Mandy Patinkin and Kathryn Grody hope their ‘out of the box’ comedy gets new life at Tribeca
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When Mandy Patinkin was first handed a list of potential storylines for the television comedy “Seasoned,” in which he co-stars with wife Kathryn Grody, he was a little taken aback.
“‘This is completely out of the box,’” he remembers thinking. “‘This is the most original thing I think maybe I’ve ever seen. I don’t think I can do this.’”
But then his son, Gideon Grody-Patinkin, one of the co-writers on the project, had a way to convince him he was up to the task. On a video call with Grody, Grody-Patinkin, and director Ewen Wright, Patinkin explains that Grody-Patinkin reminded him that he’s always playing intense, dark roles like his Emmy-nominated stint on “Homeland.”
“‘You always say you want a break from it,’” Patinkin recalls his offspring saying. “‘This is just you. Just be you. Just show up. Come to work. It should be very freeing.’ Well, from the mouths of babes, he was a trillion percent right.”
And it’s true: Speaking with Grody and Patinkin on Zoom is not that dissimilar from watching them in the pilot of “Seasoned,” which premieres Sunday at the Tribeca Festival. In the episode, Grody and Patinkin play lightly fictionalized versions of themselves scouring New York for a place to eat dinner on their anniversary after they miss their reservation because Kathryn spent too long chatting with friends after a play. That leads to Mandy having a breakdown over a falafel truck driving away.
Mandy Patinkin and wife Kathryn Grody display pop culture cluelessness and enviable marital togetherness in videos that make you crave matzo.
On our call, Patinkin clasps his arm around Grody, showering her with affection and telling her he adores her as she bursts out laughing. They casually bicker and lightly razz one another. (“Give me anything but rice and vegetables,” he jokes about their nightly dinners.)
It’s a dynamic that was also on display in the viral videos they starred in, after encouragement from Grody-Patinkin, during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown. Wright, a friend of Grody-Patinkin, joined their team when they began to direct their efforts to get out the vote for Joe Biden during the 2020 election.
Almost immediately, networks came sniffing, wondering if they could put the Grody and Patinkin show on a bigger platform. Grody-Patinkin says they turned down multiple reality offers, but when Patinkin was approached about whether he had anything he wanted to make, he realized he wanted to continue working with Wright. Wright, meanwhile, wanted to keep it all in the family.
“Obviously working with Mandy in any capacity would be thrilling and exciting and fruitful,” Wright says. “But the secret sauce, to just cut you down a little bit Mandy, is adding Kathryn.”
Grody-Patinkin and Wright, who serve as writers, came up with a list of over 50 potential episodes. They shot the pilot in July 2022 and Showtime, Patinkin’s former “Homeland” base, picked up the series for a six-episode season. They submitted scripts just before the 2023 writers’ strike hit. Once production resumed, the cable channel dropped the project.
“Showtime was amazingly gracious about letting us know, like, do not take this as a creative slight,” Wright says. “This was purely a business decision in the middle of a crazy moment in the industry.”
But none of the foursome wanted to let “Seasoned” go. Tribeca is a chance for it to get a new life. Grody remains optimistic.
“It’s an expression that sounds better in Spanish — my older son says I overuse it — and it’s not always true, but ‘there’s nothing so bad that good can’t come from it,’” she says, noticing a bit of exasperation hit Grody-Patinkin’s face.
“I just don’t know how that phrase enters nine out of 10 of our family conversations,” Grody-Patinkin says. Patinkin adds, “Learn it in Spanish by now.”
In part, they are looking to recreate the rush they got from making the pilot, which Patinkin describes as “frigging thrilling.” The septuagenarian actors shot for five days straight from about 4 p.m. to 6 a.m.
“I know it’s hard to believe looking at us, but we’re not 30 years old,” Patinkin says. Grody interrupts, “But we’re not 100 either,” to which Patinkin adds, “No, but we’re not 30. And we really were thrilled at our ability to stay awake, to keep focused and to not kill each other.”
Grody is more used to live theater than television or film, but she got a kick out of the crew laughing at footage of her running around wearing a camera that captures a close-up of her face. “I don’t care if I look like some other species, it made them laugh,” she says. “That was really fun.”
On social media, Grody and Patinkin are still posting videos that range from the silly (drawing on each other’s faces) to the serious (speaking out for causes including Gaza aid and the climate). That mix of goofiness and genuine advocacy is part of the reason Grody is so passionate about having the rest of “Seasoned” made.
“It blows apart assumptions about behavior, about relationships of people our age,” she says. “I would hope it would be encouraging for young people to not be so frightened about getting to be older in this fakakta culture that is so youth-obsessed and so frightened about the privilege of getting older.”
Wright acknowledges that the show he and Grody-Patinkin wrote is that way because of who Grody and Patinkin are.
“You know my joke is I didn’t expect my muses to be a Jewish couple in their 70s,” he says. “And that’s because of everything they’re expressing about how they approach life. It’s in who they are.”
But while the characters of Mandy and Kathryn aren’t that different from Patinkin and Grody themselves, the scenarios are not entirely taken from real life. One script has them going to a sexy party, and, for what it’s worth, Patinkin has never pulled out an Inigo Montoya impression to try to get a table at a restaurant.
He has, however, used his star power to try to get Wright and his young son into a sold-out Disneyland. At first it didn’t work, but eventually an employee recognized him.
“We got in and we had a great time,” Wright says.
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