Writer and director Nahnatchka Khan, best known for the sitcoms “Fresh Off the Boat,” “Don’t Trust the B—- In Apartment 23” and NBC’s “Young Rock” with Dwayne Johnson, is celebrating the launch of her newest laugh, the Stephanie Hsu-led murder comedy “Laid” on Peacock Thursday with the unveiling of her next projects: two more dark comedies, one starring Tony Hale and the other based on the LGBTQ graphic novel “Fuck this place.”
The upcoming TV series, titled “Boy Next Door,” is inspired by the release of John Hinckley Jr. from prison into the home of his deluded and controlling mother. This dark comedy follows a man who made a big mistake a long time ago and now just wants to live a normal, unremarkable second half of his life: get an ordinary job, meet an ordinary girl, learn how to take a selfie.
According to the project’s logline, “Boy Next Door” asks the question: Are we defined by our worst possible moment? And also: how do you send the emojis that move in a text message?
Written by Corey Nickerson, the show – which has not yet been attached to a network or streaming platform – is produced by Khan’s film and TV production company Fierce Baby Productions (which has a first-look deal with Universal Television) and CBS Productions with Hale . executive producing.
Based on the graphic novel of the same name by Kyle Starks and Artyom Topilin, ‘Fuck This Place’ follows ‘a pair of lesbians from the big city’ who inherit a 500-acre dairy farm in the middle of nowhere and assume it is the ‘first step to a bright future.” “But if the farm hides more than one big supernatural secret, we’ll watch as Gabby and Trudy’s American dream becomes an American nightmare. Will their relationship survive this? Will they?”
The project, written by David Smithyman, who will serve as showrunner alongside Khan, comes from Fierce Baby alongside Skybound Entertainment and is currently selling across platforms.
Nahnatchka Khan on the set of Peacock’s “Laid”/Credit: James Dittiger
James Dittiger/PEACOCK
“I think what the common denominator would be would really just be someone, whether it’s me or the writer of a show that we produce, that someone has a clear vision and a clear point of view and a voice for a world,” said Khan Variety on how the two new projects fit into Fierce Baby’s overall ethos today. “For me, that is what connects Fierce Baby projects. And it is true that many of our projects have female characters at the center, but not all of them. I find that very interesting too. And I love the idea of having someone with a unique voice and vision and saying, this is the world I want to live in. I really see that in a lot of these projects, and I really appreciate that.
“Boy Next Door” and “Fuck This Place” are the latest in a string of twisted comedies that Khan’s Fierce Baby has been working on in recent years, starting with Khan directing the time-travel slasher comedy “Totally Killer” with Blumhouse for Amazon ; followed by Peacock’s new launch ‘Laid’, which centers on a woman (played by Hsu) trying to figure out why all her ex-lovers are dying; Netflix rom-com “Dial A for Aunties,” which centers on a young wedding photographer who tries to hide her blind date’s body while working on a wealthy client’s wedding day; and “Killer Potential,” a TV series adaptation of an upcoming book that follows two unlikely fugitives: an overeducated and broke SAT teacher who finds her wealthy employers brutally murdered in their backyard and the mute woman she discovers trapped in the walls of their country house.
While Khan, Fierce Baby’s head of TV development Jennifer Carreras and head of film development Chloe Yellin have consistently dabbled in a variety of genres, including family sitcoms, feature films (Khan’s directorial debut Netflix’s “Always Be my Maybe”), stand-up comedy (Khan directed Ali Wong’s 2022 comedy special, “Ali Wong: Don Wong” for Netflix), Khan acknowledges that they are definitely on a horror/murder/death rush right now with comic vibes.
“I don’t know when murder entered my lexicon in such a standard way as a through-line, but there’s definitely a dark thread running through it,” Khan said. “Everything used to be so defined: this is a movie, this is a TV show, this is an hour-long drama, this is a comedy – and then all those rules started to disappear with the streamers. And now films are being made for streaming platforms; maybe they go to theaters. And a limited series – is that just a feature-length movie? Is a half-hour show a comedy, or is it just half an hour of storytelling? You certainly still have your traditional, this is a procedure, this is a half-hour multi-camera, but most of the lines have faded. And I think for me too, all the lines are blurred in the things that I like to do and what I gravitate towards. It’s always going to have a comedic quality, like it’s always going to be funny. But it could also be all these other things. I don’t know when that happened, but I think everything is definitely coming together.
As for where Fierce Baby goes from here – beyond exploring topics beyond death – Carreras says the team hopes to expand the total number of projects and do a lot more in the drama category.
“Natch and Fierce Baby have such deep roots in comedy, so we are very excited to develop more in an hour to further expand and challenge our brand,” said Jennifer Carreras, head of TV development at Fierce Baby. “And as Natch continues her projects as a writer/director, a very important goal is to support other creators and benefit from Natch’s production expertise. We are incredibly proud to have produced shows during a pandemic and immediately come out of a strike but are ready to grow in terms of volume.”