Search Party had a nonlinear, under-the-radar run, but that’s part of what makes it great. “We were really making … this thing in a vacuum that was just for ourselves,” Meredith Hagner, who plays Portia Davenport, says.
Originally airing on TBS before making the move to HBO Max in 2020, the show follows a group of friends (played by Hagner, Alia Shawkat, John Reynolds, and John Early) who go on a mission to find a missing college classmate. What they believe to be a murder mystery soon becomes an actual murder at their hands—and the offbeat shenanigans continue from there.
Each season of Search Party uses a different genre of storytelling, while consistently skewering everything from millennial malaise to wellness culture and influencers. The fifth and final season is the show’s most ambitious yet, with the disillusioned foursome finding themselves at the center of a zombie apocalypse. “I feel like I’m in The Handmaid’s Tale!” Hagner exclaims.
Portia, who begins the series as a ditzy aspiring actress, is meant to symbolize the stereotypical self-absorbed millennial—which makes her the opposite of Hagner herself. If you do a quick glimpse through the 34-year-old’s Instagram, you’ll see glimpses of her life as a wife, mom, and working actress, including snapshots of van-bound cross-country road trips with her husband and solo serenades with her guitar.
But Portia’s unabashed self-love is what made Hagner so excited to play the character. Here, she talks to BAZAAR.com about the evolution of Portia from sidekick to main chick, getting nostalgic with Usher, and how Search Party perfectly encapsulates the millennial experience.
Okay, so that funeral scene at the end of Season 4 was a dream sequence?
I know! Can you believe it? Even after we shot it, I was like, "Truly, how are you going to do this?" But [the writers] figured it out!
Before we get into this season, I want to talk a little bit about Season 4: I loved how far the show was leaning into its absurdity! What was it like to film all those madcap scenes? What did you think when you received the scripts?
It had to end in the most surreal, screwball, campy way, because that’s the show, it’s always building on itself. Our creators are so brilliant, and they really follow no rules. They’re really [teaching] a lesson in following your most wild, crazy impulses, and that’s how they write, that’s how they create. Because they take such risks in their art and their writing, it makes us feel like we can all be equally as daring. At least I feel like that.
Season 4 was when Portia really started to come into her own, I think. She started out as the sidekick with Elliott, evolving to co-lead in the last few seasons, quite literally playing the lead character, Dory, in the move of their lives last season, to infiltrating Dory’s life by sleeping with Drew, to now a possible romantic entanglement with Dory? Can you talk to me about Portia’s evolution as a character and what her motivations are this season?
Her only motivation in life is for people to like her, so there’s no malice in any of the things [she does]. She has no real self-esteem or strong sense of self; she’s so susceptible and such a follower. So Dory’s ruined her life, but no matter what she does, she can’t shake her. Portia’s trauma bonding with Drew; simultaneously, Dory’s ruined her, but yet they’re the only people who understand what they’ve been through.
It was really fun playing Portia’s version of her light being burned out. She thinks of herself as someone who’s a bright light and positive, and we’ve watched her descend into her version of rock bottom—and probably depression—in the beginning of Season 5, so that was really fun to play.
Each season of Search Party adheres to a different genre: Season 1 was mystery, Season 3 was a courtroom drama, et cetera. How was it playing across different genres each season?
To say it’s a dream is an understatement. That’s the thing about signing on to a television show for five seasons: It’s a lot! Do I want to play the same character? When you’re playing similar circumstances over and over, it can get old. [Search Party is] a true gift for an actor. They write to our strengths as actors, yet they’re constantly giving us new circumstances, higher stakes, and completely different tonal moments when I feel like I’m in The Handmaid’s Tale! It’s a dream. I don’t take it for granted at all.
There was a three-year break between Seasons 2 and 3, and then we got the final three seasons within a year and a half of each other after a move from TBS to HBO Max. What was the filming process for that like, what did it take to get back into Portia’s headspace after so much time away, and what was it like filming the final season (and Season 4) in a pandemic?
There was almost a real creative benefit to doing the [first two seasons] on TBS and no one really having seen it until we had already finished [filming] Season 4. We were really making … this thing in a vacuum that was just for ourselves. And then, it got a [new] life [on HBO Max from Season 3 in 2020], which was really special.
I always used to get so nervous because you don’t really know what you’re making until it comes out. … Will I know where to pick up? This last season, I didn’t have any of that. I was just enjoying having [this] character so in[side of me] and being like, “I know what I’m doing.” But I always used to get nervous before every new season, like, “What am I about to do?”
Search Party sums up the millennial malaise that I think a lot of our generation feel, especially in Season 1 and again in Season 5, really coming full circle. Is that something you agree with?
I think Search Party has the potential to be a time capsule. Millennial means something different now than it did back [when we started the show]. What’s charming in your mid-20s—“I don’t know what I’m going to do with my life!”—starts to feel different in your early 30s. The quirk of being lost loses its luster. Not to mention going through a global pandemic, and all of these institutions and ways in which our country functions don’t necessarily help people. But I do think the way the show satirizes this moment in time is so unique. I’m so lucky to be on the receiving end of such great writing that so brilliantly captures our generation.
It’s interesting that you say it feels like a time capsule, because one of my favorite scenes this season is when the gang is all back together and they’re just going on kind of a greatest-hits tour of New York, ending up back at Dory and Drew’s old apartment, which has been completely bougiefied, dancing to Usher. I think that was a really nice call back to the early-2010s heyday of the aspirational shows about young, cool people living it up in New York who wouldn’t otherwise be friends if it weren’t for the show.
It’s an interesting comment on people that were friends in college that you probably wouldn’t meet and be friends with now: That’s them! They outgrew each other, and then there was a murder, and then it’s like, “Well, I guess we’re stuck [with one another].” We all have people in our lives who aren’t the healthiest or who we feel like we’ve outgrown, but we’re still going back to that energy and that space.
Those scenes were so fun to shoot! We really are such good friends, and when we’re all together, we have such a special bond. I think it’s fun for the audience, too, because it’s [a throwback to] a simpler time!
What have you got on the horizon after Search Party finishes?
I did a movie called Baby Ruby with Kit Harington and Noémie Merlant that’s coming out soon, which I’m really excited about. I’m doing Bill Lawrence’s—who does Ted Lasso—new show with Vince Vaughn on Apple TV+, which is more dramatic and based on a book. And we’re doing Vacation Friends 2! So I’m very busy.
The entire fifth and final season of Search Party is streaming on HBO Max now.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
