Sex, Friends, and San Francisco: Discover HBO's New Series "Looking"

Image via Complex Original

Created by Michael Lannan (producer of James Franco's Interior. Leather Bar.), director Andrew Haigh joined the project at the top of last year. Soon after writing the pilot, based on Lannan's short film, Lorimer, about the complexities of an interracial gay couple in Brooklyn, the series was picked up by HBO in May of 2013. Production officially began last September.

Andrew Haigh: For me, it was just wanting to tell a realistic story, as I saw it, about three gay people and three gay friends. I didn’t want to see something that was like an after-school special about gay issues. Hopefully you forget that they're gay and you realize that it's something a little bit deeper than that—it's about people in general.

Jonathan Groff: One of the most interesting things about the show is that it's a show about a bunch of gay characters, but there are no coming out stories. They're men in their 30s and 40s who are comfortable with their sexuality. The problems that they deal with have to do with their relationships, their work, and their friendships. That’s not only a reflection of where we are at now in the world, but it also makes the show even more relatable to the audience.

Actually, the friends that I've shown the show to have been surprised that there's sex in it. There are moments where you see characters being intimate with each other and it's not done in a salacious way, which what Andrew Haigh captured in Weekend. He deals with sexuality in a very authentic and frank way. Sometimes sexual intimacy is very beautiful, very connected, and very emotional, and other times it's comedic. They're not just people ripping each others' clothes off.

Haigh: The title was a nightmare to come up with. We tried to find one that felt inclusive, and that wasn’t some cheap sexual innuendo. Ultimately, it's just about what these guys were looking for, what they needed, and the struggle that they face every day.

Handing off your passion project to a bunch of strangers isn't easy. Luckily, with the help of Carmen Cuba, the go-to casting director for Steven Soderbergh, Andrew Haigh and Michael Lannan found the perfect people—Jonathan Groff, Frankie J. Alvarez, Murray Bartlett—to bring their fictional darlings to life. 

Haigh: Casting is the scariest part of the process because you just hope and pray that you're going to get someone who will fulfill what you've envisioned. We saw loads of people, but these three have great chemistry together.

Michael's own friends and experiences were the starting points for the characters. Then we sat down after the pilot was made and we came up with their storylines. We asked ourselves, “Where do we want these characters to go? How can we find the  most interesting stories to tell about them?” No matter what, it was always about these three characters who, despite having different outlooks on life, were still really good friends.

Groff: The biggest draw for me was that I was a huge fan of Andrew's movie Weekend. When I found out he was directing the show, I thought, “Yeah, I want to get in a room with that guy and audition for him."

In terms of relating to my character, as an actor I've never been a person who consciously used my real life in my acting, like some people think about their dog dying to be able to cry in a scene. I've always operated from a place of imagination. When I got this script and this character, I relied on the material and my fellow actors and Andrew to immerse myself in Patrick. So any sort of personal similarities or traits that are reminiscent of me are completely subconscious.

If you're playing friends on screen, it doesn't hurt to put some effort into actually being friends off screen. To get their chemistry right, Groff, Alvarez, Bartlett, and the rest of the crew made it a point spend some time together off set.

Groff: From the moment at the screen-test where I met Murray and Frankie, who play Dom and Agustin on the show, we had an instant rapport. We went to San Francisco together two weeks before production started and spent a lot of time hanging out at the apartment in the city Murray rented.

One of the best times we had was when we all went out to sing karaoke. Joe Swanberg, who directed episode six, sang Joe Cocker's "A Little Help from My Friends." That was his big tour de force number. Our cinematographer, Reed Morano, was our ringer. We carted her out at the end to sing "It’s Oh So Quiet" by Bjork. That was her go-to, and she gave a full performance. The guy at the karaoke place said her performance to that song was the greatest performance that he has ever seen.

As for me, I get too anxious at karaoke. Because I sing on Broadway and concerts and stuff, I get so worried about whether it would be in my key or whether I could hear the band. It feels just too much like work to me, but I love watching other people sing. [Laughs.]

This show isn't Friends. It's not selling you New York City for 10 years, when really it's spent its entire run on a soundstage in Burbank. Looking is born and bred in San Francisco, drunk background extras included.

Groff: The fact that we shot on location really, subconsciously, informed our choices and informed our acting and the way that we related to each other.

We walked around the city a lot. There was a national gamers convention going on when we were shooting the pilot. We saw and talked to all of the video game programmers, which helped my character. Also, we shot on location at The Stud and went back there during our free time. I am also an avid bike rider, and San Francisco is a real biking town, so I biked to and from work everyday. My thighs were twice the size after that because of the hills. [Laughs.]

The people in town were really supportive. Sometimes people would walk by while we were shooting something and we'd say, “Hey, do you want to be in the background of our show because you are actually from San Francisco and walking down the street?” And they'd do it.

Haigh: A few drunk people were shouting at us when we were filming, but a lot of our crew was San Francisco-based and they don’t seem to have a huge amount of production down there. We've yet see what the gay community there feels about the show, but hopefully it will feel that it presents what life can be like in San Francisco.

The series has gotten non-stop comparisons to Lena Dunham's Girls. Is it warranted? Maybe. Who cares? Groff and Haigh have this to say.

Groff: I've seen every episode of Girls and I've seen every episode of Sex and The City and I love those shows so much that I am excited that it's being compared to either of them. There's potentially audience crossover if you like those shows, because all three of them are about the complexities of relationships and finding love and true friendships.

Once people watch Looking, they'll find out that the tone and the style and the writing of the show are very different from Sex and the City and Girls. But I don’t know, I am kind of giddy about the comparisons.

Haigh: The comparison's inevitable. People like to define something before it comes out, just because it's easier to put it in a little box. I don’t mind it. Girls is a great show but ours is different—different age group, different tone. If there's one similarity, it's that we're both trying to give authentic portraits about a group of friends. But people will see that Looking has its own identity.

Looking isn't trying to break new ground. It's just trying to be representative of gay culture right now.

Haigh: Fingers crossed that the show will resonate, but I think it's coming out at a great time in history. Not only has the television landscape changed, but so have the situations and the choices of gay people.

These characters have choices now that they wouldn't have had 10 years ago. They can be much more open about their sexuality, they can get married, and they can have children. Having more choices doesn't necessarily mean more happiness, it means that there are more decisions to make. Discussing and exploring that a little bit in the show is exciting, liberating, and incredible, but it can also be daunting.

Groff: Who knows what's going to happen and what people are going to say? I just know that I feel really proud of the show. I remember being in eighth grade and seeing the big billboard for Will and Grace. I didn’t necessarily feel like I was a Will or I was a Jack, but as a kid in a small town, seeing that there were gay characters on television made me feel a little less alone. If this show was able to do that for somebody, then that would be amazing.