When the solid of “Kevin Can F**Ok Himself” assembled to shoot exterior Boston, final yr, after months of pandemic-related delays, one of many first inquiries to be resolved was that of the present’s asterisked title. Annie Murphy, who stars as Allison, recalled the uncertainty on a current Zoom name from her residence in Toronto. Her hair was pulled right into a free bun, and he or she wore a hoodie with sleeves rolled as much as the elbows, exposing a forearm tattoo of Jimmy Stewart. “We have been all, like, ‘We say it, proper?’ ” Murphy, greatest recognized for her function as Alexis Rose on “Schitt’s Creek,” mentioned with a smile. “So, I’ve graduated from ‘shit’ to ‘fuck’! The place am I gonna go subsequent?”
Kevin is the schlubby husband of Murphy’s Allison, an archetypally put-upon spouse. Each time he’s onscreen, the present is an oversaturated sitcom, full with chuckle observe. When he’s not, it turns into a drama, darker in each model and substance. “Within the multi-cam world, everybody’s just a little bit extra cartoony,” Murphy mentioned. Her character, by design, has solely “to be the butt of a joke, or the one who is available in, nags on the guys, after which walks out.” Because the digicam shifts, Allison tacks from broad one-liners to a extra sophisticated array of feelings. She fulfills her duties and fantasizes a couple of change—in her circumstances, in her loser partner—till a neighbor forces her to confront actuality. Allison’s life with Kevin, the neighbor tells her, has been “laborious to look at.”
Murphy, who’s thirty-four, makes use of her entire physique when she tells a narrative, hanging poses and pulling faces. She began performing as a child in Ottawa (“I’m instructed I excelled as Hyena No. 2”), and her last high-school function, as Joan of Arc in Jean Anouilh’s “The Lark,” left her decided to behave. “My dad and mom—Lord love them, and what’s the matter with them?—have been nothing however encouraging,” Murphy mentioned. She studied theatre in Montreal, settled in Toronto, and, in her early twenties, started making reluctant pilot-season pilgrimages to L.A. In 2013, after a interval of “actually questioning if I used to be doing the suitable factor with my life,” she was solid in “Schitt’s Creek,” a Canadian comedy sequence a couple of wealthy household bankrupted by an embezzlement scheme. The present achieved mainstream success after it was picked up by Netflix, and Murphy’s Emmy-winning flip because the ex-celebutante Alexis coloured the presents she acquired on the finish of its run final yr. “Lots of people have been very excited for me to do extra Alexis, and play the blond socialitey character,” she mentioned. The formal conceit of “Kevin” proved extra interesting. “Allison couldn’t be farther from Alexis. She’s a really working-class, very retro, very offended human being. I used to be, like, O.Ok., I believe that is the one-eighty that I used to be in search of.”
Murphy ready by watching the sorts of household sitcoms that Valerie Armstrong, the creator of “Kevin,” had got down to subvert (“The King of Queens,” “Kevin Can Wait”) and dealing with a dialect coach, buying and selling Alexis’s signature vocal fry for a Boston brogue. “I’m nonetheless terrified that we’re going to be run out of Massachusetts,” she mentioned. “It’s such a tough accent! As a result of it’s not there, not there, not there—after which it simply comes and, like, punches you within the eardrum.”
Regardless of COVID constraints, there was actual camaraderie on set. “I’ve associates on the crew whose faces I don’t know,” she mentioned, inserting a hand throughout her mouth to pantomime a masks. As an actor, she mentioned, “it’s laborious to be instructed, ‘Go stand over there and don’t work together.’ ”
This spring, Murphy joined the solid of “Russian Doll” and spent a month filming with Natasha Lyonne in Manhattan simply as town was starting to reopen. “I obtained to drive an Alfa Romeo down the cobblestone streets of SoHo!” she mentioned. “I obtained to shoot on this lovely previous brownstone on the Higher West Aspect! I’d by no means labored in New York earlier than. I felt like an actual working actress.” Bars and eating places in Toronto have been nonetheless closed when she returned residence, however the heat climate had elicited some indicators of life. “I sat in a park and drank wine this weekend,” she mentioned. (She acquired each doses of the Pfizer vaccine within the U.S.) “I actually do really feel like we’re going to return out of this factor just a little bit nicer, as a result of the individuals have been simply in a good temper.” She paused. “Albeit, they may have all been simply very shit-faced.” ♦
