Rachel Bloom on Crazy Ex-Girlfriend series 3: 'We're using a word for the female anatomy that has never been said on TV before'

Over the past two years, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend has become of Netflix’s most quietly revered shows. Released episodically onto the streaming service, the musical comedy has won a cult-like following, who dissect the actions of its small band of characters obsessively and learn the show’s comedy musical numbers by heart.

Its title may sound like a low-rent romcom, but that is exactly the point: as creator and star Rachel Bloom points out, the whole theory behind the show is to demonstrate the enormous gulf between the experience of love and relationships, and the fantastical way they are portrayed on screen.

Bloom, 30, plays Bunch, a woman with childhood neuroses who abandoned her high-powered job as a Manhattan lawyer and fled to West Covina, a Califonian backwater with no discernable appeal – aside from being the home of her summer camp boyfriend, Josh Chan.

Over the past two seasons, viewers have seen Rebecca settle in, get the guy, break some hearts and stand her ground in West Covina – only to be abandoned at the altar. We are now, Bloom says, due to witness Rebecca truly become a “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend”, as the show’s third season delves further into the psychiatry of its characters. We spoke to Bloom to find out what else to expect from season three.

What can we expect? I’m excited to see a continuation of the whole desert-festival-urinating-on-Josh’s-equipment scene of season two, but for a whole season.

Yes! Yes. That’s actually kind of dead on, yes.

This is my favourite season we’ve done. Because it’s the promise of the premise of the show: what happens when you have an ex who is scorned? But it’s also very propulsive, especially in the first two episodes. There’s a lot of movement and a lot of change. It’s also moving out of sitcom world. A lot of it is darker and we’re also straddling that line between comedy and drama.

What became really apparent during the second season was that what initially seemed like a fun, musical comedy about millennial dating is actually a portrayal of a woman struggling with deep-rooted abandonment issues. Was that psychiatry always at the heart of the show?

If you actually look at the actions of people in a romantic comedy, it’s deranged. It’s a mixture of the fact that these people are mentally ill but also that the idea of romantic love is elevated to be this sacred thing. It makes us do very unhealthy, crazy things, and it’s all rooted in the primal urge to reproduce. Knocking love off its pedestal continues to be really fun, and not seeing it as something pure and holy and untouchable. Because that’s what we’re taught.

The reason why my writing partner [The Devil Wears Prada writer Aline Brosh McKenna] was attracted to my music videos [before the show, Bloom uploaded comedy videos on YouTube] was that I took established tropes, whether that was a Disney Princess song or an Adele song, and found these moments of true sadness and true human empathy. I’ve always seen the songs I did before Crazy Ex-Girlfriend as interesting because the humanity and the emotions beneath them, rather than “how well can we make fun of the artistry of this video”.

So from the beginning there was this idea of taking tropes and trying to find what linked those tropes to how people actually act. I come from musical theatre, Aline comes from writing romantic comedies. We both know the tropes and structures of those genres so well, but we also know the ways in which they are unrealistic and the ways that people aspire to be like the entertainment that they watch.

That’s how Rebecca sees herself. She needs to see herself within a structure, even though that’s not how people are.

At what point is that penny going to drop for Rebecca, and is that going to impact on the run of the show?

In mine and Aline’s head, this is only a four-season show. We pitched it in four chapters, and we’re currently on roughly the third chapter. There’s a lot left to explore, and we’re doing some of it this season, but Aline and I have no urge to make a show that wears out its welcome.

How autobiographical is her role?

Emotionally, she’s a mix of me and Aline, and, as we’ve taken on writing staff, parts of the writing staff. She’s a heightened version of the best parts of myself and the worst parts of myself. We’re going to diagnose her this year. At some point she is going to get back into treatment for real and find out what is the fundamental problem. They always say with diagnoses that it’s not about the label, it’s about the treatment. But Rebecca needs to know the label because she lives her life through labels.

We talked to some therapists. It’s interesting to have a character that we based on ourselves and then hear a doctor say, “Well, this is how you would treat that.” I think it calls into question the line between what is normal and what is mental illness and also some of mine and Aline’s own struggles with things like anxiety and depression.

In the past you’ve parodied Beyoncé videos. Are there any pop culture references to look out for in season three?

Joseph Kahn, the director of Taylor Swift’s Look What You Made Me Do video directed our fourth episode, which is one of my favourite episodes of the series. He also directed our new theme song. He made such a mark on the pop culture landscape as a director, and he’s directing our show, so you’ll see some of his overtones.

Has anyone vetoed ideas for songs that cross a line?

There’s a natural limitation because we’re on network television, so there’s no rude language, we can’t show nudity. But in this season we do say a female anatomical term that, as far as I’ve researched, has ever been said on live action network television. And we really worked to get it, and it’s really important to us, and inherent in one of our plots. We needed to say it. So stay tuned for that!

Are you surprised by which songs take on a life of their own?

I think when we were doing the bisexual storyline, we knew that that was going to be a big deal to people, and it’s so gratifying to be making something and know that it’s going to mean a lot to people. But with “Period Sex”, it’s so funny. I knew that it was going to be a big deal but the song is so silly in so many ways. It’s not saying anything radical, it more comes from the character being diverted and somewhat ADD in what she’s talking about, so she just sings about period sex. Things like that definitely sneak up and surprise me.

Greg, and whether it’s appropriate to like him or not, still remains a big point of contention for viewers.

The Greg thing is interesting, because everything you like about him was by design. He was a romantic comedy underdog, the guy you should be with, but we skewered that, because he’s really f----- up in his own ways.

Some people early on would tweet, “Am I crazy, but should Rebecca be with Greg?” And we’re like, “No, no, that’s the trope we’re doing. We’re doing the romantic comedy trope. He’s the guy she should be with, that you’re rooting for”.

But then what I had a lot of fun doing was figuring out why he was the underdog. From day one, he purposefully put himself in the position of lesser-than. He says to Rebecca, “You’re pretty and smart and you’re ignoring me so you’re obviously my type”, that’s not a healthy person. That’s a guy who likes wallowing in his own misery and casting himself as the snarky, sarcastic underdog who is calling everyone else on their bulls---. That guy has a lot of growing to do.

Similarly, I think we’ve had fun with Nathaniel. Nathanial is the “hot asshole”, but again, we’ve had fun examining what makes him that way. When someone says some of the things he said to Rebecca, that’s a broken, sad person. I remember, early on when we were creating Nathaniel, Aline said, “I think he’s the most sad, broken person on the show now. He has some serious issues and some serious trauma”.

Is there anyone on the show who is legitimately happy?

I think the show is about happiness, and the show is about the journey to happiness and how having a significant other does or doesn’t play into that. I’d say, out of every character, probably Greg is the happiest.

Greg?!

Yeah! He went from our least favourite character to our happiest, because he left to pursue his dreams. He’s now in a way more enlightened state. We’re dealing more with Heather this year, she’s happy but she’s got some s--- to figure out and Darryl, Darryl is in a state of happiness but some of that is in a state of denial, which I also want to touch on more.

Everyone loves Darryl.

He’s lovely, and sweet and everyone is so mean to him. And this season we’re looking more into what Darryl thinks of himself, and how does he stand up for himself.

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The narrative of Rebecca seeking happiness by abandoning her high-powered career is one that is often floated for women her age. There’s still a question mark hanging over whether she made the right choice.

Rebecca never wanted to be a lawyer. She’s always been smart and she loves learning and she’s a very chivalrous person but this whole lifestyle was forced onto her by her mother and she fell into it because she didn’t know who she was. I think the move to want to go to West Covina is her realising that the situation was unsustainable. She couldn’t commit more time to a lifestyle that she didn’t love. I know so many friends who are lawyers who are like, “I hate it, I’m miserable, I’m getting out.”

I just think that for her, career was synonymous with trying to live out her mother’s dream for. A high-powered law career isn’t right for someone like Rebecca, but a high-powered law career is right for someone like Paula.