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Hulu’s new show Phony is full of twists and turns — and creator Nick Paley teased an upcoming cliffhanger that will leave viewers begging for more.
“The architecture of the story is fully in place and has been from the pitch,” Paley exclusively tells Us about the story at large. “My background is not mystery and genre in that way. My background is comedy, character and drama. That’s the heart of why I wanted to make this show.”
Paley’s experience allowed him to look at the more mysterious aspects of the series differently. “I wanted for that to all be clear and fun and something that people could invest in,” he says. “It felt important to me to have real answers and architecture for where the story was going.”
Phony, which airs Tuesdays on Hulu, follows a teenage boy (Sam Nivola) who wakes up after a car accident convinced that his mother (Connie Britton) is an imposter.
“Every story I write from a really powerful emotion that I want to know more about, that I’m curious about and can power the insane amount of work it is to make something,” Paley explains. “So [something like] watching the clock in first grade as minutes tick by and your parent doesn’t show up is such a potent emotional feeling.”
He continues: “Then I always wanted to talk about the formation of an identity and figure out who you are — and separating from a parent. There’s a lot of coming of age stories that talk about the exploration of the outside world as you become of age. But there’s not a lot of stories that talk about the loss of a parent as a godlike figure and that is an interesting aspect of it. So combining that with that core fear of like, ‘What if I become an orphan?’ And it was a really lovely and easy marriage of concepts.”
Paley specifically enjoyed throwing in hints early on that Sonny (Nivola) was questioning his mother’s intentions before the car accident changed his perception of their dynamic.
“It’s a real loss of true north. Your compass just starts to spin because you’re like, ‘Oh, this person who’s been guiding me and giving me advice and feeding me and supporting me actually is just like a human being,’” he tells Us. “There is this loss of clarity. So that emotional experience is very painful for the parent, obviously, and also the kid. It’s a grieving process. In my original pitch for this show, I talked about how we lose our parents twice: one when they actually physically die and one when you’re a teenager and you realize that they don’t have all the answers and you have to figure stuff out on your own.”
Since Phony’s premiere last month, viewers have taken to social media with theories on the big reveal surrounding Ellen’s (Britton) identity.
“There are details that feel really spot on [from fans], but no one has put the patchwork together. I’m just having such a ball reading them because people are reading the subtext in a way that I’m just so impressed by,” Paley shares. “There’s the old adage of trust that your audience is smart and that is the way that we built the show. Trusting that it’s so beautiful to see people leaning in and hearing the undertones of everything we’re doing. But I will say that no one has totally cracked all the elements together. Different people have different little random ideas that touch on things.”
Paley is excited to keep unpacking the hints for the audience — starting with the beavers.
“They were not in the pitch architecture. My favorite version of developing mystery elements and clues is something that is an impulse. I love the symbol of a beaver,” he explains. “But I think trusting your subconscious when you’re developing what will become a very complicated and integrated element into the mystery is a really important part of most inspiration. … There’s an intuitive thing that people are hooked into about the beaver. You can’t just randomly put stuff in stories, you have to then integrate it. So it found its way into the story very, very easily because I was just trusting my subconscious that was serving up important details that I didn’t understand why they were important yet.”
Looking ahead, Paley promises some answers would be given before the season 1 finale. There is a plan for season 2, which means a new twist will be introduced along the way for the audience to invest in.
“I’m really excited about the cathartic emotionality of the [season 1] cliffhanger. This thing kicks us into the next story in this world because I don’t like constantly depriving people of information. I want this to feel like it means a lot and it feels very important to the characters emotionally,” he tells Us. “So that cliffhanger does both. Every episode has very big turns at the end. When you’re telling a mystery, it’s really important to show it to people who don’t know.”
Paley adds: “So in the process of editing and refining the story, we showed it to a lot of people and it was so fun, because people were just like, ‘I have to see what happens next.’ Like, constantly, over and over again. For the back half of the season, it’s just a true ride and I’m really excited to watch the Reddit forum specifically explode.”
Phony airs on Hulu Tuesdays.
