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New series from HBO Max Designed for love is about to unveil a dystopian love story full of sheer terror and comedy gold.
Premiering on Thursday April 1 with three episodes, the black comedy tells the story of Hazel Green (how I Met Your Mother‘s Cristin Milioti), a woman on the run after her billionaire tech husband implanted a tracking device in her brain to monitor her every move. As she flees the tech company’s futuristic virtual reality complex called “The Hub,” her husband Byron (Tell me a story‘s Billy Magnussen) pursues her in her desert hometown of Twin Sands. This is where Hazel enlists the help of her father, Herbert (Everyone loves Raymond‘s Ray Romano), a man she hasn’t seen or spoken to throughout her 10-year imprisonment and allegiance to the highly ethical tech company. But will she be able to free herself completely?
Here, TVLine chats with EPs Christina Lee and Alissa Nutting (the last author of the original novel) to discuss what awaits Hazel and Herbert’s troubled father / daughter relationship, finding the perfect cast with the right chops, and how the series continues. delicate tonal tightrope. (Click here to read what stars Milioti and Magnussen had to say.)
TVLINE | Christina, what made you want to get involved in her adaptation in the novel?
CHRISTINA LEE | When I discovered Alissa’s novel, I fell in love with it right away. I love that she had that very dark, inconvenient premise, with this husband putting a chip in his wife’s brain, and yet the book made me laugh so hard. I thought, what a great idea for a show to be able to tell the story with this tonal balance. When I first started working with Alissa, I liked the fact that she wanted to expand the world from her book. She has these great characters and we honored these characters on the show, but we really expanded their stories and the world around them.
TVLINE | Alissa, how did you create and maintain this tonal balance? The story is so dark and twisted, but it also has so much lightness.
ALISSA NUT | Luckily, Christina and I are both huge fans of sci-fi and comedy, and we really wanted to do something that mixes these two together. In terms of thrillers and suspense and even the character of Hazel, when a character is running all the time or is always in danger, you don’t really have the chance to know him. Cristin [Milioti] is such a versatile actress, so it was fun to think of those two lives for the characters, with those comedic moments and life in the desert in Twin Sands, and then that kind of Stepford housewife mask in the Hub.
TVLINE | Did you have any concerns about adapting your novel to the project? And how does the show deviate from the book, if at all?
NUT | As an author my main concern was that the book was so internal, and I really wanted to make it a dynamic viewing experience for our audience and also make sure that we showcased the full range of talent from our incredible cast. All the main players are such superstar thespians; we were really lucky. So we wanted to make sure that we made full use of them and the layers that they can bring out in these characters.
LEE | They are all very strong dramatic actors, because they are comedic actors. We were really lucky with that.
TVLINE | Let’s talk a little more about the casting. Why were Cristin, Ray and Billy the right choices to bring the characters in the book to life?
NUT | I loved Cristin’s dramatic work so much in Black mirror and Fargo, and I knew she had the comedy chops from how I Met Your Mother. Then all of her work on stage… there’s nothing she can’t do. Hazel is a character who at times can be frustrating and very complicated. We knew we needed an actor who had a certain vulnerability, where even when they made choices that infuriated you, you still understood them even if you didn’t approve of them. You can express your sympathy and empathy even if you felt like they were doing the wrong thing or taking a well-deserved consequence.
LEE | With Billy, again, we were fans of him before we started working with him, but what was really important to us was having a bad guy character that you can empathize with. That’s so much what Billy brought to the character. It’s too easy to have someone you hate or who is bad. We thought it was interesting to see someone who is this stuff, but also really loves his wife and wants her to come back and does it all in a misguided way. The vulnerability Billy brought to the character was very helpful in shaping the character. With Cristin and Billy, we came back and rewrote during our pandemic stop based on the things we had learned from them. And then Ray, we call him No-Bad-Takes-Ray!
NUT | One and done Romano!
LEE | So many times we’re like – That’s right! Everyone loves Raymond!
NUT | In the book, Herbert is also a bit more of a villain. Maybe a simpler villain. And so it’s a relationship that we were able to complicate wonderfully, where you have these two imperfect characters of Herbert and Hazel who absolutely made mistakes, but absolutely love each other. They are both stubborn too and try to find the best way to get back to each other.
LEE | I want to add, there were times when Ray literally made us cry behind the monitors. We would go up to him and say, “Ray, that was so beautiful.” And he was just like, “Really?” [Laughs]
TVLINE | What’s on the horizon for Hazel and Herbert’s relationship? Did he have something to do with Hazel running away from Twin Sands in the first place?
LEE | The second half of the series gives a little more context on what their relationship was like and what the pitfalls were, where you kind of get to understand how it could have ended. [in the Hub] for 10 years. It is neither black nor white. I think this reflects a lot of the relationships that we discussed during the development of this project. It’s never an easy answer. There is a lot of clarity at the end of everyone’s choices, but you see it’s also complex.
NUT | A major theme of the show in which they perform is that of facing the past. Both characters have elements of their relationship that they want to resolve. For Hazel, in particular, her path to Byron is really rooted in her relationship with Herbert, so it’s something you’ll see teased.
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