When Christopher Evan Welch, the actor who played Peter Gregory in HBO’s Silicon Valley, passed away last year in real life, the writers had to figure out the best way to deal with his character’s death in season two. [Spoilers ahead.] In the premiere last night, Silicon Valley paid tribute to the character, an oddball angel investor who met an untimely demise, by portraying Gregory’s funeral. Rotten Tomatoes chatted with Silicon Valley‘s co-showrunners, creator Mike Judge and executive producer Alec Berg, on how they decided upon Gregory’s fate, attempting to strike the right balance between funny and appropriate.
Sarah Ricard for Rotten Tomatoes: I just love how you handled the Peter Gregory storyline. What a perfect balance of reverence and hilarity, especially at the funeral when we see the photographs of the actor. I thought it was really, really moving, but of course how he died is so hilarious. I was wondering if the two of you might talk a little bit about the conversations and how you were going to balance that.
Alec Berg: Yeah, that was tough. We knew starting the writing of season two that that’s really where we had to start, because the big issue is what do we do about that and how do we handle it? How do we handle it, not just because the character’s gone, but because the character was played by a guy who is actually dead? We knew we had to handle it in a way that was tasteful, but also we had to be funny.
Mike Judge: We spent a lot of time on that. We looked at other sitcoms that have handled that. Alec actually talked to a couple of showrunners.
Berg: Yeah, there have been a few examples of actors dying on other shows, and I just wanted to see how people had handled it and whether they had regrets about the way they had done it. And we talked to Chris’ family.
Judge It was a balancing act all the way through, from writing through shooting and editing it, just going, “Okay, is this starting to feel a little callous.” But it’s also, “Is it funny enough to justify it?” I saw his mom, I don’t know, like three or four weeks ago… She asked about it, and one of the first things she said is, “I hope you made it funny.” They were at one of our functions last year. I think it was at the Critics’ Choice Awards, because Chris was nominated. He and I talked about some of the stuff we were thinking of doing. They were cool with it. I think that’s sort of a test: would you play this for his wife and his mother and would they be okay with it? Also, like I say, it’s got to be a comedy. It’s nice to hear that we’ve hopefully found the balance.
RT: I think everyone’s going to really appreciate how you did it and, as I said, that scene in which Monica tells the news and it just keeps getting more ridiculous, it really has such a wonderful payoff. It’s so, so funny and overall really touching.
Berg: Yeah, he was such a delightfully silly character that it just seemed like the details of his demise had to match sort of his demeanor.
Silicon Valley airs Sunday nights on HBO at 10:30 p.m. Read season two reviews here.
