How We Got Away with Murder - 101: The Pilot

Episode Date: January 29, 2026

Jack and Matt dive into the HTGAWM pilot — the episode that started it all. From first impressions and early character dynamics to casting surprises and those unforgettable flash-forwards, the guys break down what immediately hooked audiences (and what still holds up a decade later). Jack reacts to the pilot with fresh eyes, while Matt fills in behind-the-scenes context, including what it felt like stepping onto set for the very first time. Along the way, they unpack Annalise Keating’s commanding introduction, the formation of the Keating Five, and how the pilot set the tone for six seasons of secrets, lies, and legal chaos.We want to hear from you! Send your questions for a chance to be read during one of our episodes: [e-mail] Matt & Jack:IG: @jackfalaheeTIKTOK: @jackfalaheeX: @RestingPlatypusREDDIT: u/ItsMeJackFalaheeIG: @mattmcgorryTIKTOK: @matt.mcgorryX: @MattMcGorryFacebook: @ActorMattMcGorryThank you to our Sponsors!Hero Bread: This year, hit your goals without giving up your favorite bready dishes. Hero Bread is offering 10% off your order. Go to hero.co and use code JACKANDMATT at checkout.This podcast is brought to you by Podcast Nation. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

hey everyone my name is matt mccorry and i played the character asher millstone on how to get away with murder and i'm jack fallahy and i played connor walsh on that very same tv show and this is the how we got away with murder podcast hey welcome back what's up dude welcome back welcome back to the podcast that we have the podcast that we have i just real quick want to shout out elefante my friend tim that made yes that theme song for us fire absolute fire um elefante a dear friend of mine who i grew up with and was the other half of our short-lived band diplomacy for any fans of the band and i i didn't mention this last time but before the screen test the callback for, you know, for the show, I went over to Tim's apartment and he read my lines with me. And so he

likes to take credit that he got me the job and now he's making our theme song, which is very nice of him. I love that. That is very cool. Thank you, Tim. Appreciate you. Yeah. Thanks, Tim. How are you doing today? I'm good. I'm, I'm honestly, I'm excited to be here. I think since we first recorded that episode last week, I've just been feeling really good and excited, you You know, and I've actually was thinking back on some of the stuff I've read around like the power of nostalgia for like mental health and found this article from the American Psychological Association talking about how it affirms social belonging, alleviates loneliness and enhances our sense of meaning. And when we revisit happy memories, our brains release feel good chemicals like dopamine, giving us a natural high. So basically the show is I'm just like injecting nostalgia straight into my my cerebellum port. Just yeah, exactly.

that's good it feels great i like yeah i like that yeah yeah i need all of those things yeah how are you feeling i'm good uh i'm in new york and it's getting cold and i was walking to the to the gym to try and get another form of dopamine and i put my hands into the pouch of my hoodie and i found a piece of sourdough bread that i guess i had squirreled away for the winter days earlier and i took a bite but it was stale damn unfortunately damn but i'm great good well sometimes stale bread is good that's true i feel like we left off on quite a cliffhanger yeah quite a cliffhanger we the last thing we chatted about was us getting to philly meeting each other and we're about to shoot start shooting and we have the table read

and asia naomi king tells tells me that i better do a good job in the table read because they can still recast me right that's so good oh so good put put the fear right in my bones i was gonna say how did you how did that inform your experience of the table read and your even your performance in the table read i think anxiously i think you know but i think that that helped you know because yeah well what we see pretty immediately in the show is that connor is very anxious um so art imitating life um but it helped you know i think i obviously i was going to try my best and do a good job but i think that realizing that there were that's not enough though that's not yeah yeah exactly go beyond yeah exactly you need to destroy yourself

for the art yeah yeah exactly i mean it it was i think the second most anxious inducing table read that we had over the entire course of six seasons you know what the you know what the first is i think i do i think i do the first which we will talk about when we get there is when denzel washington dw dw came that's right to meet with viola about fences and he decided to come to our table readout lunch and he sat directly across from me and it's the most anxious i've been in my entire life yeah i felt like i was auditioning for denzel washington that's right you were in a way um in a way didn't he also direct an episode of gray's anatomy i think i think i was looking that up and saw that maybe he was doing that around that time too i could be wrong on that

but i didn't that sounds likely very cool of him yeah um yeah well denzel i'm still available if you want to if you want to call still waiting for my call back i'm still waiting for my call back okay i feel like obviously there is a lot to talk about about our time in philly and what was what it was like filming the pilot but i feel like we should just dive in and yeah i you know this is really the first time i've seen the pilot yeah because i think even when i saw this for the first time the only time the only episode of the show that i have seen i think it was you know when it was premiering and we were you know in that theater on the studio lot and we were all live tweeting and so really i was just sort of like looking at my phone i wasn't really watching

the show live tweeting i mean that's a whole thing we're gonna get into because yeah twitter was such a monumental thing at the time and a big part of tgit thursdays but yeah so this was really I was watching it kind of with, with fresh eyes and hot take. I liked it. Yeah. I was going to ask, what is your overall, your, your high level sort of, uh, perception high level. I liked it. I see why it was so popular immediately. I mean, this, the pilot moves. And of course I, I remember my, my first impression reading it was that as well was that it was smart. It uses this really cool structure device of these flash forwards which we're going to talk a lot about we've already i've already received a lot of questions about the structure of the show and how we shot

it but yeah seeing it immediately start on night x which is what we would call the night of the murders each season um it hooks you immediately you know it's totally we're off to the races yeah oh before we get in we have very exciting news we have confirmed that pete now walk the creator of the show, is going to be joining us as a guest. We're going to have Alfred Enoch. We're going to have Katie Finley, who plays Rebecca. There are so many other guests that we are talking to right now, and we are very excited about. It's going to be a big love fest. So let's jump in. The title of the episode is Pilot. It is written by Pete Nowak and directed by michael offer and we shot march 2014 10th to the 30th this is notable because it is a pilot

of television right network tv pilot and so we shot for nearly three weeks as opposed to once we get picked up the show you know goes into production in los angeles and we would shoot those episodes in nine days is that right i think that's right yeah i think that's yeah so we had a lot of time and you can you can see it and and i think the pilot all right so let's let's jump right in so we yeah we start it's cold open we call it night of the flying cheerleader because it opens with you know this actress getting thrown into the sky big bonfire it's a party and immediately we cut to most of the keating five you were noticeably absent i was but we are yelling at each other and I was very happy to hear that I had the first line stop acting like a

little bitch baby which is right one of my favorite lines of the episode and you kind of see this dynamic immediately between the students where Connor and Michaela are kind of falling apart a little bit and Wes and Laurel are kind of keeping it together a little bit more obviously Michaela played by asia naomi king laurel played by carla souza and west played by alfred enoch and yeah watching that the first thing i thought of was that it is so cold like it was actually it was it was a record breaking winter in philadelphia and it was genuinely freezing and we were shooting those scenes overnight so we were on set until like two or three a.m um we would stand around these like space heaters that they set up outside and try to warm between takes but it was you know

i just joked in our first episode that my cold acting is what got me the job and then you know here here we are doing some very real cold acting yeah so real but you weren't there yeah no i wasn't there it's so interesting because i remember this like dual feeling of you and the rest of the keating five talking about how cold and like physically difficult it was and also i remember kind of feeling left out because i think what like what a lot of people probably who are not actors don't necessarily realize is like a lot of times you you when you have like scenes with people whether it's like a love interest or even in this case like these four people it does somehow end up reflecting in like real bonds because you're spending just simply more time together

like just magnified over time so i remember feeling you know when i first signed on to the show i think you know i was kind of told that there would be more to the role than was originally planned because of me my casting being in it and it's it's a little bit of a leap of faith when you're like okay i hope that i hope that's real i hope that's true and i think i remember you know just feeling kind of like a little like oh both like i wish i could be there for that stuff because that also those those nights you know i think i probably felt that less and less as time went on right as we got enough time together and it was freezing but i actually remember that like one of the first photos in my phone is we all it was a hair and makeup test where you know for for those

listening like basically you know you you're getting into hair and makeup and then the photos go to get approvals to make sure that you know the hair styles you like and all that and i remember there was a photo and it was going to be there's a photo of all of us and then at one point someone was like actually can you step out and then it was just like the four of you and i and i remember being i remember it's so weird like remembering like as i took i took the photo of you four but i remember like having like sadness in my heart as i took the photo but but it's so interesting that i remember but i was like but maybe if i act like this is nice then i can just it'll be nice um but i still remember that anyway yeah y'all and y'all did a a great job and yeah

it starts with such like energy and yeah and and the music really by photek shout out to photek really really helps it move and there's just so much throughout the episode so many gems and planted seeds it's just really i loved it it was so cool to watch and you know when i first watched it i was i was focused more on sort of much more just on myself my performance and all that and with this much distance i'm able to kind of see it a little more for the whole and just like the i don't know the complexity of it is just really like astonishing and and cool and yeah yeah well you were obviously missed in those scenes but i think you more than make up you more than make up for it in uh all of the great little tasty asher bits that we get very soon one line i want

to point out in this first scene is this is murder none of us know what we're talking about which is laurel's line to connor and i think that is a fantastic line from pete because it sets up the entire premise of the show this is murder none of us know what we're talking about right we'll be right back now back to class all right so we move right ahead we're the next scene elfie west is riding a bike across the law school school quad and i watched this scene and immediately got angry because elfie is biking with with no hands and he is clearly showing off and it physically did something to me where i was like what a punk like he's showing off that he can bike without hands but you know we we are three months earlier so we're already setting up this the structure the

time premise of the show just to clarify now for everyone because i've seen a lot of questions about this we did not shoot chronologically we shot everything out of order you know you shoot based on a production schedule which you know maybe a location is only available a certain day maybe an actor is only available certain days there really isn't any rhyme or reason i mean i mean there's a ton of rhyme or reason but it is not chronological in any way right yeah so we're shooting everything out of order i'll we'll talk about it later but the the courtrooms or the exterior of the courthouse was the very first scene i think we shot so the night x in the woods were well we're well into production of the pilot i have no idea when alfie shot this biking scene

but he shoots it we then go to the class which i mean also off to the races you know we start seeing all the we meet asher asher's wearing i believe an ascot an ascot yeah yeah i think he only wore an ascot in the pilot yeah only in the pilot i have an ascot count i think i think he wears four ascots on the pilot which is incredible i love that so good but i think they also do a really great job in this scene in the classroom scene of setting up like the social hierarchy and dynamics of law school totally um where it's really sink or swim um so we see asher he's introduced as being you know a douche face in his his intro lines and we you know meet connor or we see connor talking to west saying you know you you better find your seat you don't want to be a

sitting duck when the shooter gets here and so we right away we we see what this environment is and how cutthroat it is i remember these scenes all of the classroom scenes were shot the same because that's when we had the location and i remember being really nervous in these scenes yeah because not only are you acting but you're acting in front of an entire classroom full of background artists totally yeah yeah no it's it's a unique experience here it's like doing live theater almost in a weird way. And the days are long too, because you're, you know, you're oftentimes shoot. I can't remember if we did this a lot of the time or just kind of later on, but you'd shoot like multiple scenes kind of at once, just like going through it. Right. So a lot of

the scenes where there's a lot of background actors and a lot of people talking, there's a lot of downtime in between and to stay like sharp and invigorated for like when it's your time is, it's kind of scary and it's it's a little bit of a hard it can be a hard thing you know totally not yeah i think not as much in the beginning because the adrenaline was purely there but you know later on it it was harder i think yeah to your point yeah we would often block shoot these scenes where we if it was three classroom scenes we would shoot all of viola's stuff in all three separate scenes right first and then we would turn and shoot all of our stuff for those three scenes and that you know that could be a 12 hour day so you're right to keep it fresh can

sometimes be a little tricky but i agree with you i think for the pilot at least for me the adrenaline was just pumping and which probably made me more tired that i was just running pure adrenaline for 12 hours but yeah we're in the classroom viola walks in obviously this becomes an iconic entrance in television where we see her you know we pan up from her walking in and then she you know goes to the blackboard and and writes or as i like to call it how to get away with murder that's right and that is the only time i think in the series that the the title of the show is self-referenced it's true it's true i feel like the chalk kept breaking too if i'm remembering correctly yeah i do remember that and i remember she kept making jokes about it and you know which was sort of a testament i

think to her coming in in that role which i don't think we've talked about but we were in philly already right i think already were we already shooting or we were in pre-production but we were in philly when we were they pulled us into some conference room and michael offer the director of the pilot came in to tell us the news that viola had been cast as annalise oh my god i don't remember this i don't remember that i wonder if i was maybe not in the room or something yeah oh no because you weren't part of the that's right no i'm part of the the murder night you were part of the crew that's right no no well i i have this memory i don't know who else was in the room because it was it was such a surreal moment but it's it's inked in my

very fuzzy memory somehow of michael offer saying that we got viola davis and just the absolute pandemonium in the room at the excitement but i think that this scene in the pilot sort of was that shown on screen you know where she walks into the room and immediately takes command of this classroom and she is such a titan of acting and entertainment that i felt nervous and i think that the chalk continuing to break was like a really human moment that she was like yeah you know being self-deprecating and you know we'll obviously talk about the i mean viola is one of the funniest people i've ever met and so i think her using that humor to sort of let us all like take a breath was yeah was really kind of her and a genius like seasoned veteran move yeah yeah and

then we immediately you know we established that wes is not supposed to be there and he has only just gotten it off the wait list we all make fun of him for getting off the wait list which as a viewer made me feel really uncomfortable because i was listed at myu and i was like man this is so mean we're being so mean immediately right yeah i had a physical visceral cringe to my i think i mouth like wow like when he says that he was the uh on the wait list and i'm like yeah totally yeah yeah a good reminder that we are we are not the characters that we exactly yeah um i also noticed in watching this that i have a giant zit on my forehead in this scene certainly from the stress of shooting my first tv pilot but uh the makeup

department did a really good job of of blending it but of course i i noticed it um i didn't notice it yeah thank you it's all right it's her it's her human and great true another weird fashion thing just west being in skinny jeans feels so of this this era and i love i love seeing elfie and skinny jeans like throughout the entire episode but all right so we zoom out of the classroom you know she reveals that this is actually this is not an old case that we're studying but an active case that she and her firm are working on and they are representing the client gina played by the incredible andrea seglowski shout out to linda lowey the cast director because i think that what we will find throughout all of these episodes that we talk

about is that all of the actors that came in were just like sensational they were all so so good but Yeah. So we're immediately in AK's house and we're starting to set up the world that we're going to help her build their defense for Gina, the aspirin assassin. This is also where we meet Bonnie and Frank played by Liza Weill and Charlie Weber, crowd favorites, which I also had a weird moment watching it where I'm like, oh my gosh, we are now the age that Liza and Charlie were filming the pilot that's i was i actually literally had i watched the episode twice then i was watching today i was like i should google is there a way i can mathematically figure out how they work but that's interesting that's true huh yeah you just subtract 11 years from

their current age um right yeah wild because i had at least i felt in being in philly on set with them i was like wow they're so old and cool you know like they're like they've been they've been around like seasoned yeah the seasoned and now i feel still like a silly goose so i'm yeah curious if we can have them on and talk about what their experience was being yeah older not old but older actors on the pilot but yeah the other weird thing i think we talked about is that the sets look so good i know like this is a real house in philly that they found the the locations department and the stained glass that was beautiful it was beautiful i mean i i wanted that stained glass door for my apartment in la yeah i remember but it's so crazy that once we moved the show to los

angeles how incredible they did in building the sets to replicate the actual real location so that i just kept having these weird moments where i'm like surely we're in los angeles i know yeah spoken to yeah as we're yeah i mean it was only basically three weeks that we were in philadelphia and i mean probably i don't know how i don't know how many days in that house in the actual house maybe a couple days maybe more for you because of the murder night stuff and then six years of it in la yeah in the same interior of that house so it's a very it's like a weird uh uncanny valley kind of uh kind of moment a hundred percent man we'll be right back and we're back so yeah we're there annalise tells us we're going to pitch defense uh strategy she sets up this competition

which is just a great again a great device for the pilot and for it to keep moving forward and she says that she's going to pick four of us to work at the firm she introduces the trophy which i have right here let's go he brought it with you and i brought it i still have it um i love that yeah mine's in storage yeah i think i lost the um the scales unfortunately in one of the moves yeah man but we were given that i don't know if it was part of a wrap gift or not but we were all given yeah it was it was from pete at the end of uh season one he he gave us a little note that said in my class everyone gets a trophy which was really sweet oh i love that yeah all right so we leave ak's house we immediately go to west and rebecca's apartment

building uh we we meet rebecca played by the incredible katie finley um yes who will be a guest on the pod they are so good in this they are immediately i see them on screen and i think i i believe them a hundred percent so which i think is really hard to do because that role the role of rebecca could be sort of this i don't know like broad like stereotype of this type of person and katie brings such a intensity and specificity and yeah honesty to it totally yeah i'm really impressed by it totally yeah and their signature sort of dry wit like also just yes uh just slots like perfectly perfectly into it as well couldn't anymore yeah the one thing that bumped me in this is that we like i'm watching i'm like what's going on in wes's bedroom there's like bite marks and

scratch marks on the wall i have no recollection of this at all really does it come back well i don't i don't think that the i could be wrong i don't think that that plot device comes back but but later in the show i think doesn't someone else end up in his apartment and i remember i forgot about what i forgot about it being and i think i remember being in it in the in the room itself and just like being like like what the hell is that um forgetting about that but i just have to wonder you know what kind of sexual acts um as someone who's you know been very exploratory and you know um i just i'm just having a hard time picturing what it would take bite marks on the headboards yeah it's giving dungeon vibes a bit it is but bite marks in that i mean it's you know

there's something special that went on there i think that's like a that there's like a spinoff show about that the lawsuit that was in there sure oh that's what it was there was another law student in the well what we'll we'll visit that if it comes back but that just bumped for me i was really taken aback so this is good intel for the fans we we use this term called poppy pop poppy pop i just remember remember poppy pop yeah so you you see it on screen these edits that they use that almost like feel like a pop where we flash forward into night axe the the future and so it would often be it would often be written into future scripts saying pop we pop the pop to ak's house which is exactly what we do from wes and rebecca's we poppy pop forward and you see us

wrapping up the body whoo and we gotta get ahead of this now because this was a big question i saw on reddit people were asking how much did we know like what yeah what number of scripts were we given how much information did we have going forward and the answer is very little like we typically only had the information in any given script so totally we did know while filming the pilot that it was sam keating played by tom verica right that is dead you know is the bot right but right if it but only because that's what happens in the end of the episode only exactly it's the reveal that if it wasn't revealed in that episode you would not we would not have known that yeah exactly if it's not in the episode and it happens in future episodes generally we did not know this

is going to be a big thing we talk about i'm sure but i just wanted to get ahead of that um so we are wrapping up you know sam keating's body uh obviously the audience doesn't know that yet played by shauna land favorite tom verica tom verica shout out tom verica who's directed many episodes of many Shondaland shows. Yeah. Yeah. He is the producing director of all of Shondaland now. Is that right? Wow. That's right. And I have been mistaken for him before when being recognized as well, which is interesting. Cool. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Tom Verica also might be from Philly maybe. Oh, interesting. Which is also, I mean, if worth noting that we are in Philadelphia and like none of us had spent any time in Philadelphia and that these are, you know,

when you go and shoot anything on location like this it's it's sort of like summer camp where you're just like plopped into a random city in the country or world and we were just running around you know and we're taking we were taking wrecks i remember i had a couple buddies from college that had grown up in philly and so we were just you know moving around it's like the feeling of like if you've ever been on like an overnight class trip somewhere and you get to stay in a hotel and except maybe they had chaperones. So you couldn't really, you know, act wild the way you otherwise would. Yeah. That was kind of the, the vibe of it. Yeah. Our producer just confirmed that Tom Baraka was born on May 13th, 1964 in Philadelphia. So I knew, I knew he was a proud

son of Philly. So I wonder if we had gotten any hot tips from him. We probably did. Yeah. I don't think we, I feel like we didn't have a whole lot of time outside of working. At least you and i enjoyed going out and during the night being uh men of the night but um but i feel like we didn't have a whole lot of time to do a bunch of other stuff at least i don't know i was like pretty locked into like yeah you know going over and over and over on the script i mean the week leading up to us filming we definitely were socializing a little bit more right which worth noting i like that was very illuminating for me because you were famous from right new black and so it was really yeah it was really bizarre to go out and be with you and see people

come up and recognize you and be fans of the show yeah it was constant it was really constant at that point too which was pretty yeah did we tell the story about the ice cream by the way yeah i can't remember i don't think we did i don't know there was one moment we were we were all like together and i don't know somehow we were talking about ice cream i think with the ice cream parties our ice cream socials were like a consistent theme and then somehow i tweeted something to ben and jerry's and then they were like follow us we have something for you and so i followed them and i just i went back and looked and there's i can still see the dms they ended up sending us a an ice cream cake like they delivered an ice cream cake to the hotel that was awesome

and you know also was interesting because you know with a certain level of presence you get free things which obviously we talked about it at some point the cupcake theory um sure you can talk about at some point but it was yeah that was a really fun that was a fun moment we're all just like enjoying it and yeah i think on i think on our first ice cream night it was i don't remember this clearly but i have a photo of it of me in the hotel robe wearing i'm wearing like a beanie and like one of my favorite vintage shirts from the time and i'm not i don't think i'm wearing pants i think i'm wearing like boxers or something and i'm we're in one of our hotel rooms and i'm handing out pints of ben and jerry's because this is before ben and jerry's sent us the

right cake which shout out ben and jerry's yeah um but i we had like i think we had already eaten all of our ice cream and so i volunteered to go out and buy more ice cream and it was like 2 a.m or something and i go across the street to buy ice cream and as i'm coming back pete nowak who is our boss the creator of the show is getting back or he's in the lobby maybe of the hotel and i just walk in in the hotel bathrobe no pants wearing a wearing a beanie looking absolutely nuts just holding a bag full of pints of ice cream and he looked at me i think like he had made a mistake um in casting me but i hate probably concerned knowing pete yeah probably just concerned yeah is this person okay yeah yeah exactly why is he about why is this person

about to eat seven pints of ice cream right right the answer was no uh not okay yeah not okay yeah anyway so we we gotta get back to this episode because it's too good but we were wrapping up the body we you and i were talking about this before we started recording we couldn't remember what was being wrapped up because it wasn't tom verica like they weren't having us just love tom verica right through the woods and yeah yes sure and so i because my memory is so bad and this was 11 years ago i phoned a friend i hit up both elfie and asian omi king and both of them think that it was a mannequin so because it was heavy yeah i mean mannequins are pretty heavy yeah yeah mannequins have some weight to them so i think that it was i think it was more that it

was just like on unwieldy right right it was hard whatever that word is it was hard to carry yeah thank you sandbag weight sort of yeah yeah yeah yeah one could say dead weight but yeah so then i don't get it yeah we we then get stopped by the security guard as we leave uh i love this this like tonal shift where michaela kind of steps up and and immediately goes to lie about why we're in the house and connor has this line where the hell's that girl been all night right i just that that's really tasty to me it is yeah you see her like i mean she does like step in in so many clutch ways in like high stakes moments like that so it is it is interesting again it's like the first moment you see michaela yes yeah doing that i think you

know like really exactly yeah also asia i texted her after watching the pilot asia to me like is immediately a star like on screen in this yeah and so i think that like we'll talk a lot about how the writers i think started writing to our strengths and i think michaela becomes so good at you know kind of rising to the occasion and and and being manipulative really because asia has just this like star quality that is really it's it's really captivating you know um and so in that moment like you're totally right it's sort of the first time we see Michaela do that which is cool and then we immediately go back to class where we're presenting our defenses poor waitlist has to go last an unenviable position and immediately Matt I'm watching this and you

were so funny and i remember i remember too when we were filming this you know whole classroom full of background actors and you were making everyone crack up it was i love that it was yeah it's like a core memory i have of filming the pilot and really the difference too i think of like you know having that experience like you being on orange the new black and coming into this with with a little bit more pep in your step than you know someone like me that really hadn't worked that much yeah it's interesting too right because we probably filmed that those scenes the same day we filmed the scenes that how to get away viola saying how to get with murder right because like for the audience perspective again anytime you're in the same location you know like which is that

classroom you're trying to like stack everything you can in that right so you're not having to go back and forth but i remember i think that was one of like i don't know if that was my first day of shooting might have been but i feel like i remember coming in and on orange is new black i remember working with pablo schreiber who played porn stash and seeing him as kind of a comedic character and that take a lot of like liberty and i remember being he would do things that i was like and then i'd look at the script and i'd be like i'm so confused like what where is this on like what's happening um but then i realized like oh he's doing the thing you know he's like taking up some space. And I remember going into it thinking like, I think that this is what I

should do. And initially I wanted to, you know, kind of like vet my choices. You know, when I was on Orange is New Black, I felt much more timid. Right. And also, you know, I was even on that show, I was a recurring, possibly recurring co-star, which is a very different thing for the audience. That's like your kind of build at like five lines and to maybe come back. And then at some point in the second season became a recurring guest star. But this is my first time being a series regular on how to get with murder. And, you know, I felt basically what I wanted to do was kind of create a lot of creative room, sort of like ask for forgiveness rather than ask for permission. So I was like, and I always want to, I try to like do something different in

every take. I think when I'm really like doing the work I want to do and then kind of let the editor put it together into what they want, but it keeps it fresh. It keeps it interesting. It keeps it spontaneous but i remember coming in and just being like let me like kind of try and blow the doors off and present as many options as possible and i'm just creating like a large how do i describe it just like a vast possibility of potential rather than like starting small and then trying to like work my way out so yeah that was me in real time doing that and then look i love making people laugh and including like including other actors and it's not always great um in terms of like having to do things again but really also like when you are seeking things in that way it

creates the spontaneity i feel like of the performance that also is like the best thing for the audience so yeah and then having done improv and sketch comedy for many years it was it was like fun to be in that room but also kind of scary because like you said it's like you know fucking up a line in front of the whole the whole room of people you know um and viola for the first time you know is uh can be intimidating i mean i do think that that seeing you do that helped me a lot because i was so tight in the pilot and and the first you know couple episodes and season arguably and i think seeing you take creative liberties and like and and be really expansive as an actor made me come out of my shell a little bit so yeah and it was always you know it was

always just so fun to watch you play in the sandbox you know yeah i appreciate that i also think by the way you're what you're describing is kind of the anxiousness and tightness i do yeah like i feel like it it worked and it like you sold it really well you know what i mean like you feel the the tightness you know but like in a way that's very compelling to watch and where you're like man there's a lot going on there's a lot going on for this guy you know um totally yeah well i'm i'm interested to see i'm interested to see if i loosen up we'll see we'll see as i watch more episodes um but yeah so we're everyone's giving their pitches and she then sets up this whole like step one discredit the witness step two introduce new suspects step three bury the

evidence that's how you get away with murder before we go to court i love that this there's this exchange between Michaela and Annalise about how we have torts in the morning and Annalise doesn't care that we have other classes like I'm watching and I'm like what a terrible professor like she like we're at we're in law school like this is yeah you don't just get to like pick and choose going to class but sure anyways come at me in the comments I'm I am right I'm consistently surprised by how terrible we all are as human as human beings also and we always talked about that you know but like when you're when you're when you're playing a role you're justifying you're not you know you're inhabiting that point of view to some degree so to see it retrospectively and be

like oh my god that is wild yeah 100 so we go to court it's the first court uh scene of the series we are going to talk a lot about court scenes and and how fun they are and sometimes how boring they are yeah michaela rushes in she you know has kind of blurred the lines of legal moral ethical areas and she's gotten this information that possibly the witness on the stand is colorblind this is the first time we see one of the keating students sort of blur those lines which is obviously going to become a recurring theme for all of us right we then we then go to the court the courthouse stairwell this is a fun scene because it's it's a short you know scene where we established that we've now discredited the witness but you will remember i definitely remember i fainted in this

scene while filming i don't know if you remember this but the handsome blonde young gentleman behind me is johnny birchtold who is now a very successful actor he was working background in philly at the time um he's currently on uh murdoch death in the family on hulu you guys should watch it he's fantastic he caught me as i fainted and years later like like not that like a couple years ago yeah we were at a mutual friend's birthday party at a bar and he came up to me and he's like you're not going to remember me but i'm the one who caught you when you fainted in the stairwell on the pilot of how to kill murder and we've become like very good friends since so i just wanted to shout out to johnny and i do remember from that day fainting that i was really embarrassed

like i wasn't i wasn't forthright about why i fainted because i was right i was cutting water weight because i had my sex scene with oliver i think the following day and this is gonna be something we talk about uh we don't have to get into it now but a lot of dysmorphia body dysmorphia that i i dealt with over the course of the series and sort of expectations expectations set on us by the industry and not the show but the industry and yeah and struggling with that and yeah so i was cutting water weight and i i fainted because i was super dehydrated i was going to say i'm always uh sweating i run hot as you know and so i think i chalked it up to me being really hot and viola i remember really went out of her way like shut down production made sure that i was

put in like a cool environment and given cold water and she like checked on me a couple times um which i really appreciate to this day um yeah but i it was really because i was cutting water weight i did i yeah actually what i was going to say was yeah i i didn't know this at the time but i had since learned that yeah that you tend to get overheated a bit like in just in general right and sweat so imagining combining that with cutting water weight is a dangerous combination is is a dangerous always a danger always a dangerous you know always a danger do not do it um so we go from the stairwell we go to ak's house where elfie you know he's like found something in a book or something and then goes to ak's house to tell her what he's found and we meet nate

he played by billy brown who has a great line get the hell out what a moment i mean he i mean of anyone anyone appearing from thin air let alone billy brown was just it was just a shock to the system and i feel like i feel like alfie west west says like what does he say oh my god or something like that i think he says oh my god and i think i also said holy shit yeah just seeing him stand up it's just it's just like you're like what is happening yeah what is happening yeah who is this man yeah that's pretty crazy um commanding physical presence and the voice yeah that's just the combo package yeah i mean it'll come as no surprise to anyone that is a fan of the show that billy brown has a great voiceover career with that voice yeah uh he has voiced uh different

characters on some of my favorite animated shows uh is that right adventure yeah including keep king on adventure time which i love oh no way that's so cool yeah but my i think my favorite we're i'm saying a lot of my favorite lines and we'll pick one at the end one of my favorite lines is is the end of the scene where annalise is pushing elf uh wes outside of her house to get her get him out and she says good night seth right she just calls him the wrong name which is incredible it is so then we we pop forward we're at the gas station connor is singing jingle bells which uh i remember reading in the pilot was one of my favorite moments where you start to see sort of like his descent into madness and the severity of the reality that they're in setting in yeah

right and you start to see laurel and west sort of taking the reins and being a little bit more in control and you know connor's just falling apart you know he says well we can just kill the the store owner if we need to you know he's unraveling which becomes a theme for connor and then as we sort of like zoom into connor's brain like we literally push in on my face we then flash back to the bar where we meet crowd favorite oliver hampton played by conrad rickamora my on-screen husband yes yes yes yes yes and my immediate scene this is by the way my second audition scene for the show is this scene with oliver and he's so good like he's immediately so likable he is yeah i think in like connor's settled moments connor is like

you know he's peacocking like he's overly confident and sure in the beat when we meet oliver conrad plays him so beautifully as this like sort of like nervous likable just really heartwarming and you want to like scoop him up and hug him and so it's just such a good they play off each other i think so well in this scene totally and a really good question we got from reddit from tony bichoni was was oliver originally meant to be a one-time character and the answer is yes is that really is that true that is true conrad was only supposed to be in the pilot of the show he was only supposed to serve as you know a means to an end for for conrad to get this information to help the court case and i remember pete i can't remember if it was during

the filming of the pilot like after we had wrapped up because again like conrad was only on set like a day or two like he came down from new york right where he's working in the theater and just shot his scenes and he left you know like we barely like we really barely interacted you know right other than like a day or two together which is even you know crazier that like one of the two scenes we had together is this intimate scene but i remember pete pulling me aside and being like he's amazing like we should have him back yeah i was like absolutely like he's so good yeah yeah and then obviously the rest is history he becomes such an instrumental part of the show and my life love the guy and he's helped me through so many things and i hope that we can have him on to talk

about all those things because he love that is literally the best and he's having amazing doing amazing things in his career to very super happy for him what a lovely lovely feller yeah he just shot double wears product too which i'm really excited to see after an incredible run in o'mary on broadway playing abraham lincoln uh yeah he is he's a star he's absolutely a star but we go from meeting colliver to the court where connor has this great line where he says it wasn't exactly legal is the point right when the analyst asked him how he got the information i also pointed like this is a bump for me as a viewer where the judge just allows this this evidence that was not in discovery to be to be you know submitted to the court which would never happen but that's okay

you know we're making tv um and then we go straight out into the hallway and this is the first walk and talk of the series do you want to talk about walk and talks yeah sure i mean a walk and talk is just literally you're walking and you're talking and it's usually kind of complex to film there's a lot of things to like navigate right like the background actors have to walk at the right time so they're not like cutting off the you know the speaking actors but they're also you know not like waiting around in the background uh the camera person usually has a steadicam right and so they're operating a steadicam which is like physically demanding there's like a harness on it and they're holding a camera attached to an arm and they're walking a

lot of times walking backwards right yes um and yeah and then also with the signature shondaland speed of line delivery as well it's amped up even more too right and then so sometimes even like for me lines are in and not always an easy thing they take a lot of work they've taken a lot of work to remember and then when you add in like a lot of physicality moving around and stuff like that i had to start practicing lines while moving specifically for those scenes to not mess them up but i do remember in this i think it was in this particular one was right where i i remember very specifically a direction it felt so awkward in the time it looks it looks great on camera at the end of the day but it was like i think my line is like yeah for reals bro

and i'm supposed to say that for reals part facing like the same direction you're facing and then and then like turn all the 180 degrees around you and be facing that direction yeah as you're like circling me yeah right yeah exactly yeah yeah we'll have many walk and talks that we can get into uh but i'm glad you brought up the shondaland pace of line delivery i meant to highlight that in i think the first time we really hear it is actually in that stairwell scene where i faint where michaela is explaining how she got this information when she is talking so quickly that i almost can't understand her so really i blame the fainting not on dehydration but me trying to listen to asia rattle off all this information at a clip i was in awe yeah the

awe you were experiencing yeah utter utter awe that she can speak so you transcended your soul left your body i was like left your dry lifeless corpse yeah exactly all right so from the court the walk and talk we go to the bathroom where laurel observes something going on between the two other ladies then we go back to wes and rebecca's apartment where we meet this guy griffin we don't really know who he is played by lenny platt yes great performance rebecca continues to be pretty icy to Wes, which I love seeing. And then we go to the law school cocktail reception where we meet Sam Keating, played by Tom Berica, Philly's own. And Asher is in another Ascot count for those keeping track. This is the third. This scene does bump me a little bit in

2025, where Wes is like, sorry, who's your wife? Which, first of all, incredibly impolite thing to right interject into a conversation but then it bumps me just a little bit because he realizes having observed annalise with nate that there's potential infidelity that has right occurred and so when watching it i was like man i wonder if like gen z law students wouldn't make that leap immediately just because sure you know like we don't know what's going on in their right partnership like maybe they have right you know some sort of understanding and this is all above bored like we don't but wes is so immediately like rattled to his core you know that it it felt uh it was just interesting to watch i guess yeah and although that that look the viola then gives him

to also like you better shut your fucking mouth um yeah it's like you're like oh that's true yeah no this this is not an open relationship but yeah but before that he's yeah rattled rattles a good totally so then we we go from there to poppy pop to night x to the woods where we're hiding on a hill with the body and laurel gets a call from frank and kayla asks why is frank calling you so we start to sprinkle those breadcrumbs and then of course we follow laurel back in time to ak's house um where she's explaining to frank what she observed in the the court house bathroom and right i love you know we're starting to set up their relationship and i i love how frank sort of he criticizes laurel for being idolistic which is obviously like this this theme that's going to

be weaved through right the entire series is the loss of our innocence and ideals and yeah i just thought that was really good foreshadowing and then bonnie i think has again one of my favorite deliveries of stop screwing the students yeah which is incredible foreshadowing as well yeah as as we will learn right and then this is i think the most asked about scene that i uh have seen so far on reddit we go back to the the law school cocktail reception and we are in the bathroom where annalise enters the bathroom where wes is taking a breather and she they have this really energetically intense exchange where yeah yeah annalise explains that they've been trying to have a baby and how hard it's been and she starts crying and she sort of touches wes

in intimate ways and rubbing his chest and shoulders yeah exactly and a lot of a lot of fans have asked was there ever you know some storyline idea that there was supposed to be something going on and i i don't know i mean i'm curious your thoughts but like to me i just i watched that and i was like wow annalise is like a master manipulator yeah she's able she's able to play everyone like a fiddle using any totally means necessary totally yeah i had that feeling i also thought literally just like i remember viscerally kind of being like oh that must feel so nice just having someone like rub your chest shoulders like that and like what a like a discordant feeling to be kind of watching that being like oh that probably feels really nice

with also like the the uninvited touch and and like being so close to his face and totally and the too much information and and all of it um yeah yeah i think i imagine probably was the purpose of it was to like destabilize yeah they're already unstable wes yeah totally yeah this is also i noted was wes leaves and we get the first like quiet moment with just annalise yeah and we'll talk about this a lot but these episodes move right which is why the show is as good and riveting as it is but i think that we see a lot of character introspection quiet moments with annalise and understandably rightfully so they are giving viola davis those those beats in episodes and this to me is really the first time we see like a quiet mirror moment where

viola is doing what she does best which is just this like insane performance with just her her face in a non-verbal moment you know yeah and it sort of slows the show down and i think grounds it into the reality of you know a character study which is yeah yeah the contrast of yeah of the speed of the rest of the show with those moments when it slows down is also really totally yeah it's just such an effective device for drawing you in you know you're kind of like holding your breath a lot of the time as it's moving quickly and then in those moments you have time to breathe and you're kind of doing it with her as it's just like yeah and her performance is just you know uh incredible yeah all right moving on because we have a bit to go we go to

sam and ak's house with bonnie and frank we foreshadow that bonnie is in love with sam which i completely forgotten about that storyline we then go back to wes's apartment we see more scratches on the wall i still don't know what's going on with the scratches right uh wes tries to invite rebecca in for a drink because she's given this nice like peace offering with the bottle of whiskey then we're back in court where the there's the first wrench in annalise's court case which which you know right we see in all of the episodes where like things seem to be going well and then something goes wrong and we get the impression that the client is perhaps lying or not telling annalise and everyone the full truth we then you know we have another bit of foreshadowing where

where annalise now back in the house accuses frank of being distracted because he's sleeping with students so that is a theme that is that is a character uh quality that we are establishing pretty heavily in the first episode yeah and just a great moment of just acting with charlie weber there playing frank and where he's he like fights back with uh annalise for a moment and she gives him a look and he's just like i'm sorry yes 100 and just like it's just such a beautiful like telling about the relationship and like just a very small moment you know yeah 100 i think the pilot does that really effectively where we get these like one or two line exchanges between characters where we're able to as an audience fill in the blanks like very quickly of of what

their relationship is and their history and all that which is uh definitely the case in that scene yeah so from ak's house we go back to court ak calls nate to the stand i completely forgot about this uh i have no idea why nate is being called he she questions him about the police doctoring surveillance footage and you know she questions him about his whereabouts when they were you know putting all of this into evidence and of course we as the audience know that he was with her which i think is just great you know character work where we see how cutthroat annalise is that she's like willing to put this man totally that she has an intimate relationship with on the stand and you know we find out that his wife is recently diagnosed with cancer like it's it's all like

pretty right it's pretty dark you know right and you're like why is she even mentioning why is i mean yeah why again i think i think part of the destabilization right like yeah getting him to to show some sort of emotions of and also there was this moment do you remember the moment that in the audience when when he reveals that he has um okay i'm glad he he basically he reveals that yes he knows that evidence has been tampered with before in the police department and then the audience was to react you know the background there's a commotion you know you're supposed to make like kind of like non-specific audible noises you know like oh my god and yeah and um And then I heard something and I was like, I feel like someone's talking. And then I'm like, on the next take I heard, and there's a woman who was just like, can't trust the police. And I remember dying, laughing. An icon was born in that moment. I never figured out who it actually was, but it was like five takes before. And I slowly pointed out to the rest of you guys, I think.

um and there was a we all had a hard time not laughing but i think it was many takes before whoever we realized was supposed to realize and was like we need you not to to not to but a clear point of view about how you feel about the police and it is it was great yeah a woman after my own heart yeah yeah sure so then we go outside of the courthouse where we are having like the media circus because we've won the case this is the first scene that uh we shot in the pilot in philadelphia i'm i'm like nearly certain i have i have photos of it uh that i'll post on instagram but i'm pretty positive that this is the first scene that we shot we then go back to class i get the trophy which made me feel very happy uh we also you know we all get selected the keating

five gets selected to work at the the firm wait list gets in by the skin of his teeth and then you know we're outside on the quad west says he doesn't want the job and ak tells him look you can join my firm and become someone you actually like um which also viola looks so incredible in this green trench coat i just love this outfit shout out lynn paulo our uh incredible costume designer who pulled all of these fits and then we then the the rest of the episode moves so fast so i'm just gonna go through it we're in the sorority flash forward where you know the music picks up shout out to faux tech again we find the body of lila in in the water tank we go to exactly we go to rebecca's apartment where her and griffin are watching the news then we go to ak's house where

sam is watching the news and then ak comes in and he says you know my student they found her in one of those water tanks viola has this delectable delivery of i'm sorry and then she finally turns to him in the scene you know she's not looking at it until i bet the boyfriend did it which is i mean yeah shivers the scene absolutely slaps i love this scene so much and it's just such good acting between uh viola and tom you know it's just a couple lines yeah yeah yeah and his delivery of i guess we'll see is like yeah you know it's it's knowing what happens it's it's so icy and and sends just chills through your spine yeah um and then you know we're back in the woods for the end of the pilot where we are building a fire to burn sam keating's body who his face is finally revealed

and elfie lights a match and puts it up a flame and i asked elfie and asia none of us remember if we actually lit a real fire asia thinks that we they allowed us to actually light it on the very last take and then i don't know if they added some like special effects of some of the flames as well uh yeah it looks really good and if you look at your foot in that when the fire gets lit the fire like goes to your you like take a step back it looks like the fire goes to your foot and you step back so i don't know if that's real or not but i'm wondering though if like because i'm doing that like if they added the special effect of like the gaseous you know like that stuff being ignited in right post yeah i'm not sure but yeah that's the pilot man it's it

moves and it's and it's there's so many relationships like being hinted at and building and i yeah i liked it i thought it was good i'm excited to see the next one i know me too and the the the just the complexity of all of it i mean it's just and how it's weaved together is so beautiful and i honestly forgot that sam that it's revealed that it's sam at the end i was like oh my god i was like so did i i was like where do you go i was like where do you go from i it's just you know there's just there's so many there's so many twists and turns um i just it's wild to have that big of a reveal i feel like in the first episode too um it's just like such a powerful storytelling device yeah and like i think that this was such a good time in television too where we were really

like as an audience we were like eating up these shows about anti-heroes which i think annalise is very quickly established as being that right and we hadn't seen a lot of women that was kind of new at the time yeah yeah we hadn't seen a lot of women in those roles you know so black women yeah 100 yeah yeah specifically black women and so the fact that she just like comes in and knocks knocks this like fully out of the park um and yeah of course like killing off a main character you know that i feel like in a post game of thrones world we are more uh experienced with that as audience members but right it was still like relatively new at the time where it's just like oh here's this character that we've introduced and they're they are dead and right we're gonna

we're gonna figure out why they are dead right hope you don't like the character too much which obviously as more people die we will we will talk about uh what it was like working on a show where we knew we could always be killed off of it and and the impact that speaking for myself the impact that that had on my my mental health and and physical health and and uh you know the coping strategies and and all of that um because it was you know it was at times it was exciting but at times very difficult too but yeah we are fully off to the races i think that you know obviously all the credit goes to pete nolak for writing just like an incredibly compelling tight episode of television yeah and really yeah i mean me too i'm i'm excited to watch it and it forces me to

you know i typically watch tv in in bursts of episodes and it's like it's actually forcing us to watch it on like a typical schedule of basically once a week by doing this podcast at least at this moment since we're recording one a week so i am i'm like excited to to watch the next episode too yeah very excited we should we should do like my predictions but like it's going to be hard because right now i i i don't i i actually don't know what happens next like i'm going into this as if i am just watching the show for the first time but i'm excited too i think it'll be really fun and especially as we have guests come on and chime in about their experiences and what they remember and yeah just a bunch of tasty stuff coming soon yeah yeah i'm excited

well i think that's a good wrapping point i think that we should you know we could talk about this episode for hours which is just a testament to i think how good it was but um we should also you know we'll revisit i think this episode once we reach the timeline where it premieres just to remind people we shot this in march and then yeah the show doesn't come out until september so we get picked up months later we relocate to la you move to la to start doing i learn to drive you learn to drive so you can fail a driving test or two yeah exactly yes that's right um and so we move to los angeles uh between episodes one and two of season one and we start filming what you know becomes a hit television show and so we will we'll definitely talk about what that was like and

the the feelings that we had as it premiered but for now we're kind of in this beautiful bubble where we're just like we were when we were filming the show where we're recording this podcast it isn't out yet and yeah it's art imitating life again where we were filming this show not knowing that it was going to be a massive hit and that continues for the next couple episodes before we premiere in september so and we're filming this podcast not knowing that it's going to be a massive hit yeah it's equally changed our lives just absolutely sensational hit i'm gonna have to learn to drive again that's not why we're doing it matt we are doing it for the fans and you know and for our love of the show and to talk with all of our old pals um but yeah thanks as always

for listening if we don't know is anyone listening because it's not out yet but maybe people are listening are you out there please but yeah like uh subscribe follow review i hear that's important knowing nothing about podcasting and tell your friends you know if you have a friend that liked the show tell your friends that we're doing this and uh if you have friends and if not we're your we're your friends we're your friends now we are your friends now and yeah thanks we will talk to you thanks y'all next time where we talk about episode two or when we talk to a guest i don't know that's right one of the two one of the two you'll hear from us again all right bye buddy i love you bye love you that's it for today's show thanks for joining us and see you

next week for a new episode they drop every thursday and don't be late because the professor doesn't like to wait. How We Got Away With Murder is an original production by Podcast Nation. Produced by James Brown and Alicia Panier. Audio production

by Miles Carter. Original music by Elefante. We'll be right back.