Grosse Pointe Garden Society follows four members of a suburban garden club – Alice (AnnaSophia Robb), Brett (Ben Rappaport), Catherine (Aja Naomi King), and Birdie (Melissa Fumero) – who find their lives intertwined by scandal, mischief, and a shared secret – a murder everyone wishes everyone would forget.
Birdie is a socialite with a penchant for small town scuttlebutt. Catherine endures a loveless marriage but enjoys the thrill of a steamy affair. Alice struggles with balancing personal aspirations with the societal expectations of being a mom and homemaker. Brett illustrates the challenges of being a divorced dad while watching another man co-parent his kids.
Showrunners Jenna Bans and Bill Krebs have been working together since The Family (2016) and have developed a collaborative shorthand. They spoke with Creative Screenwriting Magazine about developing the show (Bill Krebs is from Grosse Pointe, Michigan), which has the tonal hues of Mark Cherry’s wildly popular Desperate Housewives (which Jenna worked on).
Starting Out As TV Writers
For Bill, the biggest challenge of his early TV writing career was finding his voice. “Many writers know what they like to watch, but they’re not necessarily aware of what they’re good at. It takes a really long time to figure out your specialty.” He used becoming a good photographer as a metaphor. “You have to take a ton of really bad pictures in order to figure out how you adjust the lens and the focal point in order to really get everything into focus.”
Bill started his career writing on the animated series Ugly Americans. “I met a lot of great writers and I got to know how the politics of the room worked.” Ultimately, it wasn’t his calling.
Bill Krebs & Jenna Bans
He then moved to half-hour comedy on Workaholics before transferring to Franklin and Bash, a one-hour dramedy that better aligned with his tastes.
“I like situational funny things where you take a person who shouldn’t be in a situation and you put him in that exact one. Then you let the comedy come out of that, and then you have the drama on top of it,” he continues.
Jenna was fortunate enough to be staffed on Desperate Housewives at age 27. To her, working on an Emmy Award-winning TV show was the typical career path. She later worked on Private Practice, Grey’s Anatomy, and Scandal before starting to write pilots for her own TV series. She created the darkly comic Good Girls for Universal Television. Both Bill and Jenna wrote for Good Girls to set the tone of Grosse Pointe Garden Society.
“We always called it a high-wire act because if you lean too far towards drama, it becomes schmaltzy. If you lean too far towards the comedy, it becomes too broad,” she adds.
Developing Grosse Pointe Garden Society
Given their backgrounds, they wanted to create a series that was a “throwback reminiscent of those fun shows of the early 2000s trying to cover up a murder,” notes Jenna. (We miss you, Wisteria Lane!)
“We watched How To Get Away With Murder and Big Little Lies. We liked those worlds that had a lot of drama, but then there was humor and heart in the characters’ everyday lives. We knew that we wanted to do some type of ensemble show with a murder at its core. Soapy drama that had not been on network television in a long time.” They decided on Grosse Pointe as the engine that would generate fun on the show.
A gardening club is a microcosm of characters from all socio-economic backgrounds who bond over gardens. It is the great leveler as everyone rubs soil through their fingers. The seriousness of competitive gardening is filled with cheeky tension and heightened comedic drama. A gardening club is one thing, but a gardening society is next level.
Birdie (Melissa Fumero), Catherine (Aja Naomi King) Brett (Ben Rappaport) and Alice (AnnaSophia Robb) Photo by Mark Hill/ NBC
Other than using gardens as the backdrop for the series, flowers also serve as a potent metaphor for life.
“We started talking about the flowers and soil. Planting something and beautiful flowers being born from poop and bugs, and bugs eating poop. The most beautiful gardens come from decay, rot, and death underneath. It’s such a great metaphor for a picture-perfect suburban town that prides itself on looks and money. It lends itself to exposing the dark underbelly of a community,” Jenna muses.
The duo looked to 80s sitcoms like Family Ties for inspiration. These were half-hour comedies, but they would have these real dramatic moments or special episodes.
Bill also loves miscommunications and misunderstandings in relationships to add tension to Grosse Pointe and the butterfly effect it can have. The thing is to have the mystery simmer and unfold in an organic and well-paced way.
Balancing the Tone
“We like to make fun of elements of society at the same time that we like to celebrate them. At the core, we like to get to very emotional moments,” continues Bill. There’s a scene where Alice is talking about the challenges of parenthood. Many parents won’t admit how hard it is, let alone discuss it.
The recurring theme in Grosse Pointe Garden Society relates to the superficial beauty of the community and the rot underneath. This applies not only to the garden but to the characters too.
The people of Grosse Pointe are unlikely murderers and accomplices. They constantly question whether they’re good people doing bad things like covering up a murder. Then there’s the inherent lying that comes with that. No amount of money can save you from having fingers pointed at you. Your reputation is everything. It can make or break you.
Grosse Pointe is not merely a community; it’s an identity. The residents could easily leave when the gossip becomes too rampant, but they choose to stand their ground and stay. After all, it’s their home.
Covering Up A Murder
The events leading up to the murder and the mystery surrounding it are shown across dual timeline s— the present and six months earlier.
“This murder becomes a great equalizer in our group of friends. I love that class structure,” states Jenna.
In a town like Grosse Pointe, consistently lying to friends and family is hard work – the constant walking on eggshells to make sure you don’t slip up.
Weaving the mystery into the storyline and sprinkling breadcrumbs to tantalize characters and audiences along the way becomes an art form. The constant directing, misdirecting, hiding, and revealing is a constant dance over 13 episodes. “You can’t give anything away too soon, but we also can’t make the audience wait too long,” declares Bill. “All those red herrings had to lead to the night when the murder happened.” Every misdirect had to be earned and couldn’t simply be a gimmick. Every episode adds to the story, whether it leads to the murderer or not.
Bill Krebs cites an example early in the season when Brett and Doug have a fight, which leads to exploring the dynamic between Alice and her parents, which leads to the murderer. The rapid nature of broadcast television meant that each episode was written one to three weeks ahead of shooting, so it was impossible to change a storyline after an episode had been shot.
