A GLOW Reunion, Edible Photos And A 'Toxic' Duck: Roar EP Liz Flahive Takes Us Through Apple TV+'s Anthology
Early in the process of adapting Cecelia Ahern's story collection, Roar, into an Apple TV+ series, executive producers Liz Flahive and Carly Mensch let Apple know that one episode would be about a woman who becomes acquainted with a talking duck. And the duck is kind of a jerk.
"Everybody was a little nervous," Flahive recalls. "And then Nicole Kidman" — who stars in a different episode and is an executive producer on the show — "was on the call and said, 'If we're not doing this story, which is so bold and I've never seen it before, then why are we doing this show?'" She laughs. "Everybody was like, 'Great, let's do it!' And then we had to figure out how, which was really, really, really complicated."
The result is Episode 5 of Roar, an eight-installment, female-centric anthology from the minds behind GLOW. The season begins streaming today and features performances from well-known TV names like Issa Rae, Alison Brie, Cynthia Erivo and Betty Gilpin, as well as Alfred Molina, Daniel Dae Kim, Hugh Dancy and Chris Lowell.
TVLine talked with Flahive about the making of the surreal season. Scroll through the list below as she (and we) take you through all eight eps.
EPISODE 1: 'THE WOMAN WHO DISAPPEARED'
Insecure's Issa Rae plays a writer whose book is optioned by Hollywood. But it soon becomes clear that the entertainment industry is only interested in commodifying her story of racism and trauma... via a virtual-reality project that puts viewers in the middle of a horrifying moment from her childhood, as police beat her father. As the writer realizes what's happening, she also seems to become invisible/inaudible to the people trying to profit off her hurt.
EPISODE 2: 'THE WOMAN WHO ATE PHOTOGRAPHS'
Nicole Kidman (Big Little Lies) plays an Australian woman whose mother, who has dementia, is coming to live with her and her family. In the process of moving the older woman out of her home, Kidman's character finds some photo albums and learns that, if she eats a picture, she momentarily relives the memory... which required Kidman to nibble on several prop photographs made of rice paper and marzipan. "It was wild how weird that was, and then how normal that got after a while, too," says Liz Flahive, who created the series with Carly Mensch. She laughs. "So we're like, 'Yeah, shove another one in your mouth, Academy Award winner! Give it another go!"
EPISODE 3: 'THE WOMAN WHO WAS KEPT ON A SHELF'
"The great thing about Betty [Gilpin] is that nothing you have in your head is going to be what she does, which is why we were like, 'Put Betty on the shelf! Let's see what happens!,'" Flahive says of her former GLOW co-worker, who plays a woman whose husband (played by Hawaii Five-0's Daniel Dae Kim) treats her beauty like a literal trophy and stashes her on a high shelf in his office. When he loses interest and she realizes she can get down, Gilpin's character celebrates her freedom with a madcap dance sequence. "We didn't want it to feel suddenly like she was a dancer," the EP adds. "It was more a sort of dance of liberation that then ends in a kind of reckoning. Like, liberation sounds cool while you're dancing, but then what happens after the big dance?"
EPISODE 4: 'THE WOMAN WHO SOLVED HER OWN MURDER'
Gilpin's fellow GLOW leading lady Alison Brie plays a young woman who is shocked to find out that she's been killed, and then angry that the male police officers (played by Law & Order's Hugh Dancy and GLOW's Chris Lowell) investigating her case can't seem to figure out whodunit. And of course, with all of these GLOW folks in the mix, we had to ask Flahive about any potential possible iterations of the cancelled wrestling dramedy. "It was tough. We tried to fight, and I know many people who've been in this position also have tried — both successfully and unsuccessfully to find a new home for their show. We were ultimately unable to. It wasn't for lack of trying. But I miss that whole cast every day," she says. Fortunately, "We were able to bring a lot of our crew over to Roar to help us make it. So as much as I wish I could just have a full reunion in front of the camera, we at least were able to have — as much as we could — a reunion behind the scenes, which meant something to us."
EPISODE 5: 'THE WOMAN WHO RETURNED HER HUSBAND'
After 30 years of marriage, Anu (Paddington's Meera Syal) brings her husband back to the big-box store from which he came. And that's when she realizes that maybe she's got a little returner's remorse. Peter Facinelli (S.W.A.T., Supergirl) plays the first — but not the last — hubby Anu exchanges until she finds what she's looking for.
EPISODE 6: 'THE WOMAN WHO WAS FED BY A DUCK'
At the outset, Flahive and Mensch sent their writers a copy of Cecelia Ahern's collection of short stories, on which the Apple TV+ series is based, and asked them what selections resonated with them. Hallie Feiffer "came back to us and she was like, 'I really like the duck one.' Carly and I were like, 'The duck one? Really?'" In the original text, a woman has a bad day, goes to a pond, receives advice from a talking duck and goes on her way. "Hallie was like, 'Yeah, that duck was really mansplainy and very toxic, and I did not like that duck.'" Flahive chuckles. "It just went from there." The result: Nurse Jackie's Merritt Wever is center stage in "a sort of a rom-com about a woman getting into an emotionally abusive relationship with a duck," the EP explains.
EPISODE 7: 'THE WOMAN WHO FOUND BITE MARKS ON HER SKIN'
"We wanted to do as many things practically as possible, because to do a show that feels like a magic trick, you want it to feel real. So, as much as we could, we did practically and then we had some help from [the visual effects team]," Flahive says. That meant that the wounds that mysteriously appear on Cynthia Erivo's Ambia, a new mom desperately trying for work/life balance in Episode 4, were more makeup and prosthetics than pixel magic. "Even Cynthia's bite marks were almost all practical, with some VFX help," the EP says.
EPISODE 8: 'THE GIRL WHO LOVED HORSES'
The anthology's closing chapter is a feminist Western in which aTypical's Fivel Stewart is Jane, a rage-filled teen who wants to avenge her father's murder. The episode ends with what Mensch has called an "emotional shootout" in which Jane and her best friend Millie (Haters Back Off!'s Kara Hayward) take on Silas McCall (the Spider-Man films' Alfred Molina).