AMERICAN AUTO Post-Mortem: Lara Everly Breaks Down ‘The Letter’

[Warning: This post contains spoilers for the Tuesday, February 28 episode of AMERICAN AUTO, “The Letter.”]

Lara Everly made her television directorial debut with the Tuesday, February 28 episode of AMERICAN AUTO, “The Letter”—but the experience was a long time coming.

Everly initially applied for NBCU’s Female Forward program back in 2020, after seeing Katie Locke O’Brien—a participant in the first class, who has gone on to direct shows like GHOSTS and SAVED BY THE BELL—find success with it. (Female Forward was the first directing mentorship program to guarantee its participants an episode of television upon completion.)

And when Everly’s friend, Richie Keene, directed an episode of SUPERSTORE, she got proactive: She asked to shadow him to get a bit of extra experience under her belt.

Initially, after completing the program, Everly was set to direct GOOD GIRLS—but then the series wound up being canceled. “I was really excited about [doing GOOD GIRLS] because I was a mom losing my mind in the pandemic,” Everly explains to Give Me My Remote. “I was ready to just rage it out on moms breaking bad in the world…But when that show wound up not getting renewed, we started the process of interviewing for a couple more shows.”

Enter AMERICAN AUTO—which is run by SUPERSTORE creator Justin Spitzer. (Spitzer is also married to GOOD GIRLS creator Jenna Bans.) “It all went full circle,” Everly acknowledges.

In addition to being back on a Spitzer project (he was an EP, but not showrunning when she shadowed SUPERSTORE), there are several crew and cast overlaps between AMERICAN AUTO and SUPERSTORE. “There were little connections that were made then that I didn’t realize were going to pay off later,” Everly says. “It was sort of a kismet thing…The world feels so big, and, at the same time, everything’s kind of like a couple of degrees away.”

Here, Everly talks about getting into the AMERICAN AUTO world and directing “The Letter”…

After GOOD GIRLS fell through, were you specifically looking to try a comedy? Or was it a situation where you were going out for both dramas and comedies this go-round?
I came into the Female Forward application process pitching myself as a comedy director. But my brand and all the work that I mostly do is dark comedy, dramedy, a comedy with an edge. Not like super sitcom-y. Cable comedy vibes. And in the end, there ended up being one participating comedy show my year, which was SUPERSTORE. And GOOD GIRLS asked to look at both comedy and drama directors, because they sort of were in a unique position of being a one-hour dramedy. There was a lot of comedy in that show; Retta, Mae Whitman [the actors had a] mostly comedic background. And so that show was really unique in the sense that it was a one-hour [series], but it was in that dramedy, dark comedy arena. So it wound up working out perfectly. And I guess my reel just spoke to them. I did the interview and it was serendipitous. Everything worked out and felt very aligned.

But when GOOD GIRLS fell through, and I was talking to the Female Forward program, they’re like, “Well, what next shows do you want?” I actually said I would love to interview for some half-hours. Because, ultimately, I do feel like there are a lot of half-hours out there in the world that are leaning a little bit more dramatic, that are taking bigger risks, or having more of an underbelly.

This episode is actually a phenomenal example of not being afraid to get a little juicy, bite off some social issues, and tackle some stuff—all through the lens of comedy.

So I did ask to interview for a half-hour, but looking for shows that were more grounded. You have a little bit of that kind of liminal edge between comedy and real moments of drama.

The AMERICAN AUTO episode itself is also very female-centric as Katherine (Ana Gasteyer) has to meet with the Payne Motors employees who are enraged that the company is donating to pro-life politicians—and the men are tasked with figuring out the company’s abortion care policy. When did you discover that’s what your debut episode would be?
So first, I was just selected to be a director for season 2, and I didn’t know what episode. And to be honest, I don’t know what inner conversations went on behind backdoors about who directs which. But I knew I was going to be directing episode 6. I was shadowing on the very first episode of season 2 and I actually peered into I think it was Justin’s office—the door was open while I was shadowing, and I could see on this giant board the main theme for each episode: plot point, logline, theme. And I saw abortion, episode 6. I got really excited, just because I have done a lot of stuff in the reproductive rights sphere. And so much of my content is women-driven narratives and female-centric stories. It was just that word, but I got really excited. And they knew also that I had tackled a lot of content in that arena, and I’m gonna assume that they thought that I would be a good pairing for it.

When I read this script written by Elena Crevello, I literally welled up with tears, because I was like, “Yes.” This feels so aligned and this is such a good episode. You know, when you get a show, you’re so grateful and so excited. But then you still don’t know what story you’re going to tell. It could be anything. I mean, it could be a fluffier part of the arc or a real dark part of the arc. You’re part of a much bigger picture; you’re a chapter. And you don’t know what part of the chapter you’re going to tell. So when I got that script, I was so appreciative. And I just felt like—this is so cheesy—but everything kind of aligned. I was like, “Ah, it’s been a crazy journey. And there’s been a lot of ups and downs. But I think, maybe, it was all meant to come down to this moment, and this script, to this pairing.”

And Elena did such a beautiful job tackling all the different sides of it. How the company handles things between their younger employees and the more senior employees, between the different genders. And she was so nuanced and intelligent about tackling this social issue. It was just such a fun episode. It feels like this gift-wrapped fun ride of jokes and story, but underneath it, she’s exposing a really vulnerable topic of abortion policies and corporate culture. And that’s not easy to do.

So, I was super, super excited once I got the script, which was maybe a few episodes before mine…But it was a journey. It was a whole journey even internally within the network in getting this episode to what it needed to be.

When you got the script, was there a particular scene where you were like, “Oh, I’m going to need to do X, Y, or Z to make sure this comes out the way I’m seeing it?”
The end was actually something that we finessed a little bit, because it was hard to sort of [know] where do you leave it? Elena does such a good job of not taking any point of view, but just saying like, this is one generation’s point of view, this is another. No one’s quite hitting the mark. So to just sort of end it, we didn’t want to take too much of a stance. So we sort of finessed what exactly is said in the end to leave just enough of it to be open-ended and a conversation starter, versus feeling like we’re drawing any lines in the sand.

And also, I would say, there’s a scene where it’s Katherine and Sadie against all the Gen Z employees, and that scene was really hard. Katherine basically winds up losing her s—, and monologuing and raging at all of them. And it’s completely motivated and yet she’s also going off the rails. And that was a really fine line to hit—how angry does she get? And how angry do the Gen Z, younger employees get? We tried all different takes.

That was honestly a day where we got behind schedule, there were so many things happening, there was a stunt—the bloody nose—there was like this massive Ana Gasteyer monologue. And it was just one of those things where I knew as a director, we didn’t know what we were going to wind up having to cut, and we had to get all the different options. We had to get her “rage against the machine” take. We had to get the “I’m in control, but frustrated” take. All of the different things.

And the same for the Gen Zs. We did one where they were like going at her in a really aggro way. And then we did take one where it was more passive-aggressive. I just didn’t know how heated they wanted this comedy to get. And sometimes, honestly, the funniest takes, the most comedic take, is when they are losing it the most. So we just did everything under the sun.

We got it done. It was like a total race. It was one of those days where I literally stepped on the soundstage and then stepped out and I was like, “I don’t even know what happened.” I just wanted to make sure that we got it right and that they had options.

The listening tour scene made me think of the SUPERSTORE break room scenes, which were notoriously complex to direct with all of the coverage needed. Was there anything you had to do with that sequence to be able to more effectively cover it?
It’s funny, because that was originally written as them being in a circle. So like, they’re all in a circle, which was supposed to be Gen Z’s idea of something more inclusive. And then, speaking of coverage, we were like, “That’s going to be really hard to cover a whole circle.” It’s so much dialogue. So it’s funny, because even in the production design, we were already thinking about what is going to be a way to cover this that is fresh, but not just like a stage? We wound up doing a half-moon kind of thing versus just an audience and a stage to get a little bit of that more inclusivity. It was just a lot to cover.

Honestly, even the background [actors] were giving us amazing little gems. And it was like, “Oh, wait, let’s get this person who’s making this hilarious reaction” or “This person is filming Katherine lose it.” And I would come up with these little easter eggs on the day, like, “Oh, let’s get her fighting through the iPhone.” But all of that is just extra, like toppings. And so it’s hard because you have so much to cover. You gotta get all the main talent covered. But there’s all these little moments that are so good and what someone would do. Someone would totally pull out a phone. Wouldn’t it be great if we can catch the meta experience of this employee filming her and watch her flipping out through her phone? And so it’s just trying to find that balance.

The walk and talks were interesting, too. There’s a piece that I heard got cut, because I haven’t seen the final production [cut]—there was a walk and talk with Katherine and Sadie where they’re passing the brainstorm room, where all the guys are there trying to figure out the abortion policy. And so we did this walk and talk where there was a little bit of a connective tissue where you could see Wesley in there with the confetti and then they passed by. Which is rare that the show actually connects those pieces and scenes.

But I had fun personally trying to be like, “Ooh, how can we create a walk and talk that actually connects two scenes together, so we understand that two things are happening in the office at the same time and being handled very differently?” Here’s Sadie being very feminine, with a calm approach of like, “Let’s do a listening tour.” And then meanwhile the guys are like, “Oh, I think it was something to do with a pap smear.” So just trying to show the dichotomy of the two things happening in the office simultaneously.

Comedies frequently allow an element of improv in their production. How did you work that into filming?
The guys in the cast are comedy kings. They’re so brilliant. And their scenes were a little bit more contained, because there’s more sitting around this table, brainstorming what they think the abortion policy should be. So there was a lot of improv there. And also it was just really fertile ground for them to come up with the best worst ideas. So those things were very improv-heavy and very funny.

And then also even in the end, when they’re talking about the things that they want to do that don’t pigeonhole them into feeling masculine, like getting like bergamot vanilla deodorant. That was also very improv-heavy. But again, physically, they’re sitting around talking so there weren’t that many moving pieces; it allowed for a lot of improv. And what kind of Edible Arrangement it should be? There were so many funny things—I was crying watching it.

X Mayo is an incredible improviser. So she’s always going to improvise, no matter what the scene is. And she comes in prepared, locked and loaded, with tons of improv. So every single scene she’s in, she has like 18 alts in her back pocket. Especially when she turned on the Gen Zers, and was badmouthing them with Katherine and Sadie—talking about the things that they do, she had so many funny things. We were all dying.

So yeah, it just depends. But I come from an improv background. I’m a graduate of Upright Citizens Brigade. I have an acting background, and as an actor, I’ve done a lot of improvised shows. So for me, that’s totally my arena and something that I love playing with, too. And for me, sometimes an actor will improvise something that’s almost there, but it sparks something in me, where I’m like, “Oh my god, that’s so perfect. But what if it was like this?” So I’m kind of improvising with them behind the lens, also.




Was there anything else memorable about your directing experience?
There was just sort of a neat passing-the-torch moment with one of the directors from the inaugural class of Female Forward, Heather Jack. And she’s incredible. And she actually was in my very first interview for Female Forward—they have the alumni of the previous class sit in. And then I wound up shadowing her on AMERICAN AUTO. I shadowed two episodes; my second episode was with Heather.

I consider her a good friend at this point, and I had so much fun just being on set with her. There was a sort of a neat kind of Female Forward alum, director to director, torch passing that wound up happening. It was sort of just all coincidental, but I really enjoy being able to get to know her and observe her, as someone that isn’t necessarily 30 years ahead of me; I’m in the third year of the program, and she was in the first. So it was very helpful to talk to her about specifically what has her experience been since the program in the past couple of years and all of that.

AMERICAN AUTO, Tuesdays, 8:30/7:30c, NBC

RELATED:

• The AMERICAN AUTO Team Previews ‘The Letter’
• AMERICAN AUTO Post-Mortem: Justin Spitzer on Payne Motors’ Big Gamble
• Justin Spitzer Previews Ben Feldman’s SUPERSTORE Reunion on AMERICAN AUTO
• AMERICAN AUTO: What You Need to Know About the Season Premiere

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