How Liz Feldman explores loss in real estate murder mystery ‘No Good Deed’

This article contains spoilers for Netflix’s “No Good Deed.”

It was a strange time, being sequestered at home in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. The dwellings of millions of people had to be reconfigured: Bedrooms became satellite work bureaus, kitchens functioned as Zoom meeting rooms, and living rooms doubled as virtual classrooms. And TV writer and producer Liz Feldman, who was in production limbo on her Netflix series “Dead to Me” at the time, was struck by the way her home — like so many others — suddenly took on an almost supernatural significance as a protector from the fast-spreading virus.

The stress of it all left Feldman partaking in what became a quintessential pandemic activity: Zillow scrolling.

“At night, I would go on Zillow and I would find myself doomscrolling or surfing because it was just a way to leave my house and go to someone else’s house,” she says.

Her compulsion also eventually became research. Feldman and her wife, feeling the tightness of their bungalow-style house, began searching for a space to better suit their needs.

“We saw so many places, and every time we walked into a new door, I could feel that there was a story there and it wasn’t always a happy one, especially during such a dark time,” she says. “There are really heavy reasons why people have to sell their house, and there’s reasons why people have to buy and leave the house that they’re in. I just saw that there was an opportunity to be able to tell a lot of interesting intersecting stories, if I revolved it around the buying and selling of one house.”

The existential and superficial fixation on “home” planted the seeds for her latest Netflix series, “No Good Deed.”

The dark comedy uses the competitive housing market as a backdrop to a possible murder mystery that is actually — and unsurprisingly, if you know Feldman’s work — a thoughtful exploration of grief.

The series follows Lydia and Paul Morgan, played by sitcom heavyweights Lisa Kudrow and Ray Romano, as a married couple looking to sell their stunning Los Feliz home following the death of their teenage son. Prospective buyers for the dream home include three families: their neighbors, a washed-up actor and his philandering trophy wife (Luke Wilson and Linda Cardellini, who worked with Feldman on “Dead to Me”); a lesbian couple (Abbi Jacobson and Poppy Liu) struggling to conceive; and newlyweds (Teyonah Parris and O-T Fagbenle) preparing for the arrival of their first child. Denis Leary also stars as Paul’s brother.

In a recent video call from her home in Los Angeles, Feldman spoke about revisiting grief in her storytelling, the finale’s twist, and finding the right home to hang a series on. The following conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity.

“No Good Deed” deals with grief parenthood and infertility — themes you’ve tackled before on “Dead to Me.” Was there unfinished business?

I didn’t set out to write another show about grief or parenthood or infertility. I really wanted to tell a story about how far people would go to protect and provide for their loved ones. In doing that, I was able to tap back into some of these themes that I guess are following me as I continue to live and work. I was looking for an opportunity to show that same-sex couples have the same hopes and aspirations and troubles and grief and sadness as everyone, and so it just felt like there was a reason to do that here. I’ve touched upon my miscarriage and pregnancy loss in the past, but I felt like what I hadn’t ever seen was the same-sex couple talking about going through infertility together. As we are all living and paying attention and reading headlines in this world about IVF, the right to choose, body autonomy — it’s extremely relevant and important.

I was also interested in this main couple, played by Ray and Lisa, and how one of them really wanted to sell and one of them did not because we [my wife and I] came across that a lot. I wanted to come up with the most sort of dynamic, deep way to express that difference. Lydia being so tied emotionally to this home because it’s literally where she feels her son, and for Paul to want to sell for the exact same reason, felt compelling to me. I didn’t ever set out to be like the writer that treads in grief, but here I am.

Even for a dark comedy, parents coping with the death of their son and trying to sell their house where it happened doesn’t seem like an easy sell. What was your pitch like?

When I was doing “Dead to Me,” the constant question was, “What is the tone?” Understandably, because it was my own weird voice that was coming out and I hadn’t ever really had a chance to express it before in this way. Certainly, there were questions time and time again [on “No Good Deed”] of like, “What are we doing here?” I just knew how I heard it in my head. I’m not afraid of darkness, but I also am always looking for the light that peeks through. I’m coming off of writing multi-cam sitcoms for 10 years, which was a total pleasure, and something I really love doing. It’s a real challenge and it’s really satisfying to be able to let go of those constraints, of saying, “Well, this has to be hilarious. This has to have three jokes per page.” Instead, I’ve tried to replace that with, “this needs to feel real.”

As the series unfolds, the audience is led to believe Lydia and Paul’s daughter accidentally shot her brother; the couple covered it up to protect her. But the twist is it was actually Linda Cardellini’s character, Margo, who shot him.

We chose to do that crazy twist because we wanted to make that family whole again in a way that we didn’t feel like we could if everything had been their fault. We introduced in the pilot, that [their son] Jacob Morgan did not actually die the way we thought he did, and that there was, if you will, kind of like the Grassy Knoll, a second shooter. And as kooky as that sounds, it’s then our responsibility as the writers to go back and make that as justifiable as possible, and to put the little Easter eggs in to show you that it was there all along, which we did without hanging too much of a lantern on it. It shouldn’t be shocking to you that the person ultimately responsible is the person ultimately responsible. I love the quote from Maya Angelou via Oprah, and Oprah says it a lot that: People tell you who they are from the very beginning, and you should listen.

When did Linda know she was the culprit?

She knew really early on; I think she knew before she signed up. I pitched her the entire season. Everyone else didn’t know that early on. But once we got into the filming, Ray and Lisa — the thing is, they didn’t need to know because their characters didn’t know. There is something to that. I like to give the characters the information that their characters have, but at a certain point, when we were a few episodes into shooting, I did tell Ray and Lisa everything that happened.

Talk to me about finding the house. This is the house of my dreams.

When we hired Stephenson Crossley, who is our location producer, I said, “I need to find an undeniable house. A house that, when you see it, you immediately feel an emotional response to it.” We saw so many f— houses, but when we found the hero house that became the Morgan house, the way it’s built, it has this sort of reaching-out feeling. It’s on a corner and it has these two wings that are almost beckoning you. And it has this beautiful arch above the doorway with like an ivy or creeping fig — we called it “The Eyebrow House” because it looked like a beautiful eyebrow around the door. I felt something, like, viscerally in my body, and I thought, “This is a house you could frame a show like this on because who wouldn’t want that house? And if it isn’t your style, you would at least understand why it is someone else’s.”

We have the exterior, but then the interior was completely invented by our production designer, Nina Ruscio, and our art department. It’s an entire house that was built on two stages. And it is a full working house. Every room leads into the other; the plumbing works; there’s a first floor and a second floor. The house was always meant to be one of the stars of the show. In the original pilot script, I even sort of described her as “an old Hollywood starlet.” It really felt this anthropomorphic thing that came alive.

The series ends in a way where enough is tied up that it can stop there, but there are still some loose threads that can potentially be explored. Did you conceive of this as a limited series or one with room for more?

I think that there’s a pretty cool opportunity to keep the show going. I have a pretty clear idea of where I want to take Season 2 and I think it’s pretty fun and unexpected. I can’t wait to share it with Netflix.

The series began production not long after the Hollywood strikes ended. Did anything change from the original arc of the series as a result of that? And how was it to be on a set after such an existential moment for the creative community?

The strike hit about maybe a month before our [writers] room was set to be over. So, we were pretty well into the [writing of the] season and, when the strike was called, none of us knew how long it was going to be. We had cast several of the actors — not all, but most. To be totally honest, it was extremely difficult and frankly depressing because I felt I was on the precipice of getting to create this new show with these people whom I love, a roomful of writers that I absolutely adore being with, this bevy of actors who I would die to work with. And then it was all sort of taken away in a flash — for good reason, for an understandable cause. It’s hard to keep your excitement up for five months and to keep the freshness up and the vision clean for that long.

I have to say thanks to Netflix because they gave us extra time back in the room so that we could recalibrate when we got there. It gave me clarity in how to tell the story better because it’s a very large ensemble. And I realized during that break that it would be OK to remove characters from certain episodes so that I would have more time to focus on the characters that remained and that not every character needed to be in every episode for it to be a good and compelling story. So in many ways, the strike was beneficial just for perspective. Big beats did change, but I can’t say it was because of the strike.

It occurred to me while watching “No Good Deed” that you, as a boss, have encountered the experience of talent confronting and processing devastating life moments in the midst of production. Christina Applegate received her MS diagnosis and managed to complete the final season of “Dead to Me.” Prior to filming “No Good Deed,” Lisa Kudrow was coping with Matthew Perry’s passing. How did you think about navigating these real-life moments, to make sure your stars are OK?

I feel really honored that I’ve been the person who was chosen, in some weird way by the universe, to be the showrunner for these actors in these difficult moments, because as much as I want to make a great show, I’m a human being first and I see actors as human beings first. With Christina, we had been working together for years at that point. And I knew her a few years even before that. For me, the most important thing was always, “Is she OK? Is this OK for her?” I told her, almost on a daily basis, “We don’t have to do this. I will walk away.” She really wanted to keep going. We did take a hiatus; we kind of met in the middle at a certain point. But it was more important to me to help her through that as a human being going through the most difficult moment in her life than it was to get the right shot. We changed a lot to accommodate her needs on that show. She very, very rarely walked. It was as difficult and truly heartbreaking of an experience. It was also incredibly rewarding to help her see that through. I know she’s really proud of it, as she should be, and I’m really proud of her for pushing through.

And with Lisa, I didn’t know her as well, so I wasn’t coming at it from as close of a personal relationship. But I’m interested in being a good person to people. I just tried to make myself available to her. She’s an extreme professional and carried herself within the warmest grace and it’s all evident on the screen.

It’s an interesting time, creatively. The first time that Trump was elected, there was a lot of questions about how his term would shape the kind of storytelling networks or studios were interested in greenlighting or the types of stories writers would want to tell. How are you feeling this time around? Do you feel a sense of urgency to tell particular types of stories as a response to this moment?

It’s a little hard to predict because it’s different this time. It’s tinged with so many other feelings, like disappointment and shock and heartbreak. I think there are themes that feel very present around this issue that I have written about and will continue to write about. I don’t feel particularly driven to write something that is overtly political, but I’m always interested in writing what is subversively political. I will continue to represent characters that I feel are underrepresented. Our pens are our swords, and it just compels me to want to keep writing so that people can keep sharing in an experience and be challenged to think differently.