Asian A.V. Club newsletter #38: Nahnatchka Khan & Sally Bradford McKenna
You're going to enjoy this lively chat with the co-showrunners Nahnatchka Khan & Sally Bradford McKenna on their wild and dark rom-com Laid
Before we go into our conversation, it’s been a tough week watching Los Angeles go through the horrible, ongoing wildfires and their aftermath. We just wanted to offer a list of resources if you want to contribute to the relief funds or volunteer with groups working tirelessly to help those in need.
The Red Cross - Wildfire Relief
Go Fund Me - Wildfire Relief Fund 2025
LA Fires in person Volunteer Opportunities
The substacks Broken Palate and Diaspora have a more detailed list of local organisations that are helping on a ground level.
Writer, director and showrunner extraordinaire Nahnatchka Khan (Don’t Trust the B in Apartment 23, Fresh Off The Boat, Totally Killer) gave #AAVC one of our earliest interviews when we first started and we ended that conversation with the promise to always follow whatever project she’d work on next. So when we found out that ‘Natch’ (as her friends call her) and the equally awesome co-showrunner Sally Bradford McKenna (Will & Grace, Don’t Trust the B in Apartment 23, Reboot) collaborated on the new rom com Laid starring the Oscar nominated Stephanie Hsu (Everything Everywhere All At Once), we had to talk to them!
For those who haven’t seen the series, Laid follows eternal singleton Ruby (Stephanie Hsu), who realises that her exes are mysteriously dying and she’s got to go through her sex timeline to warn the remaining lovers of their possible fate. Based on the Australian series by Marieke Hardy and Kirsty Fisher, this version takes the original premise and not only leans into the rom-com (or shall we say wrong-com) but also gleefully embraces its dark and twisted path.
We talked to the duo at the end of last year about their own creative meet-cute, the joy of surprising the audience and the ability to say ‘no’.
Asian A.V. Club: Welcome back to the Asian A.V. Club Nahnatchka and very nice to meet you, Sally! We have a lot to talk about, but I was wondering if you wouldn’t mind going back a bit to a tv show or a movie that made you think that you wanted to lean into your creativity more than your other skills; especially how that lead to writing.
Nahnatchka Khan: That is a great question. I don't know that there was one thing for me that was like, ‘Oh, that that's the thing’, although I can tell Sally has something teed up that she's laughing about. Sally, you want to jump in with yours?
Terms of Endearment - “give my daughter the shot”
Sally Bradford McKenna: I mean, I have to start with Terms of Endearment, and I'm kind of kidding, but I'm not. I do think it was the movie that lit my fuse. It was such a powerful movie, and it's so moving, but also so funny. And I was like, I want to do that. I don't know that it was formative me, but I loved it.
Nahnatchka Khan: I watched so much TV and movies during high school, but I think for me, the first time I loved writing was when I was in high school. I don't know why, but I wrote this column for my high school newspaper and I basically wrote whatever I wanted. I remember people coming up to me the next day and being like, your thing was really funny.
I had done some standup and theater before that and liked the live energy of the room. But there's also something interesting about people experiencing what you've written on their own time and in their own world and then they come to you and say that they enjoyed it. There was something I liked about the timed-release and that column was the first time I remember being excited about writing.
Asian A.V. Club: Sally, did you ever write something in your teens that had a much more positive reaction than usual?
Sally Bradford McKenna: I must’ve had that. But my dad [Hank Bradford] had been a comedy writer. And I think growing up in my house, comedy was like currency, like I see it now with my kids, it's how you get attention. I learned that early on. I'm trying to think of when I first started writing something funny. I know that when I went into comedy writing, everyone I went to high school with was confused and surprised, and then one person, one good friend, was even like, ‘Sally’s not funny’. And I think I still am kind of surprisingly funny. I don't think people talk to me and think, I'm laughing, I'm enjoying this person. But I feel like whatever the first thing was that I wrote, I knew this can be separate from me. I don't have to speak, I don't have to talk funny, but I can be funny on the page.
Asian A.V. Club: Do you guys remember the first time that the two of you met and how did that lead to working together?
Nahnatchka Khan: Well, it was at Sally's wedding.
Asian A.V. Club: Wait… what!
Sally Bradford McKenna: No, no, no, we had met before that. (laughs) We knew each other socially because Natch had written on a show American Dad! with my now husband [Chris McKenna]. He was my boyfriend then, so we knew each other socially. I feel like I'd see you at parties but I was definitely drunk. I knew you were funny and I feel like I admired you from afar.
So, I got married during staffing season. I remember staying at Shutters [hotel], having our honeymoon, but going out for meetings and driving around and going into a lot of studio lots. (laughs) And what she's talking about regarding my wedding is when she had Don’t Trust the B in Apartment 23, I had already read the script, and I was like, I love it. I need to be on it. Basically, I was trying to get a job at my wedding.
Nahnatchka Khan: I would say as you were either coming down the aisle or coming back from just saying, ‘I do’. It was definitely an aisle exchange where you leaned over and you're full dressed, with the bouquet, and being like, ‘by the way, I loved your script’. And people are like, throwing stuff at you. Like it was right in the prime time of the of the ceremony.
Sally Bradford McKenna: You know what? I got that job. I got that job. And to this day, that was the best job. It was the best staff I was ever a part of, because I loved both the room and the staff and the show and look what we were doing.
Asian A.V. Club: What do you think was the magic sauce between the two of you? How did you figure out that you had a similar kind of humor?
Nahnatchka Khan: Sally is one of the funniest writers that I've ever worked with and I've ever read. So anybody could easily work with her. But she's not just about being funny, she’s also about like, being surprising. And, you know, because we have all consumed so much media at this point, and so much TV and movies, you can't just tell a straight story anymore. I think Sally and I are both excited by something that's surprising and something that you don't see coming. And something else we share is we like campy darkness. I'm more camp. She's more darkness. She loves true crime; I don't really know too much about it. That was also a good combo, especially for Laid.
Asian A.V. Club: That must have been so interesting when Laid showed up, because it hits all the quadrants of the of the two of you so perfectly. What was it about this Australian show, that was like, okay, this is the one.
Sally Bradford McKenna: Well, the idea is great. And we get to keep bragging about how great the premise is because we’re not taking credit for it. When Natch texted me early during COVID, going, ‘here's a show, would you want to do this?’ I would have said yes to anything. It was early days COVID. I was like, I need to work, I need to get out of my house.
But she introduced the idea of making it lean more to the rom com of it than the Australian, but with death and with boyfriends. I mean, I love just the satirical aspect on dating and romance, but with this dark twist. I just thought it was such a great idea.
Nahnatchka Khan: It felt like a perfect match for us too. Embracing that sort of dark streak of danger but doing it in a way that is surprising. How it’s sometimes funny, sometimes shocking, and loosely connected back to the central idea of the rom com of it all. So many things that we've seen has been like, ‘you're not the problem. It's not you, it's them, it's the world, or whatever’. And to turn that around and say, ‘No, the problem IS you’. That is a way to tell a story that we hadn't seen before. That was really cool for us.
Asian A.V. Club: Was Stephanie Hsu early in terms of the casting? Once you had your Ruby, was it easier to write the series around her?
Nahnatchka Khan: We had written the first episode, and sent it to Stephanie, along with a series document that outlined loosely what we were at the gate for season one and beyond. And then once she signed on as an EP [executive producer] on the show, she came to the writer's room a few times, and Sally and I sat with her and talked to her a bunch of times, and really started to form Ruby with her.
Then we went back into Episode One, and started to rewrite for her specifically, which is something you do when you cast somebody, you start to tailor it for the actor. But in Stephanie's case, she was so invested in the bigger picture. She understood it wasn’t just about the character. It was also about the mythology behind it.
It was also fun to work with her to make Ruby feel real in the world and make mistakes and have issues that she needs to deal with. Especially with how we ended season one which opens a whole other thing that we’re all sort of excited to craft together.
Asian A.V. Club: The setup of Laid is so insane in that Ruby has to find all her previous lovers before they die randomly and, in the process, has to face her own issues and demons because of this extreme ticking time bomb scenario. What was your gage on how dark the show could get?
Sally Bradford McKenna: Yeah, I don't think we ever put limits on how dark it would go. There was one plot that we thought was too far, we pulled back and then we ended up doing it. I feel like we wanted to tell a very grounded, relatable story. And we didn't think we could go too big with the extremely heightened concept around it, because it would just help us with the story we're telling.
Nahnatchka Khan: If you know that you are going to kill a certain amount of people, we wanted it to feel not expected. So, the first one is going to be surprising, and then maybe the second. And then you have to figure out ways to not just do the same thing. The challenge was that we didn’t want it to be too jokey and wanted it to feel real. You know, some of the deaths are on screen, some are off, but we had to figure out how are we gonna kill these people in different ways, and when does it happen. If anything, especially one that happens midway, it was how are we gonna pull this off?
Asian A.V. Club: Was it easy to bring on guests to come on for a couple of hours and basically kill them off?
Guests clockwise: Finneas O’Connell, John Early, Alexandra Shipp, Simu Liu, Francesca Reale, Adeline Rudolph,
Nahnatchka Khan: I mean, from the beginning, we were like, what a cool opportunity for a guest cast to come in and not just have a funny role and then die, but also each character is going to mean something in our story, and even more so about Ruby. Whatever their history was, it was always going to tell us one more thing about Ruby, and that’s the main takeaway.
So, from the beginning in the writers’ room, we put up a wish list, and Stephanie was really helpful with some of them. John Early was definitely number one on that list. And I think she went to college with him, so she was helpful in getting him. I don't want to say it was easy getting people, but I was very pleasantly surprised at how many people were down to do it.
Asian A.V. Club: Speaking of writer’s rooms, I saw that you brought in writers that you’ve worked with in the past. That must have been awesome to be able to start making calls and invite people that you’ve enjoyed working with.
Sally Bradford McKenna: I do remember sitting right here and jotting down some names, and I think I said a name, and then you said, ‘Great!’ And then you said a name, and I said, ‘Great!’ There were more names that we would have loved to have, but that list was exactly who we ended up with. There are many people over our careers that we've worked with that we would have loved to work with again, but it was a seven person staff, including us. These are people that we love we're so thrilled that they were available.
Asian A.V. Club: So when the writers’ room starts, does that mean all systems go? Meaning, everybody understands how the room should work, because everybody's worked together in some capacity in the past?
Sally Bradford McKenna: I think everyone there has worked for Natch as a writer with her running the room. So I think everyone pretty much knows how she does it. They also go in knowing it's going to be the smoothest experience possible. I will say this one felt very quick. We were on a very tight schedule, and I think for the writers, we only had two and a half months, knowing some tent poles we wanted to hit, and broke the season. It didn't feel easy, but it kind of unfolded very naturally. Even though it's very different from the first season of the Australian series, except for the pilot, we took it from there.
Nahnatchka Khan: And I do think part of that is the familiarity on day one. Of course, you're catching up or whatever, but there's no kind of feeling each other out cause we all know each other. Sally and I had worked in development for three years, so we had a very detailed, serious document laying out where we wanted to end. We knew the midway flat point, like the big twist, and so that was really helpful.
And like Sally said, it did break very naturally, because of our shared sensibilities and paths. I think we all got on the same page very quickly about what kind of show this is and what the tone is. Actually, the first thing we put up on the board was the sex timeline of Ruby, because this was going to really inform a lot of what we want to do, and how many people, and how do we break this up, and all that stuff. But yeah, it was a dream staff.
Asian A.V. Club: Both of you are simultaneously working on projects at the same time, I’m curious how you time-manage your creativity. Do you just have this superpower to compartmentalize all your ideas at one time?
Sally Bradford McKenna: I am not. (laughs) So I'm very curious to hear Natch’s answer to this, because she is superhuman when it comes to juggling multiple projects, multiple facets of one project and personal things. I mean, you'll never see her sweat. It's like it just happens so easily and so gracefully. So she can tell us that.
Nahnatchka Khan: No. No. That's not true! (laughs) I think that it depends on what stage you're at. Like if you’re in pre-production, it’s a little bit easier to maybe allocate a weekend or a lunch. But when you’re in production, and you're on set, and when I'm directing, then I can only do the thing I'm doing. I mean, there's no real room for anything else. Let’s say I know that I’m shooting from mid-May to the end of June, so for me, it’s I’ll see you guys in July.
But it’s also just that you're so excited about the thing that you're doing, and I've certainly been privileged to work on stuff that I love. And you're so engrossed in it that you're just trying to make the best show that you possibly can, and everything kind of goes to that.
Asian A.V. Club: At what point in your career did you learn to set boundaries for yourself and be ok with saying ‘no’ without apologizing afterwards? I’m guessing as a successful showrunner, people want you to help them all the time.
Nahnatchka Khan: When I was able to start texting my passes. (laughs) Sally was there a time when you were like, I'm okay to say no?
Sally Bradford McKenna: I think I am a people pleaser, so I think I do sometimes say yes to things that I don't really want to do. But I feel like I learn a lot from you. I think you've reached a point where you don't have to take on things that you don't want to do, but you're also very generous with your time. I feel like you would read something of a friends. You would help people out. You would give as much of your time as you can, but it doesn't feel like it's a boundary with you. It just feels like you do what you can, and if you can't do it, you don't do it.
Nahnatchka Khan: I think I'm just more honest. Like, I do want to help people, especially people that I think are talented, or care about, because it's important. You always remember yourself when you were trying to get somebody to read something or talk to somebody who does what you want to be doing. If I truly don't have time, I try to be respectful and just say that I can't possibly do it.
SPOILERS ON SEASON FINALE, SO DON’T READ AHEAD UNLESS YOU’VE WATCHED THE WHOLE OF SEASON 1:
Asian A.V. Club: You left season two with a lovely cliff hanger. If and when season two gets commissioned, how would you want to expand on the universe you’ve created? Also, now that guests know what they’re in for, do you have an even bigger wish list of people to bring on to the series to potentially kill off?
Nahnatchka Khan: Look, we'll always find fun ways to kill people, and we definitely have a wish list, but two very important people are now on the timeline that are in the crosshairs. So I think that's really going to ratchet the ticking clock up. I think it's going to be the anxiety and panic to not lose these important people, that will really be motivating Ruby in a way that season one hadn't.
Season one is sort of denial, acceptance and understanding of how she treated these people. So yes, they’re going to be deaths, but I think there's also going to be this urgency to figure out what is going on, and how can she save these people? And now there's this whole new element that's introduced in the finale and what happened there?
Sally Bradford McKenna: In season one, all the deaths of people we learn about as it's happening. But now two out of five of our main cast members are really on the chopping block going into season two. And you have to treat it with the weight that you can't just dismiss and undo it right away. I really want to see what happens.
Asian A.V. Club: So do we! Season two has to happen!! Thank you so much for talking to us. That was a really fun chat with you guys.
Nahnatchka Khan & Sally Bradford McKenna: Thank you!