Stephanie Hsu's New Show Laid is Redefining "Body Count" for This Twisted Rom-Com

The worst place to encounter your exes isn't just on dating apps. In the new dark romantic comedy Laid, Ruby, played by Academy Award nominee Stephanie Hsu (Everything Everywhere All at Once, The Wild Robot), combs through obituaries and attends funerals as she learns many of her former flames are dropping dead in quick succession. 

Working with her best friend AJ (Zosia Mamet), the pair dive into Ruby's relationship history to find a pattern and figure out what's happening.

RELATED: Stephanie Hsu's Exes Are Dying (And It's All Her Fault) in Peacock's Twisted Rom-Com Laid

Showrunners Nahnatchka Khan and Sally Bradford spoke to NBC Insider about the outrageous premise for the show: injecting death into a romantic comedy. An area they felt was "so ripe" for laughs. 

"We definitely wanted to add more death into our rom-coms," Khan joked during the interview. "We were like, 'We need to up the body count of these rom-coms. Not enough people are dying.'"

Peacock's Laid is a romantic comedy with a deadly twist

In the series, Ruby is forced to revisit every romantic encounter and person she's slept with to figure out either how they died or to warn them about their impending demise. For Khan and Bradford, casting Hsu was the "first piece" of nailing the cast. A second key to their success was having Mamet (Girls, The Flight Attendant) as Ruby's best friend.

"They clicked immediately," Khan recalled about the co-stars instant chemistry, soon laughing warmly at the memory. "They met on Zoom and... we turned all of [our] cameras off 'cause they were like clearly vibing and we felt we were infringing with our windows."

Ruby and AJ have a "ride or die friendship," Hsu told NBC Insider, but that relationship soon ruptures and they have to find their way back to each other. 

"I love that they're flawed," Hsu said about what she loved about the two characters. "I love that they're... a little zany, a little left of center."

Peacock is no stranger to comedies with a crime twist. Kaley Cuoco and Chris Messina star in Based on a True Story, a comedic thriller following newborn parents intertwined with an infamous serial killer called the West Side Ripper (Tom Bateman). So Laid fits right into the (twisted) family.

Laid's Stephanie Hsu and Zosia Mamet share a hilarious behind-the-scenes story

Stephanie Hsu as Ruby, Tommy Martinez as Isaac, and Zosia Mamet as AJ in Season 1 Episode 8 of Laid. Photo: Peacock

Hsu came up with an idea that every Friday on set was dress-up Friday, Mamet told NBC Insider. They found inspiration for their outfits from an improv the showrunners held with the cast about two white rhinoceroses (a mother and a child). 

"The person who won the previous Friday would get to pick the theme," Mamet explained. "And Stephanie's idea... that Friday was like dynamic duos or something and so we dressed up as those thinking everyone would remember the sort of like alt improv from a couple days before."

Unfortunately for them, no one did. 

"We showed as these two white rhinoceri and nobody knew... they were like, 'We don't get it,'" Mamet said about the hilarious moment. "One of our on-set costumers made our horns. She got so into it. She started like researching the whole thing. It was a production."

"It was the last day on set," Hsu reminisced. "We came in as rhinoceroses. Mommy and baby."

Laid premieres on Peacock on Thursday, December 19, 2024.