The first place audiences visit in “Stuart Fails to Save the Universe” isn’t some far-flung corner of the multiverse. Instead, the HBO Max comedy opens in a familiar location — the Comic Center of Pasadena — albeit in a decidedly dystopian state.
“We start in an alternate universe, but it would be contemporaneous with a continuous timeline, so it picks up years after [the events of ‘The Big Bang Theory’],” co-creator Bill Prady tells TVLine. “We start in the wrong world with instructions on how to set things right. That is the mission.”
TVLine was among a select group of outlets invited to the set of “Stuart Fails to Save the Universe” last December for a closer look at the densely plotted offshoot. On the first day of our visit, production had relocated to the desert outside Santa Clarita, Calif., where cameras were rolling on Episode 8 (of 10), which finds Stuart (Kevin Sussman), Denise (Lauren Lapkus), Bert (Brian Posehn), and Barry Kripke (John Ross Bowie) suddenly transported to an active battlefield just steps from Stuart’s comic book store.
“[They’re] coming from another parallel universe, although this scene exists in two different episodes,” Prady begins to explain. “One is from these guys’ point of view, and then one’s from the point of view of them later in the timeline. So this is the first version of it, and then there’s a second version where a later version of them pops in and sees this version of them.”
Quips co-creator Zak Penn: “We’re just trying to keep it simple, you know?”
But for all its multiversal twists, the series is built on a classic storytelling principle.
“There’s an Alfred Hitchcock quality to this,” Prady elaborates. “Hitchcock loved putting ordinary people as the protagonists — somebody who is completely unfit for the task. Think about ‘North by Northwest.’ He’s an ad man who winds up in this action situation. It’s taking people who are absolutely the wrong people, and absolutely unprepared.”
The result is unlike anything Prady and “Big Bang” co-creator Chuck Lorre have tackled before.
“This is your basic ‘Doctor Who”https://www.tvline.com/”Black Mirror”https://www.tvline.com/”Big Bang Theory’/Hitchcock mashup,” Prady deadpans. “Your basic one of those.”
