Though Chao herself has a number of current comedian tasks—the second season of Apple TV+ mystery-comedy The Afterparty; the rom-coms Someone I Used to Know and Your Place or Mine—she doesn’t contemplate herself a born comic. “I don’t discover myself humorous IRL or on the display,” she says. “I all the time really feel like I’ve snuck in by the again, and somebody goes to be like, ‘Now’s the time we out you. You aren’t humorous, and also you’ve by no means been humorous, and you’ll want to go away this set.’”
Within the first season of The Afterparty, she even helped creators Phil Lord and Christopher Miller prank eagle-eyed viewers with an off-screen misdirect. “We did do one sneaky factor to the Reddit gang,” Miller instructed VF final 12 months. “We launched a photograph of Zoë sporting a blond wig after which deleted it instantly, regardless that it by no means occurs within the present.”
Chao laughs now, remembering the pink herring. “[Miller] was like, ‘Hey, can we simply take you actual fast? We’re establishing, might you simply put on a wig actually fast and simply do one thing within the mirror?’ And I used to be like, yeah. After which, really the present got here out, and in interviews, they’re like, ‘Do you know in regards to the clues?’” She…didn’t.
Chao does love a superb thriller—although very similar to Tiffany Haddish’s Detective Danner on The Afterparty, she’s one who couldn’t decode her method out of an escape room. “There are clues on high of the clues” as to who the assassin is in season one, she says. “I additionally learn these scripts. And by the point we shot the reveal, I had forgotten, and was so bummed out.” She reads plenty of thriller novels, she says. “You’ll suppose that might translate into some kind of ability, however I’m the worst at figuring it out. I’m all the time like, Whoa, didn’t see that coming.”
True to kind, she affords a wide-eyed shrug when requested who the offender shall be in season two (it’s set to premiere in July), in addition to whether or not there’ll be extra Social gathering Down sooner or later: “I might inform you if I knew, however I’m the final particular person to know.” She and her castmates did spend time on the premiere pitching extra episodes. “[We] all made it very clear to everybody at Starz, and anybody who had any cash. Random folks, YouTubers, we had been like, ‘We’re all keen to return again! We’re keen and ready!’”
That group might additionally embrace Lizzy Caplan, a major forged member within the present’s authentic run. Caplan’s scheduling conflicts saved her from showing within the new season of Social gathering Down—till a tantalizing mid-credits cameo within the finale, the place her caterer-made-good character, Casey, now a bona fide star, runs into Scott’s Henry at a junket and teases that she’ll be again quickly. “She’s actually gung ho a couple of season 4,” Chao says.
Even when it takes one other decade-plus to occur, Chao says she might see Lucy nonetheless working that pink bow tie. All through the season she shrooms, flirts with an admitted Nazi, affords existential takes on cake pops, and, we be taught within the finale, skims sufficient from the Social gathering Down provides to scrape collectively $2,000 value of saffron threads to audition for an haute delicacies restaurant. Ron, in fact, unwittingly pops the chunk she’s made into his mouth—actually devouring her probability at escape with one chomp.
“I feel that discovering a house for Lucy has been very laborious,” Chao says. “So it looks like in some methods, perhaps Social gathering Down is the one place that can have her.”
Chao, too, says she’s discovered belonging with Social gathering Down. She has three group texts popping off continuously: one for the Social gathering Down forged, and one for every season of The Afterparty. “I’ve actually inherited three households in a really brief time period, they usually’re all dysfunctional, however my coronary heart is overwhelmed,” she says.
The actor has come a great distance since her Bar Marmont days, when she says she “completely associated to the desperateness of the entire present and the craving to be doing one thing else aside from what you’re doing.” Even now that season three is out on the earth, she nonetheless can’t imagine she received to crash the social gathering.
“I’m a really great distance from Bar Marmont. Though, whereas taking pictures it, I’m like, ‘Am I again?’”
