The Jetsons would be saddened by the reality of our present, which was envisioned to be far grander during the midcentury. But in Hello Tomorrow!, a ten-part series from Apple TV+, that marvelous version of the future has not only arrived but you, yes, you, can be among the first humans with a timeshare on the moon! Yes, folks, this little slice of Swiss cheese heaven is just a deposit away. “I spend every day of work putting on somebody else’s clothes and inhabiting their feelings in the hope to fool you all,” actor and executive producer Billy Crudup joked during a TCA press conference about the similarities between his job as an actor and that of his character, Jack Billings, a lunar timeshare salesman. “You feel a little smarmy doing that sometimes It is a natural reaction for actors, in general, to know that what they’re doing is trying to pull a hoax in the hopes that we can transport you for a moment for a small fee.” That fee, coincidentally enough, is just the low monthly price of $6.99. “The idea is obviously we’re going to put on a ruse for you so that you can be transported. And there is some proximity there. You don’t get into this business, and you don’t get into the sales business, if at the core you don’t think you’re going to try to help people. Sometimes what happens is people have overestimated their own abilities at processing what will protect people. And in fact, they’re not actually helping people.”
(Apple TV+)
Yes, folks, there’s a grim reality to the world of Hello Tomorrow! “Jack is a character who has the audacity to think that he’s entitled to live the American dream, and so are the people who work with him, and so are the people around him,” explained co-creator and executive producer Lucas Jansen about the show’s central character. “He has the innocence of spirit and the sort of good faith to think consumer capitalism is the vessel that will deliver that for them. And the show lives in that premise. The drama of the show comes out of the occasionally absurd, occasionally ridiculous, occasionally miraculous results that come from daring to dream that dream, which is, one hopes, a universal dream that perseveres and whose consequences deserve to be investigated. And we’re so admiring of the way Billy committed to that and lived it in a way that I think has absolutely universal significance.”
“The tone of a cast or of a production is very much set by your leading actor, and sometimes that works out for the better, and sometimes it works out not so for the better,” actress Alison Pill shared of Billy Crudup. “We all came into the read-through just game. We’re like, let’s experiment. Let’s try stuff with earnestness and openness, and I think that comes a lot from Billy’s own spirit… We were all there having a wonderful experience of just trying stuff.”
Set in the halcyon future envisioned more than half a century ago, a lot of what you see in Hello Tomorrow! had to be built by a team of designers, with a few exceptions. “It was hard to find 50s stuff in New York,” revealed co-creator and executive producer Amit Bhalla. “The exterior of the Vista was an old community center that we were able to find shapes in. There were a couple… hospitals, the grocery store, that we were able to find in and around New York. But a lot of it was built. And a lot of it was the painstaking work of our set decorator, our production designer. We'd be like, ‘This location's great!’ And they'd say, ‘No, the trim on the window is not period. We have to find somewhere else to shoot.’ And we're deeply grateful for that kind of drive and commitment from the design team.”
Another important component of selling the future in Hello Tomorrow! is the period costumes. “For me personally, the first thing I do before I get into character is I put on the clothing,” Dewshane Williams explained, who plays Herb Porter. “That really informed how Herb walked and how he talked and how he stood and et cetera.” Haneefah Wood agreed, falling in love with the wardrobe of her character, Shirley Stedman. “I absolutely loved my costumes,” she said. “I felt like it celebrated my womanly figure, but then, I also felt like I had some authority with my character. So it felt great. I felt like royalty in it. And then also, I feel like there was some sensitivity around me being a female and working in that space. So I loved the costumes. I loved what Billy was wearing. I loved what Dewshane was wearing.
“My father was a salesman, and he sold everything, and not particularly well,” Billy Crudup revealed about the full-circle nature of his role in Hello Tomorrow! “But for him, it wasn’t selling. It was meeting people. And his interest was in people. He wanted to find out what would make them feel a little better and he had an angle on how to find it. And he might get a little scratch on the side there, but the true transaction is meeting somebody where they live and providing them an opportunity to hope. By the way, with inflatable ice chests and umbrella hats.”
Get your passport to the first timeshare on the moon in Hello Tomorrow!, premiering today on Apple TV+.