Interview: Showrunner Andy Siara on Love, Nostalgia, and Time in ‘The Resort’

Peacock’s The Resort follows a married couple, Emma (Cristin Milioti) and Noah (William Jackson Harper), who travel to Mexico for a vacation as they struggle to connect in their relationship. Emma’s discovery of a pair of missing teenagers, Sam (Skyler Gisondo) and Violet (Nina Bloomgarden), from fifteen years earlier gives her an enticing distraction, one that reveals unexpected connections and the hope that maybe there is a creative way to move through time. 

Awards Radar had the chance to speak with showrunner Andy Siara about the lengthy journey from concept to the series actually being made and what elements of the story stand out most to him. He also highlighted the way in which Luis Gerardo Méndez and Gabriela Cartol steal the show as Baltasar and Luna, respectively.

On the process of rediscovering the passion for this premise, Siara recalled:

“Right after my first daughter was born, we were moving houses, and I was cleaning out the garage, and I was supposed to pack up the garage. I found this box of old photos and yearbooks and everything from my past. I found a couple of my old cell phones, from 2005 to 2009, specifically this Nokia phone I had. I could never afford a Razor. I tried to plug it in and it didn’t work, but I found another old phone and it did work. I swapped out the SIM card, much like Emma does. Put it on and opened the phone and immediately went down a nostalgia spiral.”

On the choice not to ground the events in a particular identifiable year:

“That was a conscious decision. There was a moment where, the first time we jump into the past, there was a Strokes song I wanted to play called What Ever Happened. The first song on their second album. That would have firmly planted it in that era of the early 2000s. I decided against doing that because I wanted it to feel a little more timeless in that regard. Rather than being so specifically one year or a few years, and so that’s why, especially on the music side, we’re capturing a feeling of the past rather than a very specific moment of the past.”

Listen to the full conversation below:

Season one of The Resort is available to stream on Peacock.