It’s going to be a good day – The Creep Tapes is back on our screens. After the runaway success of seasons one and two of the Shudder and AMC+ series based on the Creep films, Patrick Brice and Mark Duplass are back with six new episodes in season three, and they’re as wild as you might expect.
With episodes one and two already available to stream, FILMHOUNDS sat down with creator Brice to talk huge changes for Duplass’ mysterious central serial killer, how they develop each season, and what we can expect in the future…
We’re back here talking about season three of The Creep Tapes, and I was just wondering, how did you sit down and decide where you would take this season after the previous two?
We always tend to have a group text going between myself, Mark Duplass, and Chris Donlon, who’s our third collaborator. And that group text is anywhere from stupid fart jokes to hardcore story ideas for places we could go with the show or subsequent films. Usually, we take that and try to transfer that to another document where we have a list of 10 or 12 ideas and then whittle it down from there. It’s far different from a traditional writer’s room, given the fact that we shoot the show in the way that we do, which is basically around our other life and film schedules. Mark is off shooting The Morning Show or working on other projects, and so we try to find these times to come together, have focused jam sessions, and then break off of that.
I think the goal at this point with these seasons is to have something for everyone with each of these episodes. We understand that for every person that might love the first episode, another might absolutely hate it, but then that same person might love the next one. I like to think that Peachfuzz contains multitudes. I think that’s the other main consideration when we’re going through it is making sure there’s that balance in these episodes.
I feel like we have seen that sort of variety. We saw a Saw-esque episode, and we have seen ones that have been more comedic. We’ve seen ones that are focused just on Mark’s character, and then ones with his victims. Is there a direction that you really want to take them in or a certain genre you want to try that you haven’t done yet?
It’s been a lot of fun to dip our toes into these other subgenres. We love the idea of taking an episode where we’re not making fun of Saw by any means or that dynamic. It’s quite brilliant actually the way they were able to set up that film. But we like the idea of someone trying to emulate that who hadn’t really seen any Saw movies and what that would look like. This year, there wasn’t anything that we tried to do that was overtly that. Obviously there were homages to other moments of pop culture, but we also like to expand beyond horror when it comes to that too. The first episode dealing with the Pam and Tommy sex tape and that being a creative and aesthetic take-off point was really exciting for me and Mark being of the generation where that was something that was culturally important at the time. We asked ourselves, “How could we play with that and how could we filter that through this character?”
I’d like to do a courtroom episode that is just entirely in a courtroom with cameras. I’m a big fan of Tim Heideker’s work and his show On Cinema. They did the entire season that was in a courtroom that still kind of blows me away. I think that’s one of the things that’s great about the show is that we found this key to unlocking all these different fun cinematic explorations within.
In season two, we saw Mark’s character shy away from a lot of sexual activity and connections of that nature, whereas that completely changes in the first episode of season three. Why have we seen that change in this season?
The jumping off point of the sex tape was exciting for us to think about how it would affect a character who is, I would say, sexually confused. It was also the idea of what is available to us in mass trash media and how that affects people’s development when it comes to their sexual life. I think that’s something that people have tried to pin down with this character over the years. People ask me, “Is he gay? Is he asexual? Is he heterosexual?” And the truth lies somewhere in the middle of all that; it’s kind of this amorphous thing. I think it’s something he was intrigued by just in the same way many people are. I don’t think he would be able to put his finger down on what he is or how he feels. For him, it’s more about that deep connection with this specific person that he’s with at the time. For him and the character of Crystal (Kate Siegel), he is confronted with a sexually frank, strong female lead and is intimidated by it. That’s a dynamic that we started with Creep 2 with Desiree Akhavan’s character, Sara. It felt like this was a chance to take that and push even further. The impetus of creating that dynamic was wanting to see him be pushed and be a little squeamish, but also giving us the chance to flip that on its head, which we do towards the end of the episode.
We spoke about it with season one and with season two – you can never quite trust what the backstory is and what’s going on. We get a lot more backstory in this season as well, going back to his childhood and seeing him deal with Peachfuzz. How much of that we can trust in this season, and what might be changed in future episodes?
What you see is what you get in a lot of ways. We do have a flashback episode that I think maybe answers some questions, but probably creates other questions at the same time that need to be answered later on. When it comes down to it, and this is something Mark always says, if there’s anything that’s absolutely clear is that while not everything this guy says is factually correct, everything that he says is true to him. It’s that sincerity that is able to especially disarm people, whether it’s a viewer or whether it’s one of these other characters that he’s interacting with. There are some concrete details that will be revealed in this season, but there’s still enough questions that are left that would necessitate more seasons of discovery.
You’ve got some fantastic guest stars in this season. How they get involved? Do you ever write characters with these actors in mind or is it a case if you reach out to them and think, “I hope they’ll sign on”?
One thing that’s been really amazing with Mark and I finding ourselves playing in this genre is there’s so many amazing collaborators that we’ve found are either fans of the films or the show. Mark and I have started to go to these horror conventions in the last year and have been meeting people. That’s how we met Elliott Fullam from the Terrifier movies who appears in that flashback episode. But it’s also just reaching out to people that maybe we weren’t super close to, but where we’d always wanted to work with. Kate Siegel was someone who’s a certified scream queen. We knew her and her husband, Mike [Flanagan], were fans of the show and the movies. We wrote that character for her for the most part, and thankfully, she said yes. But it’s also us calling up friends like Rehka Shankar, who was in our ‘Anisha’ episode. She was a friend of Mark’s who fit the bill, came in, and was able to play with us. Nic Hamilton from the It movies who’s in ‘Greg’ was also someone who Mark had maybe met once or twice but wasn’t super close with, but we had an instinctual feeling that he could work for this. He was absolutely incredible and completely got the tone. We’ve been really lucky because we haven’t really had a bad version of that happen to us. Everyone we worked with has been really amazing and super on board with our particular brand of strange.
The Creep Tapes season three is currently airing weekly on Shudder and AMC+. Seasons one and two are available to stream now
