The complete unveiling of HBO’s first socially distanced original production is just around the corner. Pretty quickly into quarantine, HBO put Coastal Elites into production with director Jay Roach and writer Paul Rudnick and very, very star studded cast of Bette Midler, Kaitlyn Dever, Dan Levy, Sarah Paulson, and Issa Rae.
The prestige of a network such as HBO wouldn’t dare settle for a simple lo-fi Zoom look even though every cast member has to perform a monologue to camera by themselves. So, as you can see in this very first trailer, they really make use of very dramatic lighting and subtle (or not so in Paulson’s case) set decoration to give some sort of stately, theatrical look.
It does come off as sort of a stage play with individual performances that exude the title “Coastal Elites”, but the more than capable cast has us drawn in just to see exactly what Roach, Rudnick, and HBO are attempting to pull off.
We won’t really find out until Coastal Elites premieres on Sat. Sept. 12th on HBO, but you can get a very sweet, but short taste in the trailer here.