Paul Walter Hauser does Bogart in madcap murder mystery The Afterparty

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As an actor who has spent 15 years slowly but steadily rising through Hollywood ranks, Paul Walter Hauser has grafted for all kinds of roles, from the smallest bit parts on television shows to high-profile roles in features such as I, Tonya and Richard Jewell. Rather than complain, it’s made Hauser thankful for the creators who come up with work that matters.

Case in point: comedy writers and filmmakers Christopher Miller and Phil Lord, who have been involved with 21 Jump Street, The Lego Movie, and the animated Spider-Verse franchise. Instead of acting cool when he saw the duo at an awards night or launch party, Hauser would pull them aside and thank them for what they were doing. If the choice was between being cool or being authentic, Hauser always chose the latter.

Paul Walter Hauser in The Afterparty, season 2.Credit: Apple TV+

“I would nerd out!” declares Hauser. “You would think that with the amount of work they’re doing there’s a sense of slippage or backsliding creatively, but it’s just a bunch of knockout punches. I really do think they’re the best people doing comedy in Hollywood right now.”

The 36-year-old got to contribute to the duo’s run when Miller privately messaged him on social media a year ago, asking if Hauser was available for the second season of The Afterparty, the madcap comedy series he’d created for Apple TV+. A murder mystery, complete with a dead body, a location full of suspects, and an offbeat detective, the show has a delirious twist: the suspect interviewed in each episode has their story delivered in a particular genre. The first season featured musical, teen drama, and animated instalments.

“They pitched me the idea and I was like, ‘I’m in!’” Hauser says. “I really wanted to play in this world and I’m proud of the work we did. It was an adult summer camp on set because it was a lot of talented grown-ups goofing off and making each other laugh.”

Speaking from The Afterparty’s press day in Los Angeles, Hauser is a thoughtful interview subject. Taking sips from a diet cola as a long day and previous night catch up with him – Hauser and his wife, Amy Elizabeth Boland, have sons aged two years old and two months old – the actor instinctively deflects praise from himself to others.

If you note that Hauser went from playing an unnerving sociopath in the Apple TV+ drama Black Bird to hitting punchlines in The Afterparty, he’ll quickly point out that the late Philip Seymour Hoffman, one of his acting idols, shot his Academy Award-winning lead performance in Capote then segued into the farcical comic heights of Along Came Polly.

Season two of The Afterparty brings back Sam Richardson’s perpetually embarrassed everyman Aniq (his season-opening episodes are delivered as a romantic comedy) and Tiffany Haddish’s police detective, Danner. With a wedding as the setting, the new cast members include John Cho (Star Trek), Anna Konkle (PEN15), and Zach Woods (Silicon Valley). Hauser plays Travis, an ex-boyfriend of the bride suspicious of the groom.

“It’s one of the favourite things I’ve got to do in my career because there was so much funny stuff and gifts for an actor. That’s rare, it’s not often you get that,” Hauser says. “A lot of the time they hire a guy like me because the script isn’t good enough and they’re like, ‘We’ve seen what you’ve done in other movies, could you please spice this up?’ It’s a lot more fun when you don’t have to spice it up because the script already has it on the page.”

While the ensemble shape-shift for each episode’s genre, which in this season include an erotic thriller and an unofficial homage to Wes Anderson, Hauser got to transform Travis into a 1940s detective for the character’s feature episode. The film noir recreation comes complete with a gumshoe’s trench-coat, underworld argot, and a period-accurate boxy screen frame lensed in black and white.

“Bells of joy went off in my head when I read it because the script was so sharp and funny – it was Humphrey Bogart meets Leslie Nielsen, and I was very excited to take that on,” Hauser says. “I would go watch playback where they would show me footage and I remember thinking, ‘Holy cow, they really nailed the look of it’. They didn’t do it in post-production, the visuals were done in camera.”

Miller told Hauser that the role of Travis had been written specifically for him, a compliment Hauser has only received once before, when he joined the cast of Netflix’s Cobra Kai. It was rightful acknowledgment of Hauser’s comedic talent, but over the last few years he has also broken through with showcase dramatic work. A year ago, when I interviewed Black Bird’s lead actor and executive producer, Taron Egerton, it was Hauser’s unsettling performance as a suspected serial killer that the Rocketman star wanted to most praise.

“Paul’s interpretation of the role is both disarming and disturbing. He looks innocuous while also playing with a level of menace,” marvelled Egerton, although Hauser himself is just grateful that he’s now seen as both a comedic and dramatic actor. Versatility is one of the acting benchmarks he admires most, but Hauser would still rather praise his co-stars.

“I feel bad because I’ve been doing interviews today with Jack Whitehall, and he’s super funny and I love him to death, but when they asked who cracked me up the most I would always say Anna Konkle,” Hauser says. “She killed me. She did so many improv dialogue takes. It was an event watching her do it.”

Paul Walter Hauser with Taron Egerton in Black Bird.Credit: Apple TV+

Hauser, who penned scripts obsessively in his lean early years in Hollywood, is 50 pages or so into a story he’s writing that he hopefully wants to direct. It would be another breakthrough for someone who was a where-have-I-seen-that-guy actor, but he’s hopeful.

“We have enough pessimistic behaviour in our world right now, so I want to lean into optimism,” Hauser says. “I’m optimistic that people don’t want some AI replacement for entertainment. They want it in a very human way and they want to acknowledge the folks trying to make a living doing it.”

The Afterparty screens on Apple TV+ from Wednesday, July 12.

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