A garden society seems as innocuous as a bingo club. But in the new NBC series “Grosse Pointe Garden Society,” four members are not just digging dirt to plant petunias and marigolds. They have a dead body to hide.
Who’s dead? Who killed the person? Why is that person dead? None of these questions are answered in the first episode airing Sunday, Feb. 23, at 10 p.m. and on Peacock the next day. In fact, actors who spoke to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution while shooting the eighth of 13 episodes earlier this month didn’t know either.
Shot in metro Atlanta but set in the fancy Detroit suburb of Grosse Pointe, the series evokes the pulpy elements of “Desperate Housewives” and “Good Girls,” the latter of which was also the brainchild of “Grosse Pointe” producers Jenna Bans and Bill Krebs, who grew up in Grosse Pointe, Michigan.
In “Grosse Pointe,” the four primary cast members are interconnected by a garden society. Two are wealthy while the other two are just getting by.
Catherine (Aja Naomi King) is a perfectionist real estate agent who is cheating on her husband. Alice (AnnaSophia Robb) is a teacher with grander artistic aspirations but feels hemmed in by life and her in-laws. Birdie (Melissa Fumero) is an entitled, rich divorcee who always seems to be running away from bad choices. Brett (Ben Rappaport) is a recently divorced dad and owner of a garden shop who feels resentful toward his ex-wife’s new husband and competes for the attention of their two kids.
“There is a lot of old money tied to Grosse Pointe,” Krebs said. “It’s on the fringes of Detroit, an enclave built around old world auto industry money. There is also a lot of working class that lives there. We love to see the two worlds collide.”
The show toggles between two periods: the time leading up to the murder and what happens after the murder. The series quickly creates multiple potential targets for murder.
Krebs and Bans are purposely keeping such info under wraps. “We switched a couple of times in the development process who this person buried might be,” Krebs said. “It’s been fun hearing all the theories from the actors and crew.”
Credit: Photo: Steve Swisher/NBC
Credit: Photo: Steve Swisher/NBC
Based on NBC’s heavy reliance on procedurals such as “Law & Order” and the “Chicago” franchise, “Grosse Pointe” is a bit of a gamble.
Over the last decade, the network could point to two notable series that fit into the “Grosse Pointe” genre. “Good Girls” (2018-2022), about three housewives who get entangled with a crime syndicate, was a modest success, while NBC received a raft of awards and acclaim for the weepy relationship drama “This Is Us” (2016-2022), which used time jumps liberally like “Grosse Pointe.”
“Our show, being a soapy serialized drama, is a throwback but fresh at the same time on network TV,” Bans said.
The garden itself is a major character on the show. The original garden seen in the pilot was created at an event space for wedding photographers not far from Fernbank Museum, according to production designer Adam Davis (“Hunger Games: Catching Fire,” “Them”). “We turned it into lush, super vibrant, lots of eye candy,” he said.
Once the show received a green light, they hired a full-time greensman and found space right outside the gates of Assembly Studios in Doraville to create a garden across from a retirement community and by a drainage ditch.
“It required some clever imagination using a facade entrance to the garden pavilion to mask certain things,” Davis said.
The show began shooting episodes two through 13 in November so the garden has faced temperatures from the teens to the 70s. Live plants have died in the cold. Rain has turned it into a mud pit. Production stopped for two-plus days in January due to snow. Silks are judiciously used.
And given the flashbacks, the garden had to resemble different seasons in the same episode so plants and flowers are constantly being swapped out.
Here is a quick summary of the characters from each actor’s perspective:
Credit: Sally Montana/NBC
Credit: Sally Montana/NBC
Alice
Robb, 31, has been in the business for two decades with notable lead roles in “Because of Winn-Dixie,” “Soul Surfer” and “The Carrie Diaries.” She brings a surface vulnerability to Alice’s character that makes it easy to underestimate her.
“She wants out of Grosse Pointe,” Robb said. “She wants to be a writer in New York. It’s been her and her husband, Doug, against the world. But the reality is; can she ever leave? And if she does leave, will she actually be happy?”
Alice’s bohemian existence “does not make her fit the Grosse Pointe stereotype” at the garden society, she added. But as an English teacher, she finds gardening comforting in an Emily Dickinson way.
And her life is turned upside when her dog is found dead and she finds out who likely did it by the end of the pilot. Revenge might be her next project.
Credit: Sally Montana/NBC
Credit: Sally Montana/NBC
Brett
Rappaport, 38, whose credits include “Outsourced,” “For the People” and “Ozark,” plays Brett with a goofy likability. “He has a big open heart and he’s an amazing dad,” he said. “He loves fully. I really connect with his sense of humor. They gave me the best one liners. He’s also too nice for his own good and has dad jokes up the wazoo.”
Post divorce, he joins the largely female garden society in search of community and ends up in a tight friendship with the betrothed Alice. The problem: He also has the hots for her. And the writers matched Rappaport’s personal love for early 2000s emo rock like At the Drive-In with that of his character in what he calls a “salute to elder millennials.”
In all, “he melds quite well with my personal life,” Rappaport said. “All my friends are women. It makes sense I’m the one guy in this situation. It feels like home for me.”
Credit: Sally Montana/NBC
Credit: Sally Montana/NBC
Catherine
King is already familiar with murder and flashbacks courtesy of six seasons with Shonda Rimes’ ABC series “How to Get Away with Murder.”
She is back for more as Catherine, the head of a garden society with all the accoutrements of legacy wealth, from her fancy threads to her impeccable mansion.
Catherine, King said, “is trying to project this image of control as the perfect wife and mother, but underneath, her life is growing wildly out of control and could destroy everything she has built up.”
But alas, her husband is an unsavory playboy and like Alice, she quickly jumps into retribution mode.
Credit: Sally Montana/NBC
Credit: Sally Montana/NBC
Birdie
Compared to previous characters such as Amy in “Brooklyn Nine-Nine,” Melissa Fumero plays the troublemaker, the most unpredictable of the crew.
“I get to be a little feistier,” said Fumero. “She’s messier. Birdie doesn’t know what she’s doing. She is kind of just living life one moment to the next.”
Fumero said it took time to get comfortable with Birdie. The showy outfits designed by Eric Daman (“Sex and the City,” “Gossip Girl”) helped her because they “exude a certain energy. The glam. That’s her mask she puts on every day. That allows her to be present that way.”
Daman, she added, “puts me in things that make no sense. Patterns on patterns. Yet it works. I don’t understand the fashion math. But I would be happy to steal the jumpsuits if I could for my own wardrobe.”
WHERE TO WATCH
“Grosse Pointe Garden Society”
10 p.m. Sundays on NBC starting Feb. 23; available on Peacock the next day
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