What would you do if everyone you ever slept with started dying? That’s the premise of a new TV show called Laid, starring Stephanie Hsu of Everything Everywhere All at Once (and other things), and Zosia Mamet of Girls (and other things). 

Written by Nahnatchka Khan and Sally Bradford McKenna, it’s based on a 2011 Australian show with the same concept and name, which admittedly, I haven’t seen. But I have seen seven episodes of the American version, and it’s the perfect kind of show to binge on a dusty Sunday: fun, funny, a little fucked up. 

In her first leading TV role, Stephanie does a great job as Ruby at making you like someone who is objectively quite unlikeable (no spoilers, but one particularly bad decision early on is the kind that, if your friend did it in real life, would probably make you exile her forever).

Meanwhile, Zosia – as Ruby’s best friend AJ – tries to figure out why all these men are dying with the dedicated enthusiasm of someone who drifts to sleep at night listening to podcasts about serial killers.

We caught up with the pair for 10 minutes, early one morning, to talk limericks, trust falls and sex timelines. 

Laid streams on TVNZ 2 and TVNZ+ from March 7

Georgie: You guys play best friends in the film, which is that central relationship – I mean TV show, not film...

Stephanie: How early is it? 

It’s 8.30 in the morning, which I know is a very normal time for people to be awake, but talking on camera is always a different story. 

Zosia: I'm not a morning person, so I get it.

Great. Thank you. So: on the TV show, did you guys do anything before filming to help establish that relationship? Any classic bonding experiences? 

Zosia: We didn't do any bonding really beforehand, like any hardcore bonding. No trust falls or anything. Honestly, it was a very ambitious schedule. We shot eight episodes in eight weeks, and as you've seen, there is a lot of dialogue. But we did start to do a lot of hanging out as the show went on, and we started to feel more comfortable with the workload. We went on some hikes all together. We were in Vancouver, and the hikes were so exquisite. We're both very big nature lovers, so that was a lot of fun. And we went on some great dinners, and we would run lines together, which was really, really helpful. 

Stephanie: We wrote a limerick on set once.

Zosia: Oh! Oh! Steph came up with the most amazing idea, which was not just bonding between us, but I think... 

Steph: It was a co-idea.

Zosia: I feel like it was your idea. But anyways, she came up with this idea about dress up Fridays, a dress up competition, and the person who won got to pick the theme for the following week. So there was a lot of crew bonding as well. But yeah, I would say the chemistry was just sort of just sort of there organically. 

Steph: Wait, but we wrote a limerick. 

Zosia: Oh we did! We did! We wrote a limerick. 

Steph: We got to choose the winner for the first week, because we came up with the theme for the first week – which was dress like your grandma, dress like your grandparent. So we wrote  a limerick on set. This was like week two, so our brains just had just a little bit more space to squeeze out our rhyme.

Zosia: To announce the winner we wrote a limerick, and we delivered it over the walkies at lunch time.

Do you remember it? 

Stephanie: No, but they have it. 

Zosia: Oh yeah so, the hair department won, and they laminated the limerick and put it up in the hair and makeup trailer.

I feel like everyone always talks about the people on screen's relationships, but there’s also all the crew working on these sets for an intense period of time. Did you enjoy creating a vibe there?

Stephanie: Definitely. And I would say that, for me, this was my first time getting to be a producer, and number one on the call sheet, meaning I get a little say in being like, ‘Wouldn't it be fun if...?’

Working on Everything Everywhere [all at Once] with the Daniels, we had warm ups every single morning. We gave out awards at the end of every week to someone in the crew who was technically like, 'below the line,' as they say. [Note: above the line refers to the people who do the ‘creative’ development of a show/film, like the director, producer and principal cast. Below the line people are crew who work on the more technical side of things, like lighting, cameras, costume, etc].

But we were sort of disrupting the concept of even above or below the line. And usually on set, everybody's so stressed about time, and time is money. But I really found in working in that way that everybody felt so valued, it made it so much more fun. Because it always gets stressful, but if you know that you have a room full of people who have your back and value you, that you can really get through the hard parts. So it was really exciting to be able to bring that to the culture of our set. It was really fun. 

Did you watch the Australian version of the show first? 

Zosia: Neither of us have seen it yet. I think sometimes it's tricky when you're remaking something. And when I met with Natch and Sally [writers Nahnatchka Khan and Sally Bradford McKenna], they were like, ‘We're very much mining the structure, the sort of facade of the plot from the Australian show. But we're taking a pretty sharp left turn pretty soon. So maybe don't watch it.’

But we were both saying we want to watch it now. I think it's tricky when you remake something, because you want to do the original justice, but you also kind of want to put your own stamp on it. And I think sometimes it's easier to do that in a bit of a vacuum, at least in my opinion. 

This show obviously really captures the kind of, like, messed up-ness of modern dating. Like there's that romcom element, and then also there's that, y’know, death element. How did you strike a balance in finding that tone? 

Stephanie: My favorite thing so far is getting interviewed and being like, who's single? Because it's when people are like, you know, 'because, like, dating is, um, just like, really crazy'. I'm like, interesting. [Writer’s note: I am in fact in a happy relationship, now - though I was very much single for the first 27 years of my life].

But yeah, in terms of the tone, so much of it, I have to say, is on the page. And Sally and Natch just really created such an incredible arc for the series, and wrote such funny, funny jokes. All of our writers [did]. And we had to kind of just surrender to the rollercoaster of this story and allow it to kind of be its own thing. It's hard to point to, I think, what the tone is like. There's aspects of it that are like different shows we've seen. But I think when we were making it, we just had no choice but to kind of trust fall into it...

Obviously, it's about someone who goes back through their sex timeline, which is a traumatic thing for anyone to do.

Stephanie: Tell us more. 

Zosia: Yeah, the interview shifts. 

Ideally not.

Zosia: She's like, 'I'm out, bye.'

This was a lovely interview thanks so much bye! But no, back to you guys. Did it bring out those feelings for you? Or were you like, ‘I'm gonna try and avoid it.’

Zosia: We got asked earlier, ‘What we would do if this happened to us?’ We both were like, oh, we actually haven't done that mental exercise. I chose the path of avoidance while shooting. I did not play out that potential traumatic experience. I think I probably never will.

Stephanie: That's nice. [Laughs]. I'm not a method actor, but you're reading these scripts, and you have to think about, oh, what is that like? Or, how can I relate to that? And it was sort of alarming, I would say, about midway through the season, when a lot of people in my own woodwork started coming through, the ghosts of my past. They're all still alive. But there are many. And yeah, it was a little bit inevitable. It was surprising how inevitable it was.

Are there qualities your characters have that you kind of admire and wish you had in your own day to day life? 

Zosia: I think AJ is better at sort of not caring what other people think in a way that I am maybe not. And I think she's better at solving crimes. My brain doesn't work that way. Girl loves a puzzle, and she's very good at solving them, and I can barely do basic math. So I feel like I would enjoy that. I would enjoy being better at Wordle, which I think she probably is. She's probably very good at Wordle. But I've gotten to play a lot of characters who very much march to their own rhythm, and I think I do, but maybe not as unabashedly as they do. Which I aspire to.