Julie Klausner Talks ‘Difficult People’

Julie Klausner doesn’t set out to
hit a specific number of jokes on each script page of her pop culture-obsessed comedy
“Difficult People,” but the series has maintained the funny throughout
its second season by understanding exactly what makes the show work.

“You can always tell when you
need a joke, at least for our show,” Creator/Writer/Executive Producer Klausner told Access Hollywood.
“We have a very specific rhythm. … We’re just constantly punching it up.
It’s a very, very joke-dense show, in which I take a lot of pride.”

In Season 2, Klausner, who plays struggling comedian and TV recapper Julie, and Billy Eichner’s fellow struggling comedian/waiter Billy, have been joined by a host of guest stars. Nathan Lane, Method Man, PBS legend Ken Burns, Kate Pierson of The B-52’s, Lin-Manuel Miranda, “The Real Housewives of New York City’s” Countess LuAnn and Tina Fey have all played fictional versions of themselves. 

A scene from the Season 2 finale of Hulu’s ‘Difficult People’
(Hulu)

PHOTOS: ‘Difficult People’: Scenes From The Season 2 Finale

“We’re very lucky in that
even though we got great guests in our first season and people hadn’t even seen
the show, I think when it comes to the second season, we’re very lucky to have
this really nice sort of [self-reflecting] magneticism of cool people like the show, want to do the
show, are fans of the show, know that there’s stuff that we could write for
them that’s really funny. And, most of the time Billy and I do the reaching
out, we have a great casting director. In the case of a couple of instances
we asked Amy [Poehler, an executive producer on the show] to send an email. We
asked her to ask Tina, but that was something that we’d written for Tina
anyway,” Klausner said, when asked about how the guest stars are recruited. “It takes a village, but we’re very lucky to have the kind of show
that has its own
sort of built-in cultish fans and so many of them are just such incredibly
talented people that it’s so cool that they want to work with us.”

In Tuesday’s Season 2 finale,
Julianne Moore joins the show for a guest spot, playing a development executive
interested in optioning one of Julie’s essays. 

PHOTOS: Hollywood Redheads

“Julianne and I were friends
on Twitter, and then we started hanging out and she was [a fan] of Billy and
so, she did his show [‘Billy on the Street’], but I think maybe we had the
redhead connection in common. … She likes other redheads, and she was a fan of
my work and was like, ‘Write me a part,’ and I was like, ‘Are you serious?’ And
so, she did the show and it was kind of crazy,” Klausner told Access
Hollywood.

“She’s so great that we
wanted to give her a character to play that was like, kind of mean and fun and
had teeth and she made what she did out of it and she’s so funny in it and just
to be this like fake girls’ girl, there’s something sort of chilling about it,”
she added.

A scene from the Season 2 finale of Hulu’s ‘Difficult People’
A scene from the Season 2 finale of Hulu’s ‘Difficult People’ (Hulu)

Seasons 1 and 2 are streaming now on Hulu, and those who haven’t seen the show since the beginning will find that the comedic moments from the early episodes are still fresh, something Access asked Klausner about.

“The curation of the celebrities that we choose to make jokes about is very, very important if only because between the internet and every other TV show, and everybody doing everything, everyone’s got a pop culture take on something, and I’m just sick of hearing jokes about Kim Kardashian. … At a certain point you’re like, ‘I don’t have a point of view about this celebrity, I’m sick of hearing about the celebrity, therefore, what’s the point of me making a joke about it?'” Klausner said. “The stuff that Billy and I always had in common, when I loved his man on the street videos is we both have this delight for the — it’s like if you choose the right celebrity, it can seem like a non-sequitur in like a very glorious way.” 

The Season 2 finale of “Difficult People” is available on Hulu now.

Jolie Lash

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