Ignacio Serricchio portrays Danny in Netflix’sFirefly Lane. The final episodes of the series are currently streaming.
We spoke over Zoom and discussed building the relationship between Danny and Tully with Katherine Heigl, his first time doing a period piece, the importance of humanizing characters, what he was able to take from set, and more! Keep reading for everything he told me.
What originally attracted you to the role and story?
The first determining factor was Maggie Friedman being the creator, writer, and showrunner. I worked with her before on Witches of East End and I always tell her I’m forever her servant because I like the environment that she created when we were on Witches. I had a great time and I usually base a lot of my decisions on that, on the people that are gonna be involved and the kind of crew and the team that is being built.
And then, I was in Sicily when I got the call and I had to do a little bit of research through people that had seen the first season and had read the book. So that was really my research because I hadn’t seen it and I had to make my decision fairly quickly. I did my research through, “Hey, have you seen the show?” “Yes.” “Okay, so tell me about it,” and that’s how I started gathering information. Also, again, going back to Maggie, the fact that she doesn’t put her name on just anything. She does things with substance and depth, so it wasn’t that hard to decide. Then I got there, I started to get the scripts and it just got better.
The relationship between Danny and Tully, I mean, you guys just stole my heart and I was screaming at the TV like, “Come on!” Can you tell me a little bit about creating that dynamic with Katherine and what you personally enjoyed about it? I imagine the back and forth is probably fun to do as an actor and less frustrating than it is for the audience to watch.
Oh, I’m sure. Off the top, Katie and I got along really well and we made it a point to get to know each other as friends and kind of get to know our ticks and break down those barriers because that’s how you can really establish trust when you’re working with someone is if you take down any kind of barriers and just get down to the humanity, the vulnerability of the person. We share something in common that really, really bonded us, which just definitely took our relationship and our connection to each other and the trust that we had and the comfort that we had with each other to another level.
And I think it all stems from that. If you can establish a friendship and get to know the person, like I said, the ticks, the things that make them laugh, all that then you can approach the work with a lot more comfort. You can take risks knowing that you won’t face some kind of rejection because you’ve tested it out or you got to know the person. So it was very easy from the beginning with her and it made us be able to explore, it made me very, very comfortable to try stuff. She was always so receptive to everything and that’s the formula right there.
I have to say I’ve spoken to almost all of the cast at this point and every single one of you is so passionate about the material and the characters, and I think it really shows and reflects on screen. So it’s interesting to hear the behind-the-scenes of you and Katherine creating that dynamic.
Yeah, that’s always key. I mean, I personally, whatever project I go into, I wanna hang out with people, I wanna go eat, I wanna go do some kind of activities because you start to see different facets of their life and you start to see different parts of their personality, and to me, that’s very important when going into work. And we did that. We got together for game nights, we had Thanksgiving together at Katie’s, and all of that adds up.
This series is very emotionally heavy, I don’t have to tell you that, especially in season two. I’m curious, were there any big moments that either filming it or watching it really affected you?
Yeah, I mean, it triggered a lot of things in me, not even my scenes, [but] others. Oh, absolutely. I think Maggie and the rest of the writers really captured how we deal with obstacles like that in life. They captured it very well.
Were there any specific challenges on this project that you hadn’t experienced before that made you learn something personally or acting-wise that you feel like you’ll use going forward?
Actually, because it’s a period piece, right, you’re going in the ‘80s and all that, that was very interesting because I was very aware of not only the tone but kind of the cadence and the language that has evolved from the ‘80s to 2000, even the way roll our sleeves up in the ‘80s, little things like that, those mannerisms. I was a kid in the ‘80s but I remember enough to do those things and that was very interesting because I was conscious of that at the beginning, and I wanted to make sure that it didn’t seem like we were people from 2021 or whatever back in the ‘80s. So that was really fun. It’s the first time I’ve done something period actually, I’m pretty sure.
I think it’s very interesting that you kind of got to build a character through so many years of his life, doing the flashbacks and seeing where he ends up. I feel like that must be really rewarding as an actor because don’t always get that.
Oh, absolutely. I think that’s one of the great things of these two seasons kind of arced show where you know where it’s gonna end. It’s kind of like a movie, you know where you’re gonna end, so it gives you an idea of how to begin and how to thread that needle so that you don’t reveal too much and that the ending or the arc of your character and whatever redemption or not a redemption they have is really well deserved and rich. So it absolutely helps a lot when you — I mean, I remember I did two soap operas and it’s always new stuff, but that has its perks as well because when in a soap where they’re just writing and writing and constantly writing, they’re coming up with ideas.
You, as an actor, have these opportunities to show them little pieces of you, your talent, and things you can do and then they’re inspired based off of that. So that happened to me on General Hospital and The Young and the Restless where you show them a little bit of what you can do besides what they wrote. They’ll write a skeleton and then you can fill it in with the ligaments and the blood and all that, and you can add little things and the writers are like, “Oh, man, I didn’t know that that was in him.” With General Hospital, I kind of flashed a little bit of darkness, which we all have, [but] I’m not that in touch with my darkness, but I did show a little bit of that devious behavior and they kind of went with it and they made me a serial killer, which is a little bit intense. But it was fun.
I feel like those are always the performances that speak to audience though is when you get to see the actor add stuff in or show their range. Bringing a character to life is one thing, but when you actually make them human, that makes the difference.
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, we all have something in common. We have something in common with serial killers just like we have something in common with, I don’t know, a Tibetan monk. That’s the thing with humans, there’s always something that we have in common and that’s the thing is that instead of thinking about what you don’t have in common with a person, find what you do have in common and work it from there, grow from there, and justify their actions based on that, because you have to play roles sometimes that you are completely against their ideology, but you gotta love them, you gotta find a way to love them. You got to humanize them and you gotta make the audience actually have that inner conflict of, “Oh man, why am I rooting for this guy?”
What was the last day on set like for you? Are there any memories that stick out? Or if there’s nothing from that particular day, what was your favorite memory from filming this season?
It was super fun. I think one of the things that is most memorable was going back to the ‘80s because even though I was a kid, I would go see my parents — I’m in Argentina right now doing a play, another dream come true, so my mother is a lawyer and she worked here in a bank as a corporate lawyer, my father worked in a bank and when I was a kid, I would go visit them at the office, so when I walked back into KPOC, it all felt very familiar because of the computers — well, my mom used to type on a typewriter and the looks, the outfits, the hairstyles, everything. Seeing it as an adult and getting to wear those clothes and to walk around was super, super trippy because I lived it as a kid. I remember it really was like going back to the past. I think it’s the closest thing to traveling back in time for me, truthfully, because what it did was I didn’t travel back in time per se, but all my senses definitely came back and they were very much alive, the smells, all the visual, it was quite trippy in the best way.
Now that you’ve done a sort of period piece, are there any time periods that you would like to travel back to in a project that you haven’t gotten to do yet or that you would like to kind of explore as a character and actor?
I don’t know why, but what came to mind is the knights and King Arthur and all that, and I wouldn’t want to do that because that seems heavy and uncomfortable as hell. That sounds miserable. I would go back to a caveman type era because I like walking around barefoot and I like just wearing, I don’t wear a loincloth usually, sometimes I do, but it seems so comfortable and just being in nature and not showering, that sounds awesome. Yeah, I would do that. I would go back to that one. Super easy wardrobe, makeup would be like mud, perfect. I already got here and I had mud on me, so I’m ready to go. Cave? Easy. Everything that I do in my real life because I always do expeditions and backpacking, so it would be all that, it would just be more glamorous.
Lastly, did you get to take anything from set?
These boots, which I wear all the time, and I haven’t taken this [tag] off, but it says Danny, 2000s. The rest of the stuff, the ’80s outfits, all that, they’re terrible. That was one of the things I went back and I was like, “Oh my God,” the ’80s outfits were either terrible or really cool. The early 2000s is the worst era in fashion in the history of humans. Then, it made me want to go back to the 2000s to see how I dress. I mean, I’m not a great dresser anyway, but especially in that era, and then you Google it and I was like, “awful.” But that’s what I took, I took the boots.
