The Residence is the latest Netflix series produced by the ubiquitous Shondaland. It was warmly received when it debuted this past March. Inspired by ‘The Residence: Inside the Private World of the White House’ by Kate Andersen Brower and adapted for television by Paul William Davies, it is the story of a fictional murder at the White House. It stars Uzo Aduba and Giancarlo Esposito, who replaced the late Andre Braugher, who died during production. The finale is dedicated to his memory.
Mark Mothersbaugh was brought on to do the score. This prolific composer is possibly best known for his band Devo. For the past four decades, he has built up one of the most impressive composers’ resumes in film and TV history, with a whopping 267 credits (according to IMDb), including Pee-Wee’s Playhouse, Rugrats, Yo Gabba Gabba!, Happy Gilmore, Films by Wes Anderson (Bottle Rocket, Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums), The Lego Movie, and Thor: Ragnarok. Mothersbaugh recently spoke with Immersive via Zoom.
[This conversation has been edited for clarity and length.]
Tell me about how you first got involved with this show.
The music supervisor with whom I’d worked on other projects sent it my way. I looked at some of the things they’d cut together. I read the script, and it’s fascinating. I thought it was a great concept for a show. I heard their first rough cuts, and the music they were putting in was like bebop stuff. I have a love for that—I enjoyed doing stuff like that for Wes Anderson. It turned out to be a delightful project to get to work on.
What kind of challenges were there? I imagine you did all the episodes. How much music did you have to create?
About four feature films worth of music. That was not expected, to be quite honest with you. I’ve done 75 TV series, starting in the eighties. I listened to what they had in temp and thought I would write music for the first two or three episodes and then do permutations throughout the show. It turned into writing new music every episode. So that was a surprise.
What kind of instrumentation did you use? What was the thought process?
Bob Leatherbarrow was my drummer; he’s great for this kind of scoring. Jazz guys can play it perfectly every time. It’s like they don’t need to rehearse; they play it. Then you go, okay, we’re gonna adjust this, that the dialogue comes in here, and let’s take the horns down a couple dynamics. I put the picture up on the screen, and we’d be playing, and I’d say to Bob, “When she looks through the door, and she sees the body for the first time, put a little something on that.” And then the bass player will go, “Hey, let me try this.” And the piano player wants to do things, it’s so much fun. So, although we did four and a half hours, it was just a pleasure.
I mainly had a quintet – drums, piano, bass, violin, cello, and then a couple of horn players played some of the pieces. That was the core group. They fit in my studio; it’s nice because my studio’s a writing studio, not a recording studio. When I’m writing, I have all these things on electronically: I have synthesizers all over the building, electronic instruments, and all the programs in the computer now. I’m used to doing that, but having players here is a treat.
How much were you doing at once? Did you do like one episode and then the next, or were you going back and forth?
Everything was stacked on top of each other. They had multiple editors, so they worked on at least three or four episodes at a time. Paul William Davies had many thoughts about everything related to music.
Let’s talk about Paul, the showrunner and creator… What was he like to work with?
He was great. Everyone circled him because he was the brain of everything. I think he did a great job of balancing and handling it all. Even when he gave notes, he did it in such a nice way.
You have amazing discipline. I know a lot of your stuff, but I was looking at your credits, and there are just pages and pages of projects.
I didn’t take any breaks for a long time, and it only slowed down a little after COVID-19 just because I lost sight in one of my eyes. I get tired more easily now when I’m using a computer screen, though. I don’t get tired of playing music, though.
I have eye difficulties and a very thick prescription. I work all day on the computer and take lots of walks. You have to get away from the screen every once in a while.
I like to work that way. It’s kind of enjoyable to think about something and solve a problem, and then you get stuck, and then you go over and work on another project that’s a different world. I went down to New Zealand to score A Minecraft Movie with an 80-piece orchestra.
What’s it being on the other side of this now? What kind of feedback have, have you heard? How would you encapsulate the experience of working on this?
The feedback on the show has been very good. The music is excellent. People who worked for me in the past have been calling and saying, “Hey, can I work on that show?” They all wanna work on it. I work with many jazz people, and I think it would be a lot of fun to get to work on it. So, who knows? We’ll see if somebody else will die at the White House next year.
The Residence is streaming on Netflix.
