Two years after first debuting on HBO, the Duplass brothers’ (Mark and Jay) anthology series ‘Room 104’ will premiere season three of the series on September 13th.
On Thursday, September 12th, Mark Duplass along with fellow series executive producer Sydney Fleischmann arrived at this year’s Tribeca TV Festival to screen and discuss the premiere episode of the season and what to expect as the season rolls along.
“I think this season was all about leaning into sort of the experimental and stretching the boundaries of what the room could be or could do. We’ve always told different kinds of stories in different genres, but this year we have things like documentary episodes and an entire episode based on music with no real narrative whatsoever. So it’s really just about trying to find new stories and keep surprising our viewer,” Duplass told The Knockturnal on the red carpet prior to the season’s first episode being screened for audience.
The Knockturnal also inquired about the series’ choice to prominently include Travis Scott’s song “Goosebumps” in the promotional trailer for this season which Duplass stated, “I think that Goosebumps are a good little metaphor for our show and that you never really know what you’re gonna get when you open up this show. I think most shows you watch you go there because you know how you want it to make you feel. You watch your Friends rerun when you want something lighter, you watch Mad Men when you want that thing. Room 104 it’s a roulette wheel, you don’t know what you’re gonna get and I think it makes you unsettled and uncomfortable before you figure out what the story is gonna be. So I think “Goosebumps” was a good choice for that.”
As an anthology series, the setting of Room 104 stays the same throughout the different stand alone episodes however the stories will change as different characters enter and leave Room 104. Viewers will also get the opportunity to see a little of the room’s pre-history this season. In addressing the confusion about the state of the room in the first episode of the season Duplass told Vulture’s Jen Cheney, “Well it IS in the room but it’s the origin story of Room 104. We have a mythology in our minds of what’s going on in this Room 104. We want to reward the serialized viewer with Easter eggs because we do have a mythology and a plan.”
The looks play just as much a part as the characters and stories this season to which executive producer Sydney Fleischmann told The Knockturnal, “We have an amazing costume designer named Lindsey Monahan. She just dives right into every episode and gets into each character’s mind and really shapes a lot of who they are with the clothes. And because each episode is a new cast of characters the clothes have to say a lot because you have to learn a lot about them really fast. So the costumes are a big part of it.”
Aside from Room 104, Mark Duplass also told us what else he has coming up. “We have a show called The Morning Show that’s coming out in November that I acted in. And there’s a movie called Bombshell that comes out in December that’s really interesting I’m also a performer in that. And just trying to make some more documentaries and stuff, that’s been really fun lately.”
The twelve episode season three of Room 104 will air on Friday nights on HBO beginning September 13th.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uwTjTQfvCyE
