What hasn’t Amy Ryan done? Over her decades-long career onstage and screen, the award-winning actor has earned top notices for prestige drama (Gone Baby Gone), screwball comedy (The Office), and just about everything in between. She tries not to repeat herself—which, after so many years of work, can mean getting pretty picky. Then a project like Only Murders in the Building comes along.

For much of her time on the popular Hulu series, which concluded Tuesday, Ryan’s role feels familiar. The comedy follows a trio of strangers (Steve Martin, Martin Short, and Selena Gomez) who band together to solve a murder that took place in their Manhattan apartment building—and record a true-crime podcast about it. Early on, Only Murders subtly introduces Ryan’s Jan as a neighbor and love interest to Martin’s Charles. Her prominence increases in the first season’s final three episodes, though—initially as an apparent patsy who knew too much, and then in a final-act twist, as the (ultimately apprehended) killer herself.

Brilliantly peeling back the layers of her lonely bassoonist character, Ryan goes from sweet and seemingly unassuming to off-kilter and a little manic. Though her character initially drew comparisons to her portrayal of Holly Flax in The Office, Ryan thinks her latest creation may have more in common with the reckless addict mother she played in Gone Baby Gone, a performance that earned her an Oscar nomination. “The choices that you get to make are quite endless, because who’s to say what is true and honest for them?” Ryan says over Zoom. “They’re already so off the wall.”

Coming off a rare (and highly regarded) lead role in Netflix’s heavy drama film Lost Girls, Ryan was thrilled to get back into comedy. The lifelong New Yorker prefers mixing the two genres up, having recently wrapped Ari Aster’s Disappointment Blvd., which she eagerly describes as “a pitch-black dark-comedy horror movie”—the best of both worlds and then some. “There’s that element of like, Is this going to work?” she teases. “I hope so. It’s wonderfully dangerous in that way.”

Vanity Fair: Did you know what you were signing up for when you joined Only Murders?

Amy Ryan: I did. [Cocreator] John Hoffman pitched me the outline of the whole series and shared with me that Jan is the murderer, which was fun and good to know ahead of the game.

You’ve played such a range of characters. We spoke a few years ago and talked a little bit about what you hadn’t played yet, which wasn’t much. But “killer in a whodunit” is a box I didn’t even think of checking off.

I didn’t either! [Laughs] Just for my own self, I try not to repeat myself. And also, after doing Lost Girls, I remember saying to [director] Liz Garbus, “I have to do a comedy.” I loved making Lost Girls, I loved being the voice for those women. But just to stabilize my own mental health, I was certainly eager for a lighter workload. If murder can be a lighter workload. [Laughs]

For much of your arc, you’re in your own sweet little rom-com, pretty far off from the main action. But all the while, key clues are quietly being dropped. Did you lean into that in your performance? Or did you want to keep things hidden?

I was so afraid to tip anything. I had friends calling me like, “Well, of course you did it. I’m looking at the billing of the show, who else?” I’d say, “Well, you haven’t met the other cast…. Wait, just wait.” I was afraid to play any thought process of Jan being nervous or being caught out or looking to the left and a little deer-in-the-headlights. I approached it as, Jan is definitely someone who’s in the moment—and in the moment at that time, she’s just serving pizza rolls at her boyfriend’s house for his friends. I couldn’t carry the weight of what she knows. I don’t think she does. At least, that’s the rule I gave her to justify my own means. Then it’s such a fun shift with the last episode where we see how quickly she jumps into different realities. She still likes Charles, and she’s tender to him. And yet she’s poisoned him at the same time.

For me, there was initially a fun recognition in you appearing in the show, knowing there’s going to be some kind of payoff. But it takes some time.

The way they introduced Jan was perfect in the sense that it was this little, small taste of her. I don’t know if this was their intent, but it really set me up to be just the girlfriend. Like, this character will have two scenes, and they’ll go to dinner, and we won’t think much of it. I had family saying, “I want more of Amy Ryan.” I’d be like, “Oh, yeah, no, more’s coming”.... I like shifting it up, just to keep myself interested after all these years. No one wants to see me play another strapped mother right now. I don’t know if I have anything else to add to that.

Can you talk a little bit about filming the big reveal in the penultimate episode, at the concert? Jan’s role in the story kicks into place there, and we have almost a bird’s eye view.

This was all during the pandemic. Before we shot that scene, they said, “The conductor will come out, and then we’ll start; Amy, just organize your sheet music, and everyone else tend to your instruments.” On action, the whole orchestra started playing. And it’s the first live music I’d heard. This is probably one of the most magical moments of being on the show. I just burst into tears. I hadn’t heard live music in so long! They’re only doing scales and warming up, and any other time on a set, musicians usually play to a playback or something, but this was real. It just floored me. And then we did it again, and I burst into tears the second time too. It was just an extraordinary moment, being surrounded by all that music.

Going into the finale, this huge new information about her has become public. Was there any trickiness in connecting the Jan of those past episodes to the one we see here?

I think the key is the loneliness. In some ways, I love how the show captures that part of New York. We’re an eclectic group of interesting people. Every building has a thousand stories, and yet we’re either all lonely or ever so close to being lonely—and therefore ever so close to making really poor choices and decisions. And Jan is an example of that. She’s just been alone for too long with herself and with this boundless energy, looking to connect, but she’s just odd. She’s just off.

Something we can all connect to these days, I think.

We’re all off.

Coming out of this, yeah.

We really are! [Laughs] Myself at the top of the list…. When you play people that are kind of off—even like the character I played in Gone Baby Gone—the choices that you get to make are quite endless, because who’s to say what is true and honest for them? They’re already so off the wall, you can really have free range with it. It’s fun.

How specifically did you key into Jan?

That last scene, I remember just having so much fun with levels and shading. There are times when she’s genuinely excited that [Charles] has figured something out, and she’s proud of him. Not sarcastic. Or the tender moment that she puts the pillow under his head, to help him keep going. Those kinds of extremes, that’s fun to look for. Jan in the beginning, too, physically, was kind of contained and liquid. And here it’s more these bursts of energy. She can’t contain this excitement. It’s a snap. Liquid to snap. That’s what I would say Jan is.

It looked like you were having a really good time the whole season. And I imagine having the reveal in the back of your head made it extra fun.

I had such a great time. This was the first job I worked on during pandemic life, locked down. So to come out of that world into Steve Martin and Martin Short and Selena Gomez and John Hoffman, it was such a needed lift. But I also felt like every day I went home and my neck was dipped in cement, because I wasn’t vaccinated at this point. So it was still such a horror-movie moment when they say, “Okay, rolling, take off your mask,” because you’re just like, “What?!” Pretty scary.

There’s something very moving to me about the show being such a New York story, seeing all these strangers bumping into one another and getting to interact. 

Yeah, I think so too. I certainly have missed New York during this time. New York obviously is always shifting and moving and reinventing itself, even if it’s from 9/11 or if it’s 42nd Street, preparing for Disney coming in—these giant events that happen to our city. It’s always shape-shifting. Yet I agree with you. I missed this New York, and it’s such a joy to see it and revisit it.

You live in a big, older building yourself, right, in Brooklyn? 

Yes. Oh, I’ve got to tell you, this is a true story from just 10 minutes [ago]. I’m in an old co-op in Brooklyn, built in 1910—a beautiful building. And I’m on the house committee. It was my job to tell the super to kill all the weeds growing in our gutters. So he turns up there, and he says, “Amy, look out your window, I’m up here doing this.” I open my shade, and he’s hanging on the outside of the fence, nine stories up, pulling weeds. I was like, “Richard, no!” I went up and I was like, “I don’t feel good with you doing this.” He’s like, “No, I’m okay.” My brain immediately went to, “If he falls and dies, now Amy Ryan is the murderer.” [Laughs]

Wow.

My own bad luck of being there at the scene of the crime.

And you sit on the house committee, so you must have your own encounters with some Only Murders–esque characters.

Oh, my building is just perfect. [Laughs] We have a perfect cast of characters.

A good, diplomatic answer. Before we wrap, I wanted to ask you about your increasingly impressive screen-romance resume: We’ve got Steve Carell, Michael Keaton, Gabriel Byrne, on and on. Now Steve Martin. How did you find working with him?

He’s such a gentleman, and he’s so funny. He won’t let me walk through a door. He leads the way. He says, “Is it silly I do that?” And I say, “No, you might be the last man left doing that, but I’ll take it. It’s wonderful.” 

I grew up in Queens, listening to his albums in my room. I found one or two friends who shared this sense of humor. I was like, “This is my way out of the neighborhood.” He’s been with me a long time in my quotable brain, my teen self. To work with him, it took me a moment—a few moments—to kind of calm myself down. It’s surreal in many ways. I heard him tell a story of doing a show, and then backstage, Elvis came to his dressing room, and he was gobsmacked and couldn’t quite get his balance, and Elvis started showing him his gun or something like that. Well, Steve is my Elvis. 

This interview has been edited and condensed.

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