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As a member of the Writers Guild of America (WGA), Australian showrunner Abe Forsythe is back at work after a bruising Hollywood strike. Having followed the labour dispute via WGA updates, news reports, and social media commentary from his home in Sydney’s inner-west, the writer and director of Wolf Like Me is happy to be booting up his laptop.
“It’s crazy that it took as long as it did, but let’s be real about it: the studios spent seven days at the negotiating table over the course of 140 days, which is ridiculous,” Forsythe says. “This could have been dealt with so much sooner. I’m glad it’s over, but it’s amazing how much this has disrupted everything.”
Wolf Like Me creator Abe Forythe is glad to be back at work after the seven-month-long Writers Guild of America strike.Credit: Ben King
The 42-year-old’s workload for his genre-busting series, which has returned for a second season on Stan in Australia and Peacock in North America, is now front-loaded with promotion. (Stan is owned by Nine, publisher of this article.) As members of the American actors union, SAG-AFTRA, the stars of the show Isla Fisher and Josh Gad are still on strike. And so, on a recent morning, Forsythe did 14 consecutive interviews with American media outlets.
One of the key negotiating points in the strike Forsythe followed closely was securing a mandated number of writers working on a show’s season. The WGA considered the issue crucial, as does Forsythe, but he has his own input. Like a few other creators, such as Yellowstone’s Taylor Sheridan and Mike White of The White Lotus, Forsythe writes every line of his show. He has to.
“With this show, because it’s so personal and there’s so much of me in it, I’m required to sit down and write each page myself,” Forsythe says. “Writing it informs me how I’ll direct it. Pre-production is figuring out line by line how I’ll shoot it.”
A pandemic production that debuted in January 2022, Wolf Like Me has a (literally) wild concept. Reclusive Adelaide advice columnist Mary (Fisher) meets single father Gary (Gad) and his daughter, Emma (Ariel Donoghue), and they forge a connection strong enough to breach her secret: Mary’s a hungry werewolf, complete with full moon transformation.
Josh Gad, Isla Fisher and Ariel Donoghue in the new season of Wolf Like Me.Credit: Narelle Portanier/Peacock
It’s an idea drawn from the very heart of horror storytelling, stretching back centuries into folklore and canonical texts, but for Forsythe lycanthropy is also a way of accessing the deeply personal: finding love a second time, letting someone into your life, and adding a partner to your child’s life. Wolf Like Me’s first season was This Is Us with fangs.
“The fun thing with genre is using it as an avenue to explore. The werewolf represents a lot of things to me, but I’ve since discovered that it represents a lot of different things to other people,” Forsythe says. “Season two speaks to the fear of bringing a child into the world and not knowing what it might be, or whether as a parent you’ll damage it. Mary is literally scared of eating her baby.”
“Season two is continuing things that I have dealt with or are living through at the moment. I have been fortunate to find these characters and I wouldn’t want to continue this if I didn’t have that experience,” he adds. “I’ve given up three years of my life to work on this show and if I’m not being informed by the characters as much as I inform them then it’s just so much harder to go to work and find satisfaction and completion.”
Shot once more in Sydney (though the show’s setting is Adelaide), the new episodes of Wolf Like Me are an expansive addition: larger cast, knotty concepts, nutty twists, and an increased digital effects budget. The show’s first season withheld the on-screen presence of Mary’s snarling alter-ego, whereas the second season can’t wait to let her snarl. There’s also a juicy new foil in Anton, Mary’s friend and former professor, played with haughty charm by Edgar Ramirez (Zero Dark Thirty).
Edgar Ramirez joins the cast of Wolf Like Me as Mary’s (Isla Fisher) friend and former professor.Credit: Narelle Portanier
“When we cast Edgar he was beyond perfect. I’d written it in one way and when he came in he didn’t change a word of dialogue, but just added all these interesting, thoughtful layers,” Forsythe says. “My direction was that he needs to seduce everyone in the show except Gary. He came in as the disruptor, but you can totally understand his point of view.”
Every declaration by Anton draws a muttered retort from Gary, a skill that’s perfectly in Gad’s comic wheelhouse as an everyman given to manic escalation. Creator and actor first worked together on Forsythe’s 2019 movie, Little Monsters, a romantic-comedy about a kindergarten excursion during a zombie outbreak (it’s a very Abe Forsythe concept), and can finish each other’s creative sentences.
By contrast, Forsythe hadn’t worked with Fisher prior to Wolf Like Me, so it’s not surprising that with the second season he has an even better grasp on her talents. A gifted comedienne and flinty confrontational voice who too often has been underused by her directors, Fisher has never had a role this sustained and eclectic.
“I’ve never really encountered an actor like her before – she’s so unique and makes such strong, unpredictable choices,” Forsythe says. “Isla has an incredible energy and by the end of season one I felt like I knew how to write her the best possible situations of conflict. She has this crazy energy, so if you bottle it up and stop it coming out you can still see it simmering before it finally does come out.”
Initially an independent filmmaker and award-winning creator of short films, Forsythe has always been a prolific creative voice, but Wolf Like Me has now brought him back to the same world repeatedly. Soon he’ll link up with a small group of writers to hash out the outline for a possible third – and final – season of Wolf Like Me. The next batch of episodes will up the ante again, although there are few rules that remain paramount to their maker.
“The most important thing for me is that you can get away with a lot if you play it sincerely, whether it’s drama, comedy, or horror,” Forsythe says. “If the characters are just trying to survive, rather than reacting to events, then the tone stays somewhere believable.”
Wolf Like Me (season 2) is on Stan.
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