SPOILER ALERT: This story contains spoilers for the first three episodes of “Only Murders in the Building” Season 5.
“Only Murders” is headed “back to its roots,” as showrunner John Hoffman puts it.
Yes, the series’ central victims have always died in the Arconia, but Seasons 3 and 4 were less focused on the history and characters of the building than the people who happened to wander into it as they interacted with Charles (Steve Martin), Oliver (Martin Short) and Mabel (Selena Gomez) for various reasons. By contrast, this season’s murder feels like an attack on the building itself: In the Season 4 finale, Lester (Teddy Coluca), the Arconia’s doorman, is found dead in the fountain out front.
The trio suspects mob activity at first. Charles and Mabel were recently approached by a woman named Sofia Caccimelio (Téa Leoni), who wanted them to investigate the disappearance of her mob-associated husband Nicky Caccimelio (Bobby Cannavale), and later Oliver receives a severed human finger in an order of shrimp, which they interpret as a Mafia-style message from someone who wants them to back off. Then, in the background of a photo from Oliver’s wedding, they see Nicky and Lester talking to each other. But when they travel to Nicky’s home in Staten Island — which happens to be the house from “The Godfather” — they find only Nicky’s five bumbling adult sons, who cower in fear at the sight of the finger and are clearly more focused on their mob history podcast than any real crime. Sofia insists that while her family has some ties to criminal activity, there is no real organized crime anymore in New York. She hands Charles a deck of cards that her husband used to carry around, hoping it might be a clue.
Courtesy of Disney/Patrick Harbron
It is. Charles eventually realizes that the design on the backs of the cards contains a map to a secret gambling room in the Arconia, where he and Mabel find an envelope full of cash that matches the one Nicky handed Lester in Oliver’s wedding photo. At the same time, Oliver is at the Caccimelio’s dry cleaning business after hours and discovers Nicky’s dead body hung up with all the clothing.
In a flashback episode, it’s revealed that young Lester (Emory Cohen) met Nicky back when he became an Arconia doorman as a young man. They’re introduced by a retiring doorman (Tony Plana), who lets Lester in on his side hustle: getting paid to let people in and out of Nicky’s secret Saturday game nights in the basement. At one point decades later, Lester tries to tell Nicky he doesn’t need the extra money anymore, but Nicky tells him he doesn’t get to quit until he’s told he can.
Back in the present, Oliver has snuck Nicky’s body back up to Charles’ apartment, where the trio improvises an autopsy overnight before Charles rushes the body back where they found it. Among other things, they find felt from the game room’s poker tables under his fingernails. Then they sneak down to the poker game to see whether this week’s players seem to have been involved in Lester and Nicky’s deaths. There, while hiding out of sight, they find three billionaires: Sebastian Steed (Christoph Waltz), Jay Pflug (Logan Lerman) and Camila White (Renée Zellweger). Notably, one of Jay’s fingers has been severed.
Hoffman spoke with Variety about door men, mob men and rich men.
After the Season 4 finale, you mentioned wanting to pay respect to the rich history of New York City doormen through the investigation of Lester’s death. Tell me more about that.
Each season, we’re trying to figure out what new aspect of New York we can look into. It felt to me like the show was ready for a return to its roots, bringing it home to the building itself more specifically than it had been for a few seasons. Lester, and Teddy Coluca who plays him, has a quintessentially New York vibe and a quintessentially New York occupation. And I began to wonder about the idea of old New York and new New York, and nefarious influences. Power in New York. And putting that classic job of a doorman in a pre-war apartment building (against) influences like that in a big city. It felt so right to me as another character we could really layer and humanize make more grand his legacy.
I have been living in a pre-war apartment building in New York while I’ve been making the show, and there are many doorpeople that I’ve come to meet and talk to. I had lots of occasions to connect and find out what made them tick and what made them fall into this job or crave this job and hold on to this job. Everybody is different. Teddy was doing his own research on this, and Emory Cohen, who plays young Lester, dove deep and talked to a lot of doormen, trying to find out the history and the details and the specifics of decorum. David Patrick Kelly, who plays Miller, the trash guy in the building, was showing me pictures from visiting apartment buildings in New York and having long conversations with the people who manage all of that. The people who make New York run and hold it together are the people behind the scenes. They’re just as important as the people who consider themselves most important. So it felt nice to balance our view of the city in that way.
Last season, Sazz’s (Jane Lynch) death revealed a lot of flaws in Charles. Lester’s death is doing a similar thing for Oliver. We’ve always known he’s a less-than-great neighbor and community member, but we’re seeing more of how poorly he treats the building staff this season. What’s behind that?
Last season ended with Oliver getting married to Loretta (Meryl Streep) and saying, “OK, bye! I’m gonna hang here (in New York). You hang there (in New Zealand).” Some decisions that he’s made make him wonder, “Wait a minute, my life has changed, but my life isn’t changing. Why is that? Am I too self centered? Am I not incorporating the people I’m saying are very important in my life?” And that’s exacerbated by this terrible death of Lester, and what Lester has meant to him. This is what happens a lot: Deaths impact you in ways you don’t expect, of people that feel maybe more periphery. I find it really profound. The slow realization that this was a person who had a life, but I don’t know much about it. Oliver is thinking, “I never really asked too much about him. It was all in service of me.” It starts to really hit Oliver and his narcissism — the funny things we love about him. “Have I been just too selfish all my life? Have I made this building too important in my life? Have I made this trio too important in my life — more than my own wife, who’s now not even near here?”
Courtesy of Disney/Patrick Harbron
Charles is connecting with Sofia Caccimelio more than Mabel and Oliver are. He’s already had his affair with Jan (Amy Ryan), so it seems like you’re setting him up for yet another iffy romantic decision. What’s happening there?
A crisis for him is happening. Mabel will always a whole new world ahead of her, and Oliver has just made a huge step in his life. Charles has made the best relationships he’s probably had in his whole life, but they don’t make sense. How long will they continue? He may very well be isolated again, and that is the terror. He was perfectly fine, in his mind, for the longest time, even if he was in complete denial about needing anyone else. So that’s one trigger going on subconsciously with him. He expresses it a little bit with Oliver, and then it’s more profoundly dealt with in his bad instincts about relationships, and his draw to what he may feel he deserves, which is an edge and danger that may not be healthy. I loved the scene at the end of last season that he had with Jan where she’s talking about the ways she would have loved to have killed Marshall (Jin Ha), and the words she’s using are just vulgar and diabolical, and Charles has never been more turned on. I just got very excited about the idea of making a season that included not only him dealing with his mortality, but finally looking dead-on at: “Why am I so attracted to dangerous women?”
There’s a political angle this season with Mayor TIllman (Keegan Michael Key) running for reelection, which makes for interesting timing with the actual mayoral race happening in New York, as well as all the effects of Trump’s reelection. There’s also an AI-powered doorman introduced at the Arconia after Lester dies, and that’s topical after the Hollywood strikes. Tell me about how real world problems have been influencing the way you write the show.
How could it not? We’re writers, and we have to reflect both the truths of our own lives and also the greater world. When we start looking at like questions of power in the city, if we’re being honest, we have to lean into (the news). We’re a show that’s very lighthearted in many ways, but very serious, very intelligent writers are crafting this. The idea is to keep the tone pure to the show while being truthful with what’s happening. So when you look at power and you look at a building as a home — and for many people, home is represented by the city, the country — you have to ask yourselves hard questions about what choices people are making for the wellbeing of their home. How are they protecting the things that matter the most about their home, or vice versa? And that felt obviously relevant in many ways. Many of us in the world right now are asking ourselves, “How are we protecting the things that are important to us? How are we connecting with each other, as opposed to finding divisions?”
Keegan-Michael Key, Steve Martin
Courtesy of Disney/Patrick Harbron
The Mafia comes up for the first time this season, but that doesn’t go as expected. Sofia says that “the mob is dead,” and seems ashamed that Nicky was a “failed mobster” and that her sons are podcasting about mob history instead of being involved in present mob dealings. It seems that Nicky’s business dealings were never as dangerous as the trio would have imagined — until his murder, of course. What is informing your take on the present-day mob families in New York?
As Sofia says, even Scorsese is doing movies now about Native Americans and Irish people. Because what is the mob? I am a huge fan of of “The Sopranos” and “Goodfellas” and “The Godfather,” and all of that. These are deep, dark legacy stories that hold the greatest esteem in our culture, so there’s great fodder in it. It’s been a part of New York since the beginning, and in a building that’s been there for over 100 years, what else is going on in that building? There have been power grabs for years regarding real estate and everything else around New York City. So when we got to it, we go right at the “Godfather” house and aim towards the most stereotypical version of it. But we’re subverting it in a way that feels funny and a little bit smart. I love those Caccimelio boys, and Téa was so great carrying all of the angst of this legacy. It fed into the theme of people in positions that they may not have asked for. Legacies that are handed down to you that compel you or or confine you. And how do you break out of that? How do you hang on to a wish? I thought it was fun to give a new version of the mob in 2025 New York.
Martin Short, Steve Martin and Selena Gomez
Courtesy of Disney/Patrick Harbron
Was that new version based more on research or invention?
We talked to a lot of people. One cop we talked to was very instrumental to what you hear Detective Williams (Da’Vine Joy Randolph) say: The way to the rich and powerful is through the help. They’re the ones hearing everything when the powerful don’t even think they’re in the room with anyone else. That was a really interesting way to look at the people who work in the building, who know everything and have seen everything. What are the secrets they’re holding? What are the things that matter to them?
The mob, they’re around, but they’re also diversified. We thought it was funny to go classic Italian mob, and then meet the sons of a guy who wanted to be in the mob but even he missed the train. We were keeping it a bit lighter, because the crackdown around the mob in New York was pretty effective, and crime changed. The kind of crimes that are happening now are not what was happening 10 or 20 years ago. You don’t read about a lot of hits anymore. So we felt like, “Let’s bring back the old mob and check in.”
Courtesy of Disney/Patrick Harbron
The first batch of episodes ends with the trio coming across three billionaires who clearly have some secrets. Whether or not they’re involved in the murders, they seem to represent some kind of villany here. Why did you want that to be the first big lead in the case?
It felt like one of the big nutcracker moments for the season. We realized we were doing something we haven’t done before, which is go straight to the headlines. You have very wealthy people in the world right now who want a lot of things. How far will they go to get them? How much is it a game for them? What keeps someone who has way more than anyone should ever have in their lives entertained, and how dangerous can that be? But on the other side of it, how expansive can it be? If you’re in direct connection with someone with motivations that might be questionable, and resources that feel boundless, that’s a really intimidating person to be dealing with. When you’re dealing with three of them and your trios are going mano-a-mano, it’s a magnifying glass on your own choices in life.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
