The compelling Peacock dramedy Wolf Like Me is back for season 2. Isla Fisher and Josh Gad return as Mary and Gary, and Fisher’s secret—that she is a werewolf—is closer than ever to being discovered. Wolf Like Me continues to be written and directed entirely by Abe Forsythe, the Australian filmmaker known in part for his 2019 zombie film Little Monsters.
Although Wolf Like Me is far from a musical, music plays a central role in the show. Forsythe is a music-minded filmmaker, and as such collaborated closely with music supervisor Andrew Kotatko, who is also an acclaimed director in his own right. Kotatko’s other work as a music supervisor includes the films Talk to Me and The Power of the Dog.
Andrew Kotatko spoke with Screen Rant about crafting the unique soundtrack of Wolf Like Me, his collaboration with Abe Forsythe, and more. Note: This interview was conducted during the 2023 SAG-AFTRA strike, and the show covered here would not exist without the labor of the actors in that union. This interview has also been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Andrew Kotatko On Wolf Like Me Season 2
Screen Rant: I discovered you are not only a music supervisor, but you have written and directed a few shorts as well. It seems like you are interested in all aspects of storytelling; how does that help you do your job on a show like this?
Andrew Kotatko: Thank you for mentioning those films. I’m really proud of them, and I’m actually doing another one next year with Radha Mitchell, as well. I’m doing a third, and possibly final, Raymond Carver adaptation early next year.
I fell into music supervision many years ago, in the ‘90s. I did The Portrait of a Lady for Jane Campion; that was my first ever project. I was 23 at the time, I found the composer for the film, and I had an incredible creative collaboration with Jane. That happened through a dear film editor friend of mine, who’s no longer with us, who introduced me to Jane as somebody who was just basically a film music geek. But I had made a short film that my editor had cut, and she was an assistant on The Portrait of a Lady.
I really started my career at the top, and then I had to enter the Australian film industry and work out that, “Actually, no. Not every film is like that, and not every experience is like that.” For the most part, in the Australian film industry, you have a beer budget, and you have to make it sound like Veuve Clicquot; you’re turning beer or soda pop into champagne with the money. That’s what I spent a good 20 years learning to do, and during that time, I started directing, writing, and adapting.
I do think that directing… I don’t know another music supervisor who’s done it and had some success with it. It is my first love, but it does give me an insight into how music is used. When I think about music, I’m not thinking about a cool tune or a needle drop; I’m thinking about tone. I’m thinking about subtext. It has deeply informed. I’m thinking like a director, in essence. When I start pitching materials for something, I’m thinking, “What would I like? What does this scene mean to me?”
I connect deeply with directors, and I love them because I understand that ultimately, a director is fighting a battle for a vision. They have commercial considerations, they have studio considerations, and they also have the input of creative producers, so there’s a lot to balance in that. I’m really in the corner of the director; I really am there to make sure that their vision gets the best shot it possibly can.
It seems like Abe Forsythe is your opposite in a way because he is the creator and the director, but he seems very specific about musical choices. Can you describe how you two work together?
Andrew Kotatko: I absolutely adore Abe on every level; I just think he’s a superb director. He’s a wonderful writer of dialogue and character, and he understands subtext. He’s philosophical. I think the show has a philosophical edge; there are levels to it that go beyond entertainment. He’s simply using genre as a way to convey a relationship. The supernatural elements of the story are really a metaphor for the secrets we all have as people. I think it’s such a brilliant setup to take. I think the new season does move more into the genre elements, but it’s still ultimately about, “This relationship is complex. Will they make it work?” I think it’s fabulous.
Abe understands that, and for him, the music is so inherently connected to character. It’s so connected to the journey of those characters that some of the songs were integrated at the narrative level. In season one, [with] Queens of the Stone Age, obviously, but also Melody Gardot. Those things actually feed into the narrative, and they do again here in season two.
I think what was great about season one was [that] we were getting to know each other, but in season two, we now have a shorthand in the way we communicate and share music. If Abe likes something, he has an instantaneous passion about it. I refer in particular to “How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved By You)”, because we had nothing in that sequence for a very long time. Then, I just tried the Marvin Gaye, and I brought it in. Everybody’s sitting there, I had no idea, and he just said, “Let’s throw it up against the screen.” I said, “Well, we haven’t run it past the music editor. We haven’t tried it yet.” [He was like], “No, no, no, let’s just do it.” Then Jodi (Matterson) said, “It’s perfect,” and he said, “It’s perfect,” and that’s the kind of thing that you dream of: that understanding of what it is, and what it should be.
I don’t want to give too much away, but I think I can say that the first thing you hear is “Here Comes the Sun”, and I know it comes back in different ways. What is it like to take a song like that and repurpose it to fit the story?
Andrew Kotatko: That’s not the only song we repurpose. We also do quite an amazing thing with “Lithium” as well, which is kind of outrageous. I’m thrilled that Kurt Cobain’s estate agreed for it to happen.
With George Harrison, we had to go to Dhani and Olivia Harrison to get permission to do it. They were so lovely about it; they were really open to it. I think Piers Burbrook de Vere, who wrote the music for both seasons, is an extraordinary composer. He’s got it in a huge way. He’s hugely talented, and young. He had done an arrangement for quartet of that first usage of “Here Comes the Sun,” and again, we had to run it past the estate.
You can’t just do these things; you have to take people in by the hand and say, “This is what we’re doing. What do you think?” and they might remove their hands and say, “We don’t like it.” That does happen sometimes, but if you’re sincere and your approach is respectful, I think people are open. It’s a great song, and I love the fact that we use not only George Harrison’s live performance of the song, [but] we also use Nina Simone’s, which is the version I grew up with in my household as a boy. That record came out the year I was born, in ’71, so I grew up with that.
I love the fact that it has a transformative arc that goes from a quartet version in the opener to Nina Simone’s beautiful performance of it to George Harrison’s seminal performance of it. To me, there’s a beautiful through line for the journey of that song that’s so connected to the arc of the characters and what is happening to Mary throughout the show.
There is a scene in which a character is listing a bunch of bands and artists, and a lot of them happen to be people that we hear in the series.
Andrew Kotatko: That’s right. That was intentional.
Do things like that have to change based on what songs you’re able to get?
Andrew Kotatko: Yes, to some degree; we did so much work in pre-production. Things like Etta James and Ella Fitzgerald were things I’d shared with Abe. He just said to me, “If you had to put together a playlist of great jazz standards, what would you do?” So, I did. A lot of those songs were things that we shared and talked about very early on in the process, so they were seeded before the cameras started rolling.
There were placeholders in the script, but we made decisions about what we were going to do before we got to post on those things, so they became integrated into the screenplay. What I love about this show is that sometimes the chicken is before the egg with the music, because it’s so part of the narrative thread. I think Josh Gad said this in an interview; there are so few shows that do this. Music is [usually] an afterthought.
The range of music in this is crazy, to. I don’t think I’ve ever heard Dolly Parton and Queens of the Stone Age within the same 30-minute span before. Were you ever worried that something wasn’t going to work because it was too opposite from what’s coming next or what came before?
Andrew Kotatko: In some cases, you end up with a mess. It’s like mixing watercolors in a glass; it usually ends up brown. Usually, mixing too many colors produces mud, but I think that the curation here is impeccable. I’m not just saying [that] about me; I think [it’s] for the show itself.
Every moment has the right mise-en-scène, the right tone, for that music. It’s not an afterthought. It’s already been there floating around at the pre-production level a lot of the time, so they know what they’re shooting to. They know what’s playing in the background, or what is being used in the montage as they shoot it. I find that so inspiring. It does create a lot of work for a music supervisor because there’s a lot that has to be done before you even shoot, and lot of exploration. This was a blue-chip project in terms of the spend. The money was spent, and you can hear it in the music. In the case of this, I do think you can do almost anything.
I did it with Of An Age, Goran Stolevski’s movie which Focus Features released, as well. That film has even more music than this series, but it uses one piece of music over and over again, which grounds it. There is no score in it at all. So it’s the curation of it, and that one thread that brings you back to that one emotion.
I think in the case of Wolf, if it weren’t for Piers’ score, you couldn’t take these flights of fancy. The score is the thing that grounds you, musically, and allows these things to be like little bursts of flowers in a field. The score is the field itself; you need to have that grounding and that basis to do these things.
Do you have a favorite song from the season?
Andrew Kotatko: I love them all, but I would say there are two. I love “Bright Eyes” by Art Garfunkel. That’s from the film Watership Down, and I love that film. It moved me terribly as a child. I think I was traumatized for about a week. I have a deep personal resonance with that song.
I also adore Paul McCartney’s cover if “It’s Only a Paper Moon”, which I think is a lovely reference to “Blue Moon”, which appeared in the first season, which is a reference to American Werewolf in London, of course. I love the connectivity of the moon in this series because it’s obviously a trigger for a werewolf.
About Wolf Like Me Season 2
In the second season of Wolf Like Me, Mary (Isla Fisher) and Gary (Josh Gad) 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 Ramírez), suddenly in the picture, can their relationship withstand newly unearthed secrets from Mary’s past?
Check back for our other Wolf Like Me season 2 interviews:
- VFX team members Adam Johansen & Damian Martin
- Creator Abe Forsythe
- Executive producer Jodi Matterson
Wolf Like Me season 2 drops on Peacock on October 19th.
