A MILLION LITTLE THINGS Post-Mortem: DJ Nash on the Gary and Delilah Twists in the Season 4 Premiere - Give Me My Remote : Give Me My Remote

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A MILLION LITTLE THINGS Post-Mortem: DJ Nash on the Gary and Delilah Twists in the Season 4 Premiere

September 22, 2021 by  

A MILLION LITTLE THINGS season 4 premiere

A MILLION LITTLE THINGS – “family first” – Gary struggles in the aftermath of his encounter with Peter. Meanwhile, Regina and Rome put on a united front following the closure of Someday and the deportation of Tyrell’s mother. Sophie deals with mixed emotions surrounding her mother while Delilah faces a difficult decision. Eddie inches closer to finding out who caused the accident, and Maggie navigates a new career opportunity on the season four premiere of “A Million Little Things,” airing WEDNESDAY, SEPT. 22 (10:00-11:00 p.m. EDT), on ABC. (ABC/Jack Rowand)
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[Warning: This post contains spoilers for the A MILLION LITTLE THINGS season premiere.]

Though A MILLION LITTLE THINGS’ Gary (James Roday Rodriguez) attacked Peter (Andrew Leeds), there was a twist to the encounter that wasn’t clear in the finale: Christopher (Michael Weston), the father of a deceased victim of Peter, also joined in on the attack.

But what actually went down between the trio? Showrunner DJ Nash shared a few teases about what and the premiere hour’s other big twists…

How will the show be handling the reveal of what happened between Gary/Christopher and Peter? Will it be spread throughout the season or will be something we learned relatively fast?
You will learn it relatively quickly. We’re going to go back, pop back to that night; we will see what happened and we’ll see sort of how a simple plan and how things went wrong. And you’ll see Gary torn between knowing that, “I kind of love that this guy had to pay a price,” but also feeling very heartbroken at the price he’s going to have to pay—and for the unintended price that he may have Sophie pay for it.

So I think there’s a lot going on for Gary, who’s never really dealt well with guilt. And it will be pushed to an extremely high level. He didn’t do well with not knowing Jon was suffering from depression, which led him to die by suicide. He didn’t do well with the fact he didn’t know that Rome was struggling as well. I think he’s struggled a lot with guilt, and if there were ever a time that that was going to come to a head, it seems like we’re there.

We’ve discussed before that Gary is very beloved. And while this is in character, given his past anger, is there also an internal line the writers discussed about how far he could go without fundamentally risking how the audience views him?
I believe that if you look at the FBI profile that is Gary, we set up a lot of things that suggest that this perfect storm was inevitable. From him punching a car, to his self-destructive need for justice, it has been, I think, firmly planted in the show. So the belief that he would take matters into his own hands, was not hard to believe. You know, the question is, how do you allow whatever may have happened behind that door to happen, and still allow him to be an accepted member of the friend group? And I think that’s the challenge that we’ll watch this season.

Gary now knows Darcy wants to have a future with him. How are they going to move forward with this cloud over his head?
Yeah, it’s interesting—the pilot starts with this idea that if Gary hadn’t called Rome about Jon, Rome wouldn’t be here. And you can’t help but wonder if Darcy had left her message for Gary an hour before, would the story be different? Probably yes. So, yeah, I think we’re looking at how fragile life is and how one event can cause a series of events. You see that with a bunch of things—you see that with Gary circling back to Peter, or with Peter and the assault. And we see how many people Peter’s assault actually ended up hurting. So we were following all of that.



Delilah makes it clear she’s leaving in the premiere and her friends/family say goodbye in the hour. Will this stick? How much can fans expect to see her this year?
I love Stephanie Szostak. And it’s so funny, because, as I was thinking about how many people read to Delilah—she was the last one cast in our cast—and I just can’t imagine anyone else playing Delilah except for Stephanie Szostak. We are very close in age—I’m older—but we share a lot of similar background and family structure and things, and I just I love her so much.

I called the episode “family first,” as my sort of thank you to her. I know with her family being in Connecticut and how hard it was for for for the first two seasons to be long distance. And then with COVID and the quarantine, making it impossible to get home, I know how much she sacrificed for the show. And I totally understand and value of putting family first, it’s what our whole series has been about, so how could we not allow that to happen?

Talking to Stephanie, I needed to put Delilah in a place where if she weren’t here for events that everyone in the friend group tends to show up for, like, I need four stitches and I need go to the hospital or someone’s birthday party or a restaurant or something opening. I didn’t want it to feel like she was slighting her friend group. So I couldn’t have her in just some episodes and have her still living in Boston, it would feel like, “Wait, where’s Delilah?” Whereas if she’s in France, I have the ability to bring her back to Boston to visit whenever we want. And whenever Stephanie can. But also explain her absence.

To be clear, is she no longer a regular?
She’s not a regular, but she will be back for a bunch. I would say that we use her more than we used her last year, sort of like we used Jon the first season. There’s stories that will be told: some in flashback and some in present day, you know, you’ll see her. There’s a beautiful flashback, we have coming up with her. And it’s great. I don’t want to say more, but you will see her.

Given the changes to technology with COVID, is there more wiggle room to see her via FaceTime, etc., again?
The DGA has been very understanding about that during COVID, because, technically, I guess, prior to COVID you couldn’t do that—you need the director to be on site with where the actor. They’ve been really understanding of FaceTimes or video conferencing presence and stuff. So we will continue to do that whenever it’s appropriate for the story. But we also wanted to tell the story of a survivor who needed to figure out what this next portion of her life would be. And I have a couple family members who we’ve lost. And for some of them, people mourn in different ways. And sometimes the memories of the people are harder than just trying to move on, and I think that’s what Delilah’s speech in the premiere is speaking to.

And just to quickly look at the mystery around the person who hit Eddie, is that the mystery of the season?
We’re certainly following that. We’re going to follow Eddie being caught between being the father he said he would be in the finale to Katherine, and to Theo, and now this new piece of information that really, on one hand, he wants to be this dad, who despite his challenges shows his true grit, very much like my dad, and you know another parent of a writer in the room. But what’s challenging that is he’s newly sober, he’s finding out information about who hit him. The backstory will challenge it, everything about it will make it really hard to be Eddie. And we’ll watch him try to navigate what he wants to do. How does he forgive?

A MILLION LITTLE THINGS, Wednesdays, 10/9c, ABC

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