Even before I could start my interview, Zach Woods is apologetic, “I am sorry Tiffany Haddish was supposed to be here, but she is stuck on a plane… so, you are going to have to be content with me and I am as heartbroken as you are.”
In an instant, I am reminded of Gabe Lewis and Jared Dunn, some of his memorable characters from The Office and Silicon Valley— morally upright and heartbreakingly honest. While the actor says he does not perceive himself as “usually uptight” like them, he admits that he gravitates towards characters who are slightly controlling because they are hilarious, “It is like that famous quote, ‘How do you make God laugh? Make plans.’ I think there is something very funny about people who are trying to enact their will in a world that is completely unreceptive to that. People who have fantasies of control are funny because they are setting themselves up to slip on the banana peel of their own life.”
But Zach does not want you to look at him as the definitive authority about his characters or career choices, so he immediately dismisses his analysis and quips, “Maybe it is just my limitations as an actor or the conservatism of Hollywood, we will never know. I am just happy to show up and play ball.”
Zach Woods in a still from ‘The Afterparty’ | Photo Credit: Apple TV+
In his latest outing, the second season of Apple TV+’s original TheAfterparty, Zach is playing the role of Edgar Minnow, an awkward tech titan who is content with playing Connect 4 on weekends and caring for his pet lizard, Roxana. Things take a mysterious turn when he is found dead on the morning after his wedding and Detective Danner (Tiffany) is tasked with finding the culprit. Each episode is dedicated to one of the characters present at the wedding and is fashioned after a famous film genre in order to narrate the events leading up to the murder in Rashomon style.
But since Edgar died, Zach missed out on having an episode dedicated to his character, “If there had been an episode from his perspective, it would have just been darkness for 30 minutes or hell, who knows? Depends on what you believe about the afterlife,” he jokes. This challenged him to shoot each episode keeping in mind how the character narrating it perceived him. But this came easy to the comedian, “I am viewing myself through the eyes of all the other characters… which is how I experience myself in the real world too. I have no internal identity. It is all just what I can assume from the people around me. Who am I? I have no idea. You tell me, please. I am desperate for your attention and approval. You know what I mean?” I slightly nod and respond, “I have a vague idea.” Zach cannot help but let out a chuckle.
However, Zach agrees that adapting the character to fit multiple genres while retaining the core essence is fundamental to the show and reveals that Chris Millner and Anthony King were adamant about making sure they are characters first and genres second. “We wanted the audience to feel connected to the people as opposed to feeling like we are playing archetypes from various genres. So I tried to nudge it in directions without fully reinventing the wheel.” He takes a brief pause to evaluate his answer and remarks, “What a dry answer that was!” But he is not one to wait for reassurances and continues.
“Of all the genres I had to shoot for, my favourite was the Jane Austen-esque Regency period one. When I was a kid, my mom was obsessed with Pride and Prejudice and she is adamant that the one featuring Colin Firth is the only legitimate film adaptation. And that the Keira Knightley one was not. My mom was a Jane Austen fascist so it was nice to be able to fulfil one of my mother’s dreams by occupying a pseudo 19th-Century world.”
When asked if he could adapt to the world of The Afterparty in their second season, he vents, “There’s a vicious hazing process where actors from the first season did a lot of weird frat rituals. Ben Schwartz made me chug Natty Ice until I had alcohol poisoning, Ayden Mayeri put my head in the toilet — it was horrendous and I encourage people to stand up to that kind of bullying in a way that I did not.”
Watching Zach nail his comedic timing in an unscripted interview, I could not help but ask how he aced it with a giant ensemble on the set. In true Zach fashion, he is quick to downplay his skill, “One of the greatest privileges of my life is that I do not nail my comedic timing. When you pre-grieve all the comedic missteps, it is quite a relaxing shoot.” He continues, “I think it is the editor who makes the timing work. There is a degree to which you can do it on set but a lot of it is in the cut. And I think editors do not get enough credit for it.”
Talking about people behind the scenes, I could not let Zach go without discussing the WGA (Writers Guild of America) strike. “I have reverence and adoration for writers and they have my full and enthusiastic support. On a show like this, which is a murder mystery told from different characters’ perspectives across genres, actors including myself, often go up to the writers and ask them all sorts of questions about the plot even though we have all read the script a bunch of times. We are completely marooned without them; as an actor, if I had to make up my own dialogue, which as I am currently demonstrating, would not go well,” he snickers and signs off.
