In the previous two seasons of HBO Max’s “Search Party,” it’s felt as if Dory Sief (Alia Shawkat) has existed within a different genre inside the show. The show’s protagonist has found herself experiencing a courtroom drama as well a “Misery”-like kidnapping thriller as an outgrowth of her initial folly in tracking down a missing acquaintance. These assignments have required the actress to play the authenticity of the situation while also staying true to the off-kilter satirical tone established by showrunners Charles Rogers and Sarah-Violet Bliss.
For the show’s final season, thankfully, Dory gets to share the screen once more with her merry band of millennial mates. Season 5 of “Search Party” once again takes the character in a surprising yet consistent new direction as she emerges from her near-death experience. Dory’s embrace of dubious wellness culture and flowery “therapy-speak,” broadcast far and wide through her social media channels, provides an organic vessel for the show to explore the question since its pilot aired in 2016: how can someone be altruistic in a world and generation that’s become increasingly self-obsessed?
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Shawkat filled us in on the natural development of Dory to this point and how it fits into the show’s journey over the course of five seasons. She also reflects on how “Search Party” has changed over the course of its run, as well as how it’s changed her as an artist and person.
Was this always the plan for Dory after Season 4 wrapped, or did COVID alter the trajectory?
Weirdly, it didn’t because we finished season four in January 2020. So when the ol’ COVID hit, it was our regular timeline. But obviously, it affected the writers’ room, I would think. At the same time, two years ago when we finished season four, they had always talked about if we came back again [that] this was the idea for season five. We never know, season to season, if it’s going to be the last. I’m so glad season four wasn’t the last. As much as I liked it, it was very heavy. We needed the whole group back together for a couple more laughs. We definitely get that in this season.
Could the way Dory finds a new lease on life, ironically, through her death be how the show addresses the pandemic? Because the seasons pick up right after each other, I don’t think it’s 2020 in the world of the show yet.
Yeah, you’re right, I guess it is kind of! Because we really pick up right where we left off, Charles [Rogers] was talking about how our timeline is so weird the other day. We’re actually in 2018 or something. I think the whole show has always been pretty prescient without really meaning to be. This season is definitely pretty relevant to what’s happening right now.
Do you have much input into how Dory shifts between seasons?
I’m definitely involved in the sense that I go to the writers’ room a couple of times while they’re working on the season, just to hear about the ideas and the arc. I try to speak for Dory. I don’t channel her or anything, but I try and help break down like character’s arc and how it relates to everybody else just because storylines sometimes set the action in motion for the year. And then, when we’re on set, we’re always still trying to shape it and make it specific and realistic. The writers are so amazing, and Charles and S-V have such wild imaginations. I feel like every season, they just drop a huge challenge in my lap. I’m like, “I don’t know if I can make this work!” And they’re like, “Yeah, you can! Don’t worry about it.” It’s always a bit of a challenge every year to try and land everything. I find that Dory is actually the most realistic and serious in the bunch, but she allows the rest of the story to fly. I just try to keep it as grounded as I can in this surreal world.
Has Dory’s instinct in Season 5 to become an Instagram Live-forward influencer type forced you to recalibrate your performance at all? Especially after the last two seasons, the character does feel more overtly comedic.
It was fun to have Dory be someone who is a little more expressive, jokey, and actually smiling and laughing all the time, which she hasn’t done in the four seasons leading up. But I think that that’s part of the ying-yang of the whole show. Every season she’s making such a sharp left or right turn. I definitely want to still keep her grounded but, at the same time, have her be able to fill up a space. In a way, this last season is how she always wanted to see herself: as someone who is happy, enlightened, and productive. Someone who could be on a stage and give a TED Talk because that’s a “successful” person. I think she’s trying to play that character now – and believing it. She’s like, “I am finally a successful, awakened, connected human.” We’ll see how far that gets her!
And the response to this from her three other friends is that being this happy is just insanity.
Right! [laughs] That actually makes a lot more sense [to them]. They’re like, “We need to commit her as soon as humanly possible.” But then when you get a famous person on board who says she makes sense, and they’re like, “Okay, yeah, yeah!”
Did this season being the final one help at all with playing up the theme of how the show’s characters have aged into adulthood? There’s a reflectiveness that feels both fitting for where the show is and also where millennials are as a generation at a crossroads.
We did know pretty certainly this was the last season. We kind of ended up destroying the world, and it definitely wraps up in a way that felt right for our show. I think that anytime when you finally know this is the end of something, you naturally reflect differently on everything. It’s like we all know we’re gonna die, but no one’s like, “You’re dying on Friday,” and now I’m gonna have a moment to reflect on my life. All of us as creative actors and writers have changed so much during the show. I mean, just personally, two people have had babies, people got married, bought homes … all these things that are very adult, and we can’t believe it. We’re like, “Wow, when we met, we were all fuck-ups.” And some of us still are, you know! As for the show, seeing these characters change so much and yet, at the same time, not change at all has been a really beautiful comment on this strange millennial generation’s desire to find out who you are more than anything – and yet failing. Maybe realizing that you’re being very selfish and you haven’t actually helped anybody is a sad trajectory. I’m really proud of the show in that way. It’s a really beautiful, satirical comment on this generation.
One thing that’s happened over the lifetime of the show is the rise of “Gen Z” as a cultural force. Was that at all something you were tracking and thinking about incorporating?
They slightly become a part of the narrative as we end up hiring all these influencers to promote the pill. And a lot of those actors and comedians are actual Instagram stars; some are definitely younger and are of Gen Z. Charles and S-V [Sarah-Violet Bliss] always have a finger on the pulse of what’s happening and just how things are changing. So, it’s never like, “We’re just about millennials!” It’s about what’s just happening at the time in general and how we fit how these characters fit into it. For me, I’m on Instagram, but I try not to be as much as possible. I have some Gen Z friends who will tell me what’s going on, I guess. Always good to have a few in your back pocket!
The show is always so great at changing directions, but it does so in a way that I think is rare — it avoids getting caught up in the hype or think-piece cycle. How do you all tune that out and go your own way?
I give a lot of credit to Charles, S-V, and the writers. But the cast, too, we all do feel like we’ve been making this show a little bit in a vacuum. Even though people do watch it – and I think more people have seen it since it’s been on HBO Max – it still doesn’t have the hype of a “Succession” or whatever these shows are that everybody’s talking about and watching. It doesn’t have that kind of frenzied energy around it, so it feels very personal still. Like we’re just making it for us. We also made two seasons that didn’t air for a while because of the HBO Max transition, so it really felt like we were making it in a vacuum because we were off the air for two and a half years. And we were like, “I guess we’re just making a TV show where no one’s watching it. Does it exist?” But looking back on it, it created this strength and confidence in our own voices. I think it’s rare when you make something, especially a television show, where you are able to tune out [those] voices. Making the show, we were always feeling like the underdog not getting awards and all these things that we were like, “Oh, that would be cool!” But, at the same time, the giveback is that we were able to make the exact show that we wanted and not change any of it for anybody. That part I’m so proud of because that’s all that matters. Time will pass, and the show will still hold up.
It’s good to feel like the work is its own reward rather than needing external validators.
Exactly. Our egos are sensitive, but yeah, that is all that matters!
Do you feel a sense of closure on the character of Dory after living with her for all these years?
I do. When we were shooting the last episode of the season, we had a collective moment where it finally landed on us because we were just so busy. You just keep working, and all of a sudden it just hit in this one scene. It felt really good to take a moment to be like, “Wow, this has been a huge part of my life, growing up on it in a way in my twenties.” I’m really proud of all the different directions Dory got to go in and what we got to see of her. I learned what I needed to about this character because, as cheesy as it sounds, every character I play teaches me something about myself. I feel like that part of the self-discovery, wanting to please people, wanting to define an answer to things, wanting to help but not helping, all those qualities in Dory that were so fun to play and challenging I’m ready to let go of a little bit. I’m like, “Okay, we’ve done that. I’ve done that character.”
You’ve said that “Arrested Development” changed the way you picked projects because once you had material that great, you weren’t as keen on taking things that were merely good. Has the process of producing and starring in “Search Party” reoriented your artistic compass in the same way?
Yes, definitely. I would say more so because, as important as “Arrested Development” was, I was very young and taking it as it was. It helped build my creative timing, how to read scripts, those kinds of things. But “Search Party” did that times ten in the sense that I was a lot more active and creatively producing on set, which pretty much just means that we’re just very involved. I’m working so closely with Charles, S-V, the other cast members, the DPs Jonathan Furmanski and Pedro Gómez Milán. We all became so close with all the production heads, and we really created this thing together. That felt amazing. It also taught me how to make TV on a whole other level. I’ve been acting since I was really young, but I grew the most on this show. I directed my first episode of TV on this show. I’ve done the most challenging scenes as an actor on the show.
But what it taught me the most was learning how to trust my instincts with confidence. Sometimes you walk on a set, and it’s intimidating. As long as I’ve been doing this, I still am kind of like, “Hey, just here do my job! I’ll say the lines and get out of here.” Whereas on this show, I’m able to show up and really take up the space confidently. I can be like, “I don’t like this, can we make sure this is different? I want this…” We all creatively carve it down to the essence of what we want it to be, and that taught me so much confidence to have on other sets. To know that I could do that and I didn’t just have to be someone for hire, I’ll be eternally grateful to “Search Party.”
All seasons of “Search Party” are available now on HBO Max.