Shirley MacLaine and Amy Schumer have joined the cast of the runaway Hulu comedy hit “Only Murders in the Building.”
Selena Gomez, plays Mabel, who is overseeing her aunt’s high-end apartment renovation. Martin Short, plays Oliver, a washed up Broadway director, and Steve Martin plays Charles, a semi-retired actor.
Tina Fey, 51, is also returning as Cinda Canning, the host of a popular true crime podcast, along with Nathan Lane, who plays Teddy Dimas, a Broadway producer.
The latest casting news comes after British model and sometime actress Cara Delevingne, 29, was cast as Alice, “a sophisticated art world insider who becomes enmeshed in the mystery.”
Cara and Selena have been longtime friends. The pair got matching tattoos. Cara, who is openly lesbian, was even thought, at one point, to be dating Gomez.
“Me and Cara , one of my best friends that I’ve known for — I was maybe 16 when I met her — she calls me ‘Rosebud.’ So, it’s a nickname and I’ve always wanted a rose. Now, I got one and I love it,” Selena said.
The show has also featured a string of big-name cameo appearances. The included rocker Sting, singer Annie Lenox, Jimmy Fallon and such comedic talent as Roy Wood Jr.
While the show is a comedic take on crime, it’s also a send up of the ideosyncracies of living on Manhattan’s Upper West Side in New York City.
MacLaine, 87, a Hollywood legend and Schumer, 40, the queen of neurotic female comedians, will join an already stellar cast.
The three strangers share an obsession with a death in their tony co-op and decided to launch a podcast to investigate it. While police have ruled it a suicide, they believe it was a murder.
“The quality of actor that this show is attracting makes it endlessly fun to go to work,” said Martin, 71, who is also an executive producer on the comedy show.
The show was a surprise hit and critically acclaimed, not least because of the lead actors’ performances and chemistry.
It was enough for Hulu to renew it for a second season last September after the show set a record for the most-watched comedy premiere in Hulu history.
The show was also a critical darling. It received a 100 rating on rottentomatoes, which tracks reviews.
“The series soon turns out to be—like The Princess Bride, Galaxy Quest, or Jane the Virgin—that rare and wonderful thing: the parody that also offers a great example of the genuine article,” wrote Alan Sepinwall in Rolling Stone.