Maude Apatow is channeling her inner Lexi Howard.
When she was originally cast, show creatortold her to just hang in there through the show’s first season, because the second season was where things would get interesting. “Unless,” Apatow quips, “IOf course, she didn’t, resulting in an explosive season finale that sees her character—the bookish, sidelined Lexi—write, produce, and star in
based on her family and friends, painting an unflattering portrait of her sister, Cassie along the way. Lexi turns into the theater kid from hell, barking out orders backstage and bullying her crew, a true transformation from the sweet girl next door she usually is. The episode was inspired by Apatow’s own high school theater days, where she too “became a tyrant” while putting on a school play.
“When I’m stressed, I think that sometimes manifests in strange ways. It’s the same thing as Lexi,” Apatow says. “She just wants everything to work out perfectly. Everything in her life is falling apart around her…. What do you do with all of that? She just puts it into the show.” Apatow hopes to take her theater-kid ambitions all the way to Broadway one day, name-checking shows likedo it in New York before I did it and I really look up to her,” Apatow says. “She’s so amazing. I think her career has been so perfect.”