It’s not the meek or zombies that inherit the Earth in Fox’s The Last Man on Earth, it’s the guy-next-door.
Will Forte plays Phil Miller, an earnest and childish everyman who believed himself to be the last survivor of life-eradicating virus until he met Carol Pilbasian (Kristen Schaal), the O. Henry-like answer to his prayers. Phil and Carol later discover a handful of other survivors who join them on their suburban block.
Phil’s place is the world is quickly displaced as he fails to adjust from last survivor to a member of group to an exile from his own home. As the first season concluded, Phil was rescued from his exile by Carol, and viewers learned of yet another survivor — an astronaut in orbit who may just be Phil’s brother.
The post-apocalyptic comedy is the creation of writer/actor Will Forte and the directing/writing team of Phil Lord and Christopher Miller. Lord and Miller are no strangers to mixing other genres with comedy given Clone High and The Lego Movie reside in their shared resumé.
Compared to another famous writing duo, John Lennon and Paul McCartney, Lord said while he and Miller are far less successful, they do share something in common.
“Those guys had their own voice. When you put those two voices together they balanced each other out a little bit. I would say we have some of that. When I work on my own, it lacks a certain amount of clarity and has only half the jokes. And that’s where Chris’ place in the partnership is essential. It makes everything better.
"That’s what we’ve always said when times were hard. And it is a really pain in the neck to have to share everything with somebody else. We’ve always said it makes the work better, and that’s what we care about more than anything.”
“We are one-tenth as talented as Lennon/McCartney,” said Miller. “But if [the comparison] is set during the Rubber Soul era, we’ll take that.”
Lord and Miller’s working relationship is equally unique in that they both share directorial and writing duties. Miller explains that they do not separate their responsibilities, but instead “we both do everything.”
He says, “We talk a lot about everything so when we get on set we’re not coming at it from different points of view. It might be more efficient if we separated our duties, but we both are too obsessive-compulsive to do that.”
Instead of feeling caged by the trappings of the post-apocalyptic genre, Lord said they “feel liberated by the concept that allows us to do so many things and so many places. The way Forte designed it is the expectation of the audience is things are going to change from episode to episode. We have a show with encyclopedic possibilities.”
Some would believe selling a show set in such dire circumstances to a major network and an audience would be an impossibility, but Forte, Lord and Miller met with great initial success.
Lord explains, “We showed the first two episodes to an audience, which is somewhat rare in single camera television comedy. We found them to be very engaged. They were more game for the show than we would have ever guessed.”
One of the show’s strong points is its acknowledgement of terrible circumstances without drowning in them.
Lord feels that at its heart, the show “really isn’t about what happened in the past. It’s really about the future and how they’re going to rebuild society. It wasn’t about dwelling on the not super-hilarious idea of a massive virus wiping out the entire earth’s population. It became about given that scenario, how would you live going forward?”
Deliberately baked into the show is its allowance to let scenes and bit breathe and play out without interruption. Lord and Miller used that pacing to take visual advantage of television instead of being reduced to a series of talking heads.
“We want the audience to feel the loneliness and the emptiness [of being the only survivor],” says Lord. “There’s an intentional use of wide shots in the pilot. The way Forte wrote the script gave a sense of that loneliness. Also, Forte is a really gifted physical comedian and he thought of it like a silent movie type of comedy.”
And it is Forte’s character of Phil Miller that propels the serialized comedy forward. His adversarially romantic relationship with fellow survivor Carol rests at the heart of the series and is Phil’s engine of change.
“I just think that Phil has a long way to go and that real change for Phil is hard to come by,” adds Miller. “Taking two steps forward and one step back is the show’s philosophy. Overall, we’re interested in the tension of this man who struggles with selfish impulses and trying to mold those to a collective living situation. I think you’ll see that over the seasons he’ll prove himself worthy of a woman like Carol.”
Phil and Carol quickly discovered they were not the last two people alive as they’d previous suspected. Phil even encountered another Phil Miller, this one being an Alpha-male and the original Phil’s natural adversary.
The introduction of more characters could have made the series’ male lead less unique, but Forte, Lord, and Miller use the opportunity to reinforce what makes Phil special. “We always imagined this would turn into ‘Gilligan’s Island,’” says Miller. “Forte’s original series pitch was, ‘Let’s do Gilligan’s Island where literally there’s no escape.’ The show’s about how a person resolves their individuality with the need to live in groups with that boiled down to its most basic moments.
"It’s the basic human conundrum: I want to do whatever is in my self-interest, but I get lonely and I have to subjugate those individualistic impulses to live in a group. And that is a real pain in the butt.”
The 13 episode first season featured dozens of memorable fan-favorite moments. Miller and Lord shared theirs.
“When Carol and Phil get divorced and have a loving kiss afterwards [is a favorite],” says Miller. “I’m a big softy, so I love all the loving sweet stuff. And I really love the contrast of them signing their divorce papers, as that’s the moment Phil loves Carol most. It’s hard to make a list and not include aquarium bowling. I really like when Carol and Phil have a fun date and get to use the steam roller together.”
“For me,” added Lord, “ it’s almost all the scenes where Phil talks to the balls in the bar as his confidantes. And I really like the last scene in the season finale with that super-crazy twist reveal. I also really like when Todd made Melissa pancakes.”
Looking toward the future after two huge cliffhangers, the pair were extremely trepidatious to say where Phil and Carol will be when the second season begins.
“We’re going to see a lot of Phil and Carol’s relationship and some time has passed,” shared Miller. “We’re not going to show up 10 minutes after the season one finale.”
“I don’t think it’s a spoiler to say the beard is back because Will Forte has been seen around town sporting that beard,” said Lord.
“I’m inferring from that the next season will begin far enough into the future [for Will] to have grown back the beard a little bit,” Miller added. “And I think it will be like last year as far as delivering twists, turns, and surprises, and changing the dynamic regularly so that the audience won’t know what’s going to happen next.
"I think that’s a really exciting part of the show — how a highly serialized comedy keeps its audience guessing. We’re also trying to take more advantage of the concept of being the last people on earth. Take from that what you will.”
Another question left unanswered from early in the first season is when (or if) Phil and Carol would start to repopulate the earth. Would the introduction of a child be the kiss of death for the series?
“We tend to run straight at things that scare us because it means something dangerous is happening or might happen,” Lord explained. “I think there’s a certain amount of wanting to do it right if it happens. I think the question is, ‘would a person want to bring children into a world like this?’ It’s not a foregone conclusion every woman would think that’s a good idea.”
Miller summed up what makes The Last Man on Earth worthwhile experience: “The possibilities are limitless.”
The Last Man on Earth airs on Fox and will return this fall for its second season.
