Apple TV+’s 'Loot' is back for its third season, and co-creator Matt Hubbard is taking Maya Rudolph’s billionaire Molly Wells into bold new territory where Molly isn’t just enjoying her wealth — she’s questioning it.
Hubbard sat down with Metro to discuss crafting this evolution, exploring billionaire accountability, and why 'Loot’s' ensemble cast continues to shape the show’s heart and humor.
The initial impulse was that Alan (Yang) and I wanted to do another show with Maya because we just loved working with her. And we wondered, what would be a really fun role for her to play where she can be really funny, but there can also be that heart at the center of it? We were happy to come up with that idea. I will say since that time, which was a couple years ago now, billionaires have become so much more prevalent in our lives [with] how much they're involved with the government and how much we hear about them.
They're almost like our royalty where we talk about them and you sort of think about what their lives are like. That's been great, but it's also been the responsibility to show what does Molly think about them? What are we saying about them? So that's why this season, we thought, she should really go after them and she should really start to question what they're doing. We wanted to show what if there is someone who was a member of this group who says you're all doing it wrong and holds their feet to the fire? So that's been fun to write about to challenge such a big topic.
Yeah, it's been great. With that episode, I think we were always like, okay, at the end of Season 2, Molly can run away. We can all run away from our lives if we really want to, but when you're really, really rich, it's a lot easier. You have the privilege of doing whatever you want…so [it was] just spiraling outward from that. I thought, what is the most absurd, insane, in need of a mental health break reset we could think of? And it came from there.
Then of course, we started talking about what is it that would bring her back to reality? So we started talking about the other half of the island and this other billionaire who had just basically lost his mind a little bit. And then we got to the Henry Winkler character, so it all fit together that way. It's been really fun to see people just enjoy those elements of the show that are a little broader and bigger swings.
I think this was a Bill Lawrence thing that I read, and I was like, 'Oh my God, he was so right.' He said with casting, when you cast someone, just lean into the pitch. For example, with Ron Funches, my initial conception of Howard was a little bit different. He was a little bit more of a scammer, and always trying to extract money from Molly in a charming way. But then we were like, Ron is such a sweetheart and such a teddy bear. He should be a ball of love who maybe just isn't that great at deciding what he wants to be. So even before the end of this first season, you're adjusting as you're going along. Especially with Michaela, that changed that character. There were versions of Sophia who were 20 years old, but then with Michaela, we thought, it's more interesting if she's a little bit older.
With improv, that's also a huge part of [writing], because they all are good at that. They're all standups and have done improv, they’re all just funny people. We will write the scene and we usually try to get a version of it, but then once we all feel good, we just loosen it up and let them start saying whatever they want. I will say, I've been on shows where you do that and you usually go back to the scripted [version.] With ‘Loot’, a lot of that stuff ends up on screen. They’re all just that good.
When we pitched the show, there was the idea that Molly should have an angel on her shoulder, which is Sophia (Michaela Jaé Rodriguez), and then she should have a devil on her shoulder, which was how we came up with Nicholas. But as we got into it more, it was like, oh my God, [Nicholas and Molly] have a deeply codependent, unhealthy relationship, which is really good for comedy. So we needed to deal with that this season and how they're maybe not totally helping each other the way they used to. So in Season 3, I said I think we've earned a flashback episode and it would be fun to see them meet each other. The second half of this season is, what is it like when he's gone and can he come back? And if he does, what has changed?
Same thing with Arthur (Nat Faxon.) We did two seasons of them kind of flirting and passing each other and two ships passing in the night. But then we were talking with Maya about it, and she said it's so much more fun to play conflict with someone sometimes, which is so true. So, when do you start getting into conflict with your partner? It's when you're serious with them, when the kind of fun, easy days are over. And there would be a lot of problems if a woman in this relationship had this much wealth.
I think of Arthur as a really great guy, but I also think there's some masculinity stuff that comes in. So we did a couple episodes about that, and I think all those things are going to come to a head by the end of this season. Molly will have to make some choices…they'll all have to make some choices about who they are, and are they going to stay together as a team? And what are their lives going to be moving forward?
New episodes of ‘Loot’ Season 3 will drop Wednesdays on AppleTV+ through Dec. 10.
