Throwing ‘The Afterparty’: How Chris Miller and Phil Lord Crafted the Animated and Musical Episodes

variety.com:

Apple TV Plus series “The Afterparty” is, by definition, a murder mystery. But it’s also part action-thriller, police procedural, musical, rom-com — oh, and animation.The series follows escape room designer Aniq (Sam Richardson), who earnestly attends his high school reunion hoping for a second chance at love with his old crush Zoë (Zoë Chao), but instead finds himself the primary suspect in a murder when the afterparty goes terribly wrong.

When dweeb-turned-asshole pop star Xavier (Dave Franco) invites his former classmates to his glitzy home and winds up plummeting off a balcony to his death, Detective Danner (Tiffany Haddish) shows up to interview each partygoer about their motives and alibis.

Chris Miller created and wrote the series, executive producing alongside his longtime creative partner Phil Lord. Lord and Miller are the minds behind some of Hollywood’s zaniest projects, such as the wildly popular “21 Jump Street” and “Lego Movie” films, as well as lesser known gems like the soon-to-be-rebooted animated teen satire “Clone High.” However, with “The Afterparty,” the filmmaking duo sought to outdo the creative challenges they’d previously hurdled.Miller first imagined a murder mystery set at a high school reunion over a decade ago, but he’d originally pictured it as a feature film.

When he and Lord began toying with an episodic format instead, they had the idea for a multi-genre project — what they call a “comedic ‘Rashômon’” — where each character gets their own episode, and each episode is expressed using the conventions of a different genre.“The more different each person’s point of view became, the funnier and more interesting the show became.