How ‘Only Murders in the Building’ editor Peggy Tachdjian humanized Bunny Folger [Exclusive Video Interview]
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“Only Murders in the Building” editor Peggy Tachdjian received her fifth career Primetime Emmy nomination last month and this one definitely stood out from her previous bids for “Born This Way.” “It means so much. I’ve been nominated before, but this is the first time I’ve been nominated for scripted and it’s the first time I’ve been nominated on my own, so it feels extra special,” she tells Gold Derby (watch the exclusive video interview above).
Tachdjian joined the Hulu murder mystery in Season 2 and is nominated for the very first episode of three that she cut, “The Last Day of Bunny Folger.” The installment flashes back to the final 24 hours of Bunny’s (Jayne Houdyshell) life before she was murdered, which was also her last day as board president of the Arconia. Viewers see the predominantly lonely existence Bunny leads (not counting her pet bird Mrs. Gambolini) and her deep desire for some human connection that belies her crotchety exterior. The episode is less than 30 minutes long but manages to fully sketch out Bunny’s character while introducing new clues about her murder.
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“I was intimidated when I read that script because there’s not a lot of scenes with the trio [of Steve Martin, Martin Short and Selena Gomez] in the episode,” Tachdjian shares. “As soon as the dailies started coming in, I knew it was going to be a slower pace. And it was my first episode on the show. I hadn’t cut anything on ‘Only Murders’ yet, so I remember presenting it to the producers and being like, ‘Are they going to hate it because it doesn’t exactly feel like the rest of ‘Only Murders’?’ But I think that figuring out a way to humanize such an unlikable character from Season 1 was kind of genius on their part in the script. And it was so fun to try to figure out how to make people feel an emotional connection.”
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One important element in humanizing Bunny was the music. Early in the editors’ Season 2 discussions with showrunner John Hoffman, they realized that the score, by Siddhartha Khosla, would have to shift from Season 1 as Season 2 dove more into personal stories of the characters. “It was really fun to see how he could elevate the score from Season 1 into something that still felt in the same tone as Season 1 but was kind of emotional connections with the characters,” she says. “Especially the episode I was nominated for was all about Bunny Folger and there’s a lot of sadness in it.”
At the end of the episode, fans see Bunny’s final moments. She brings champagne to Charles (Martin), Oliver (Short) and Mabel (Gomez) in hopes of joining their celebration after they had solved Tim Kono’s murder, but they do not invite her in. Bunny retreats to her apartment, watching movies with Mrs. Gambolini when her murderer arrives — all while the trio is up on the rooftop. Tachdjian recycled the rooftop footage from the Season 1 finale to create more tension while also situating viewers.
“Somewhere in post, we were thinking that just staying with Bunny almost wasn’t dramatic enough and we needed people to remember that this was the same night as this big celebration was going on up on the roof,” she explains. “So then we started intercutting from Season 1. It feels like an action sequence, but there’s not that much happening. She’s sitting and watching TV in her apartment and feeding her bird. And again, the music in that scene — I think at some point we had a song in there and we kept being like, ‘It’s not quite right.’ And then Sidd and I talked and he said, ‘Well, let me take a stab at it.’ And he came up with the most insane, beautiful score for the last five minutes of that episode. It’s a really long cue and it’s beautiful. It makes the whole thing come together.”
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