The Apple TV+ comedy Platonic offers a new perspective on adult friendships, as the series tracks how two formerly close friends in their early 40s, Sylvia (Rose Byrne) and Will (Seth Rogen), reconnect following Will’s divorce. It also makes at least one unexpected choice: Byrne, while originally from Australia, often uses an American accent in her comedy work. For this project, though, she says Platonic co-creator Nicholas Stoller told her, “‘Oh, just do your accent.'”
Byrne’s wry response. “I was like, ‘fine‘.”
“It’s so much funnier,” Rogen says about the choice. “I’m always a proponent of people using their natural accents in film and television. Especially in comedy, because the way people talk is what makes them funny — like the terms of phrase that an Australian who’s lived in America for 25 years [might use] — that is a funny way to speak. And I think as soon as you’re trying to modulate that, it eats into the comedy a little bit.”
“Yeah. It becomes a different thing,” agrees Byrne. “So that’s what happened.”
“Yeah, we said, ‘You were not allowed to act,'” Rogen laughs. “Save your acting for your other Apple shows.” (Byrne does play an American in her other Apple TV+ series, Physical.)
Byrne and Rogen previously collaborated with Stoller on the Neighbors films — but moving to television for this project felt like the logical move, given the current media landscape. As seen in the video interview above, Rogen says that Platonic “was always designed to be a show, but I think we were kind of jumping on the opportunity to make shows like this that haven’t really existed before, which is a show that has the tone and style of an R-rated comedy — you know, taking the kind of sensibilities that we had in Neighbors and applying it to a 10 episode arc. To us, that just felt original and exciting and something that we would be excited to watch ourselves.”
Byrne agrees, adding that the idea could have potentially worked as a film, “but it’s harder to make those movies. So I embraced the idea of, like, let’s do this as a show instead. Because I love half-hour comedies, the classics, like a Seinfeld or you know, gosh, I’m blanking now…”
“That’s it. There’s only Seinfeld,” Rogen helpfully adds. “It begins and ends with Seinfeld.”
Laughs Byrne, “Or The Office, these brilliant, like half hour comedies — this is definitely leaning into that format.”
New episodes of Platonic premiere Wednesdays on Apple TV+.
