Soon after episode 5 of the second season of Only Murders in the Building was released, Rob Turbovsky began receiving text messages from friends and family members. Turbovsky (’08) and his writing partner, Matteo Borghese, are writers and coexecutive producers on the hit Hulu series, which stars Steve Martin, Martin Short and Selena Gomez as an unlikely trio of murder mystery podcasters and amateur investigators. Those familiar with Turbovsky’s quirky interests and style of humor sensed his hand in a particular exchange in the episode.

“There’s this scene where Steve and Marty’s characters are talking about the difference between memory and perception—whether you remember something or you think you’ve remembered something—and then it devolves into them arguing about the Iran-Contra hearings and trying to explain to Selena Gomez’s character what Iran-Contra was, and then it’s just them listing obscure political names from 1987,” says Turbovsky. “Negroponte, Noriega, Hasenfus.”

He was delighted that those close to him could pick up on his comedic touch. “I kind of can’t believe that we’re getting Steve Martin and Martin Short to say these lines,” he says. “We wrote the longest possible version of it, where it goes on and on with all these different names, and they were so game to do it and find their own rhythms. They bring such an enormous amount to the scenes in their performances.”

Turbovsky, who honed his comedic chops in college, doing stand-up at The Comedy Studio in Somerville, has come a long way from his days as a runner-up in BU’s Funniest Student Competition.

At COM, Turbovsky took a lot of film studies and film criticism classes in addition to classes about writing for TV and film. He wrote for The Daily Free Press and was the paper’s film section editor. He thought he might want to be a film critic one day. 

After graduating, Turbovsky spent a year in Boston figuring out his next steps while writing for DigBoston (then known as the Weekly Dig), an alternative newspaper. But he realized he wanted to work in film and television, so he moved to Los Angeles to attend the University of Southern California’s screenwriting MFA program.

It was at USC that he met Borghese. “We recognized that we had similar senses of humor. A year or so after graduating, he asked me if I would like to write something with him.” So, they wrote a movie script. “I don’t know that it ended up being that good of a script, but the process was easy and enjoyable.”

Since graduating from USC in 2011, Turbovsky and Borghese have worked on shows including Silicon Valley, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, and Lady Dynamite. They’ve also been called in to contribute to scripts for films such as the 2016 Ghostbusters and Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. Their work on Ghostbusters brought Turbovsky back to Boston, where parts of the production were filmed (including at the BU Castle). The whole experience felt very full circle—and a little surreal, he says. “I remember walking through the Boston Common with Paul [Feig, the film’s director] and going to a party at a producer’s apartment on Newbury Street. We left the party with Bill Murray. Seeing him walk away down Newbury was so strange.”

On Writing

The most recent season of Only Murders, which premiered on August 8, 2023, finds Oliver (Short), Charles (Martin) and Mabel (Gomez) trying to solve the murder of Ben Glenroy (Paul Rudd), the lead in Oliver’s Broadway musical. The show’s writing process is very collaborative, Turbovsky says. First, showrunner John Hoffman, who created the show with Steve Martin, will present some big picture ideas for the season, such as character relationships or themes he wants to explore. “With the latest season, I think it was this thought of wouldn’t it be fun to do something on Broadway, to do a musical and see the Martin Short character, who is of that world, return to it?” Turbovsky and Borghese are part of a team of 10–12 writers who will then discuss further ideas for the season. Sometimes, they’ll bring in stories from their own experiences to help inspire plot points or jokes, Turbovsky says. And they’ll conduct a lot of research.

There’s a recognition that a lot of the issues are so existential, and that if they aren’t resolved, a lot of people are not going to be able to make a living as writers.

Rob Turbovsky

“For the first season, when we were very much focused on the building, I think John asked us to share either weird confrontations or fights we’ve had with neighbors over the years, or any kind of mystery that existed in our lives—questions that we had wanted answers to for a long time but never received,” he says. “With research for this latest season, part of it was what is some Broadway theater lore that’s worth exploring? Who are people in this world who we can draw from?”

After the writers discuss research and personal experiences, a season starts to take shape and is divided into 10 episodes. “We usually get a better sense of the early episodes first and then, at some point, figure out who the killer is and why.” The episodes start to take rough shape, and then they are each assigned to different writers or writing pairs, like Turbovsky and Borghese, who take what was discussed and create outlines for their plots. Afterwards, the group of writers gather again, and Hoffman, along with the show’s other executive producers Dan Fogelman and Jess Rosenthal, will weigh in. Next up? The writers for each episode come up with a script that gets feedback and, sometimes, a series of rewrites. Martin and Short also weigh in on the scripts. “It just sort of gets refined more and more as you get closer to production.”

Besides the Iran-Contra scene from season 2, Turbovsky says another scene he penned with Borghese for season 1 stands out. “There was a monologue that Marty gives about the podcast fans. I remember watching the dailies [the unedited footage from that day’s filming], and he just could not get through it without making everyone laugh. They just couldn’t get through a take. I must have watched that 100 times, seeing them break up over it. It was such a cool moment in my career.”

A New Season

In the show’s typical fashion, season 3 of Only Murders ended with an epic cliffhanger that will be explored in the next season. Like so many Hollywood writers, Turbovsky spent much of 2023 on strike. Back in mid-September, when COM first spoke with him, the Writers Guild of America (WGA) strike was still in full swing. The WGA was just about to restart their negotiations with film studios that would ultimately end with an agreement and an end to the strike. At the time, Turbovsky lamented the pause on work—the strike had halted writing for the fourth season—but was inspired by the unity of his fellow writers. 

“There’s a recognition that a lot of the issues are so existential, and that if they aren’t resolved, a lot of people are not going to be able to make a living as writers,” he had said. “I think because of that, people seem to be sticking together much more on every level, from newer writers to show runners.” He recalled one time when he was on the picket line at Fox and saw Matt Groening, creator of The Simpsons and Futurama. “That gives you a sense of the kind of solidarity.”

Now that the strike has ended, he is eager to get back to work with Borghese on Only Murders. “The agreement we got was worth the fight, but the costs were obviously enormous. We’ll see how the industry is going to change because of it—there’s still a lot of uncertainty and, of course, we are still out there in support of SAG, who deserve a fair deal too,” he says. (The Screen Actors Guild has been on strike since July 14, 2023.) “I’m very grateful to have a show to go back to.”