Arconia tends to attract high brow residents (Sting, Amy Schumer, and movie star Ben Glenroy, a.k.a. Paul Rudd). After years of cleverly deployed cameos (like last season’s Matthew Broderick episode), the Only Murders In The Building fourth season trailer has gone full Hollywood with a cameo parade of actors-playing-themselves and actors-playing-characters. And, well, with an actual trip to Hollywood. 

The Only Murders In The Building trailer is about as star-studded as a trailer can be post-Barbenheimer. First there’s our heroes, Charles, Oliver (Martin Short), and Mabel (Selena Gomez). Plus we’ve got Eugene Levy, Eva Longoria, and Zach Galifanakis playing themselves studying to play Charles, Oliver, and Mabel. They’re going full method, too, attempting to help solve the mystery of the latest murder of Charles’ stunt double Sazz (Jane Lynch). Except the true target might’ve been Charles himself, opening up the suspect list to his neighbors from the Arconia’s West Tower, including Richard Kind and Kumail Nanjiani (seemingly playing characters, not themselves). 

Elsewhere, there’s Meryl Streep, returning as the now-successful actor Loretta to proclaim “Actors are investigators,” which is more or less the tagline for the series. Joining her in the Oscar-winning ranks is Da’Vine Joy Randolph, who promised The A.V. Club there were “very strong conversations about figuring out how to get me involved” in the fourth season. (“I will do it until they cancel this thing. I will do it,” she told us in 2023.) Then there’s funny ladies Molly Shannon as a Hollywood exec and Melissa McCarthy as Charles’ sister who lives on Long Island. McCarthy is already making a strong case for the best line reading of the season with her interpretation of the word “podcast.”

All in all, there’s a lot of glitz and glamor in the OMITB trailer, though one worries that the show may become a little overstuffed. We don’t want to eclipse what makes the show really special, which is the dynamic of the core trio. However, the meta turn does already have its pleasures, like hearing Oliver’s movements described in the script as a “septuagenarian Peter Pan or a male Tinker Bell.” The beloved Emmy-nominated series returns for the fourth season on August 27, with new episodes streaming every Tuesday.