Posted in: Peacock, streaming, TV | Tagged: Abe Forsythe, Andrew Kotatko, interview, isla fisher, josh gad, peacock, Wolf like Me

Wolf Like Me Music Supervisor: Making Nirvana/Lithium Happen & More

Music supervisor Andrew Kotatko (Talk to Me) spoke with us about sharing Wolf Like Me creator Abe Forsythe's music interests, Nirvana & more.

When Andrew Kotatko was recruited to the Peacock dark supernatural comedy Wolf Like Me as music supervisor, he never realized how much fun he could have brought the Abe Forsythe series to life with his takes on contemporary music in his nearly three-decade career. Since his debut in 1996's The Portrait of a Lady as a music consultant, he's worked on nearly 100 titles, including most recently, the Amazon Prime Video series The Flowers of Alice Heart, Netflix's Wellmania, indie film Late Night with the Devil, Australian miniseries Significant Others, A24's Talk to Me (2022). The series follows Gary (Josh Gad), an emotional wreck who struggles to provide for his daughter Emma (Ariel Donoghue) since the death of his wife. Mary (Isla Fisher) has a secret she can't bring herself to share with anyone that she's a werewolf. The universe brought these two together for a reason.

The second season ramps things up as Mary and Gary leap into the next phase of their relationship, facing their biggest challenge yet: pregnancy. As much as the two try to have a "normal" pregnancy, it seems impossible with so many questions looming over them. Will their child be a human or a wolf? Just how long can they keep things secret from the rest of their family? Will what happened in the outback come back to haunt them? And, with Mary's former professor, Anton (Edgar Ramirez), suddenly in the picture, can their relationship withstand newly unearthed secrets from Mary's past? Kotatko spoke to Bleeding Cool about how he got involved in Wolf Like Me, working with creator Abe Forsythe, channeling inspiration from Queens of the Stone Age, Melody Gordot, and Nirvana, and working with composer Piers Burbrook de Vere. The following contains minor spoilers.

Wolf Like Me: How Series Allowed Andrew Kotatko to Play in a Vast Sandbox

Bleeding Cool: How did you get involved with 'Wolf Like Me?'

Kotatko: I was introduced to the project by this series producer Jodi Matterson from Made Up Stories [in Australia], who felt that I would be a good fit for the project. I met with the director and creator of the show, Abe Forsythe, and we hit it off in a big way. We had an immediate click on all things musical, and it was much a fait accompli that I would do it. It felt like we chose each other for the project, which was the best start to a creative relationship.

What went into the development process of developing the musical tone of the show?

Certain things were already inherently part of the narrative fabric of 'Wolf Like Me' that started in season one, particularly with Queens of the Stone Age and Melody Gardot. Some touchstones were integrated rather marvelously by Abe into the narrative already, and we had those in place for season two as well. We also kind of moved in newer directions, and the tone of the music we were using in many ways, evergreens to humanize and deepen our connection with Gary [Josh Gad] and Mary [Isla Fisher] and their situation.

The songs are deeply personal to Abe, and some of the songs I brought to the table as well. It's a combination of both of our sensibilities, working in unison, but also strongly connected to characters set the tone to some degree dictated by the characters and the narrative and their situation. There's a kind of ironic use of songs at one point, Gary in episode two, is trying to call up a 'Preacher Man' by Melody Gardot, and Alexa mistakenly puts on 'Son of a Preacher Man' by Dusty Springfield. There were some ironic uses of great songs as well, and rerecorded sort of some songs like we did a mariachi cover of [Nirvana's] 'Lithium.' I don't quite know how we were so fortunate to get permission from Courtney Love on that one, but I'm delighted that we did. This is a show where the music is used as a strong color and the source music. We connected to the characters and used music in a way that strongly transformed the energy of the moments.

Was it difficult to not veer to one genre versus another or was there an organic build from day one?

It was both. Abe, I, and Piers Burbrook de Vere, the composer, all became a tight unit. There's a symbiotic relationship between the three of us. Piers's contribution to the series is extraordinary. There would often be ideas that Abe had, and I would suggest other ideas. Some of them he embraced. Sometimes he wanted to stick with his original plan. What was great was that there was the idea of the music in the show being as playful as possible. Whether it was a classic or more contemporary song by Hot Chip or an amazing, unknown song like 'You've Got a Woman' by Lion, an unearthed gem like that, we were trying so many different things and being experimental with it.

There were the things that we came into it with. For instance, 'Lithium' was at script level. We knew we wanted to do a mariachi cover. That was a crazy but definite plan we had for that song. The Queens of the Stone Age songs were integral to the narrative, but we didn't we didn't have a set plan for about 70 percent of the music. Some of it was happy coincidences, like, for instance, the use of 'How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved by You)' by Marvin Gaye was something that I played with at midnight the night before review and brought it in, and we were literally in a room with everybody. I said, "Well, throw it up," and normally, I wouldn't want to be in that situation where I'm experimenting on mix room time. It was like, "Bang!" I remember Jodi said, "That's the one." I said, "That's the one." There was also great instinct. There was great planning for the things that were at the script level. There was great instinct for the things that found a happy accident within the fabric of the show.

What was the most difficult sequence to sequence in season two?

It was the 'Lithium' sequence because not only had we had to do a vocal recording in Los Angeles when we're based in Sydney [Australia], but there was that. There were the time zone differences and trying to organize a session. We wanted to work with an L.A.-based mariachi band. There was also the arrangement of the track in the chase scene. It had quite an amazing arc where it starts as source music playing on a stereo in the hospital, and then it goes mad in the second part this mad chase sequence uses an instrumental and vocal outro of the song. That was the most challenging thing.

There was also the fact that we had to send it. These things need to be approved. Anything you do where you're doing a cover and doing something different with it requires approval from the parties involved. You can't just make assumptions that what you're doing is something they're going to love. You must be open and share and hope for the best. A lot was riding on that because it was at script level. Although we had approval, we didn't have approval on that recording, which didn't happen until much later in the post-production process. I'm proud of Piers's arrangement, but also as a journey that was probably the most, strangely enough, the most challenging element musically of the show.

How do you read this compared to your previous work? Did you find it similar or derivative?

This is one of the things I'm most proud of in my entire career. This and the films 'Talk to Me' [2022] and 'The Power of the Dog' [2021] by Jane Campion are my best work as a curator, but also in terms of the opportunities that are presented to me. It was a dream to work with [laughs]. The music material in this show is incredible. There's no other way to describe it, it is your dream playlist, and it doesn't happen that often. You don't have the support, often creatively or financially, especially in Australia, to do something this powerful, universal, and colorful. I'm in all those ways, and the collaboration with Abe, especially with the composer Piers Burbrook de Vere, was a complete dream. It rates highly for me and is one of the highlights of my career thus far, and I'm proud of the show.

Season two of Wolf Like Me premieres on Peacock on October 19th.

Enjoyed this? Please share on social media!

Stay up-to-date and support the site by following Bleeding Cool on Google News today!