Neighborhood Secrets Uncovered: Celeste Hughey Talks “The’ Burbs” In A Candid Interview

The ‘Burbs, a television series adaptation from the 1989 cult gone mainstream film starring Tom Hanks, Carrie Fisher and Bruce Dern, follows a mixed-race couple (Keke Palmer and Jack Whithall) who head to suburbia – moving into the husband’s childhood home in Hinkley Hills after becoming new parents. Their world is upended when new neighbors move in next door, bringing old secrets to light that shatter the illusion of their quiet little neighborhood.

The show’s creator Celeste Hughey (Dead To Me, No Good Deed) discusses her insights into injecting new life into this adored film while maintaining its core theme – everything is not as it seems in the suburbs.

How Did You Get Involved With ‘The Burbs Project?

The project came to me through Imagine Entertainment and Fuzzy Door Productions. Brian Grazer and Seth MacFarlane  were thinking about The ‘Burbs as potentially a movie during the pandemic. Seth MacFarlane is a huge fan of the original movie. That movie never happened so they started to think about it as a series.

Celeste Hughey. Photo by Taylor James

I was brought in to develop it around 2022.  The ‘Burbs has continued to be a favorite movie for so long, it has such universal themes such as race and class that still are timely to this day.

The original movie was very much of its time in 1989 during the satanic panic. I was inspired by re-examining through the state of the culture coming out of COVID, when we’ve all been sitting at home, looking out of our windows. A lot of my friends moved back home to be closer to family and are rediscovering themselves in these strange new suburban landscapes.

Almost everyone has a neighbor. I live on a cul-de-sac in Los Angeles. One of my neighbors shot one of my other neighbors because he was trespassing. There is always crazy stuff going on in everyone’s street and behind the window blinds. It felt like a really ripe area to play in.

How Did You Expand and Modernize The Film Into A TV Series?

Although it’s a cult classic, it’s important for me to create a new world and new characters with new stories, but still honor the original DNA of the movie. That really is part of keeping the fun tone –  it’s horror, it’s comedy, it’s mystery, it’s slapstick. It’s all of those things that make up the original movie.

There are Easter eggs throughout it. There are tentpole scenes. We have the sardine scene that we reimagined to fit our story. It was really important for me to, to make sure that people who love the movie can look at the show and say, “This was done with hands that really care about getting it right and care about honoring the original film.”

What Were The Original Elements Of The Film That Remained Sacred And What You Updated?

The original element that really stand out is the music. When we approached scoring the show, we brought in Michael Abels, who’s done a lot of Jordan Peele’s movies. It’s so great creating a landscape that can help tell you whether to laugh or to be scared.

That speaks to the tones to walk between. When I first saw the movie, I was quite young and I was terrified. I wanted to make sure there were true scares and true thrilling moments, but also the laugh out loud, funny moments in the series too.

I have been fortunate enough to work on shows that walk that tonal line. I think that’s why they brought me in, because I can see a story that can carry multiple tones at once. I also felt that we needed to center the characters in the ensemble, and have all these people that would never be friends in real life who can come together as this ragtag team.

We were able to bring in all these comedic actors who are also able to carry a level of pathos too. We get to see them in their heightened, comedic selves, but also they bring a real undercurrent of emotion, which is less apparent in the original movie.

I wanted to invest in the backstories of these characters and to spend time with them week to week compared to the film.

Rob (Jack Whitehall) and Samira (Keke Palmer) Photo by Elizabeth Morris/ Peacock)

What Does The Suburb of Hinkley Hills Represent?

Hinkley Hills, as an idea, is a place of comfort and familiarity.

I kept the same name as in the movie, but it was important to make sure it was non-defined. We only talk about the city. It’s not New York. It’s not Philadelphia. It’s whatever city the suburb is in so it can feel universal. It can feel like it’s anywhere. I think suburbs are supposed to represent safety. People move to the suburbs for space and community.

I think that’s what the ideal of a suburb is. And then conversely, the community can also become an adversary. When people try to fit in too much, it becomes too homogenous.

It becomes hard to accept people who are from the outside. That’s where I rooted Samira’s (Keke Palmer) story – someone new to this neighborhood, expecting one thing and then getting a whole other sense of what a community like this could look like.

I think everyone has a point of view of what a suburb is. That it’s boring. You’ve kind of given up on life. You’ve moved out there, but there’s so much happening. There’s so much going on. It will surpise you.

When we start to put together that there’s more here than meets the eye, it crumbles this white picket fence facade.

Discuss Balancing Tonal Threads Of The ‘Burbs.

I’ve always written focusing on multiple tones because life is a layer of tones. I think the best dramas like The Sopranos is a comedy. Succession is a comedy.

I feel you can’t have levity without drama and you can’t have drama without levity. And then to be able to anchor it around a compelling mystery with an ensemble that can bring all of those elements together.

One character could be really feeling the moment when the other might crack a joke. It’s important for me to always be able to stay nimble in tone. I think makes this show unique because you can’t put it in one box.

Let’s Talk About Samir and Rob. Who Are They?

Samira is a complex woman. She is from the city where she was a high-powered lawyer. She’s naturally curious.

She has found herself in a very new marriage, a very a new baby, and a new neighborhood. It’s all very fast and she didn’t expect any of it. One of the threads I wanted to carry through is that she’s experiencing a bit of postpartum, the anxiety that’s there, and wanting to protect her family and her child manifesting in a greater suspicion of the neighborhood.

She goes on this journey learning that not everything is what it seems. Even her husband Rob (Jack Whitehall), who has only been in her life for about a year and a half.

Samira was inspired by my part of me. I grew up as a mixed race kid in a white suburb outside of Boston and always felt a bit like a fish out of water. I couldn’t always tell who was welcoming and who wasn’t. I wanted to carry that into the show as well. It’s not just about the guy who could be a murderer across the street, but the people live next door.

Rob’s layers are chipping away. It’s that playing with the facades of things. You don’t always get what you’re seeing on first blush. We buy into him pretty quickly. He’s super loving. He’s supportive of his wife and his kid. But very quickly, we know there’s something more here. And for his journey, it is confronting a part of his past and his childhood that he never dealt with, never processed, and compartmentalized.

That is now manifesting in ways that he never expected. I think in his recommitment to now being a father and a husband, he must confront those parts of himself in order to integrate and become a better version of himself. We go on this journey with him where we are not sure what what he’s done and what kind of a threat he is. We love him, but what’s going on? We should be a little nervous.

Lynn (Julia Duffy), Samira (Keke Palmer), Dana (Paula Pell) and Tod (Mark Proksch) Photo by Elizabeth Morris/ Peacock

How Did You Approach Writing The Ensemble Characters?

The Hinkley Hills neighbors are community borne out of proximity. We’re forced to live with them.

You can become best friends as neighbors, or you have a neighbor who does bad things and you wonder why they become such an antagonist.

It was important for me to build up these characters in a silo. Who are they, what is their story, what is their secret, before looking at them all in relationship to each other? Coming fully formed, with a point of view and a specific voice, and how they move through the world, made it easier to put them together and see how they work off of each other.

So much comedy is derived from when you have opposite personalities trying to tackle the same problem or being in a conversation with each other. When we were developing Lynn (Julia Duffy), she’s the neighbor that we all know. We all have the busybody neighbor who knows everyone on the street.

I wanted to make a version of her, but give her her own secrets, her own dark undertones, and grief from what she’s going through. With Dana (Paula Pell), she’s our Bruce Dern, military character. Again, she has her own secrets.

Tod (Mark Proksh) was the last character I developed for the show because I needed a man. Tod Mann, that’s where the name came from. He came fully formed, with one syllable sentences, someone that we project our own issues onto. Mark really embodied him as this super confident weirdo who just like just moves through life, marching to the beat of his own drum and totally shameless about it.

I think Tod will be a lot of people’s favorite character. Putting them all together becomes this exercise in finding the best ways to play off of each other. And when you put them on missions, it becomes chaotic and fun because they all are approaching it with their own different point of view.

Gary (Justin Kirk) Photo by Elizabeth Morris/ Peacock)

Describe Gary, The Black Sheep Of Hinley Hills.

I know most people can relate to Gary (Justin Kirk) – when you’re looking out the window and there’s a car sitting outside your house at two in the morning, you start to you start to imagine the worst. And when you don’t have all the information, your imagination fills in the holes. So, for this guy, who we later learn is doing mostly normal things, it becomes layers of suspicion projected onto him to the point where we imagine that he’s a murderer.

Gary reflects the doctor in the original movie. He’s charming and clean cut, but you have this unease when you’re around him.

What’s Your Favorite Episode?

My favorite is episode three titled Sardine.

I think it is one of the episodes that really runs the gamut of tones. We start with humor –  the dog and lightness. And we end with Rob and Samira having this intense fight and pulling off the scab of their relationship, and us starting to point our suspicion at Rob for the first time.

And centered in that episode is our take on the sardine scene from the film. When we shot that scene, it was the day that everyone in the cast and crew could feel when everything clicked.

Rachel Goldberg, who directed the episode, wanted to incorporate so many elements of horror into it. There’s some shots that evoke The Shining. She added those layers of horror while we have this dog caper happening. There’s so many references to the movie, like digging up the basement. We have a replica of the furnace in the background.

It’s the episode that really brings all the things that I was trying to do into one place, into a really compelling story. Where we get to really see all the characters come together. We get all the tones coming together. We have those moments from the movie, but in our own voice.

by Staff Writer

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