‘Difficult People’ Creator Julie Klausner on Reuniting Billy Eichner and the Gang for a Live-Read of the Movie Script That Never Got Made — SkimNews
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- Difficult People will reunite its cast at Town Hall on Nov. 3 for a staged reading of Julie Klausner and Alex Scordelis’s follow-up movie script, which Universal commissioned but never produced.
- Billy Eichner will reprise Billy alongside Andrea Martin, James Urbaniak and Gabourey Sidibe, with Christopher Meloni, Cecily Strong, Michael Urie and Paul Walter Hauser joining as guests.
- Susan Lucci will play Matthew while Cole Escola is unavailable, a casting change Escola and Lucci announced on Instagram.
- Difficult People’s lost movie returns Julie and Billy to the entertainment industry and confronts the glut of cheap horror films and the rise of social-media influencers.
- Julie Klausner said she wanted Billy and Julie during lockup, Marilyn handling Zoom sessions and the show on air for #MeToo, while the strikes, mergers and COVID frustrated her with changes in show business.
- Julie Klausner called that season of “The Comeback” more inspiring than almost anything else that year for checking in with its characters during the strike, and cited AI, consolidation and pressure on writers’ rooms as subjects worth revisiting.
- Julie Klausner said she wants “Difficult People” to take more than a traditional 30-minute reboot, citing the five-episode “Girls” reunion and raising a limited series, movie or stage adaptation as possibilities.
Why it matters: For Billy Eichner and the returning cast, the Nov. 3 reading turns a four-year-old, Universal-commissioned screenplay into a live audience experience without a feature production. Klausner also identifies a limited series and stage adaptation, giving the cult property two additional format routes beyond the one-night event.
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