10 Behind-The-Scenes Facts About How To Get Away With Murder

How To Get Away With Murder may be ending – but how much do you know about how it all began?

You Are Reading :10 BehindTheScenes Facts About How To Get Away With Murder

How to Get Away with Murder is one of the most popular shows on network TV, constantly keeping viewers on the edge of their seats every week with each new twist and turn. With so many moving parts, there are a lot of things that go on behind-the-scenes that even the most hardcore fans wouldn’t know about without being told.

With the show currently wrapping up its final season, now seems like the perfect time to share 10 behind-the-scenes facts you didn’t know about How to Get Away With Murder.

10 Sex Scene Break

One thing almost everyone who watches How to Get Away with Murder knows is that the frequent sex scenes make up a large part of the show’s DNA. What some may not have known is that Viola Davis had to take a break from the show’s sex scenes for a while for a very good reason. During an interview, the actress revealed that she blew her back out during a scene when fellow actor, Billy Brown, who plays Nate Lahey on the show, threw her up against a wall during one such scene. Despite the pain, Davis continued to act through the scene but later told the people behind the show to slow the number of them given to her character down.

9 Planning Process

While a lack of a long term plan can be seen as a negative, sometimes it can lead to interesting storytelling. Peter Nowalk, the creator of the show, revealed that lots of the shows plot twists are written on the fly and often aren’t planned out at the beginning of the season. This level of flexibility allows the writers to often change things as the episodes are being shot. A great example is the character of Annalise. Despite being the main character Nowalk said that he “didn’t know 95% of who Annalise was” when he made the pilot. One of the main benefits being that it does allow the show to be more character-driven rather than plot-driven which helps the story feel more authentic as it progresses.

8 Young Gabriel

Gabriel Maddox, played by Rome Flynn, was first introduced in the episode, “Nobody Else is Dying” as a mysterious character causing many to theorize who he was in the grand scheme of the show. It wasn’t until much later that Maddox was revealed to be the long-lost son of Sam, played by Tom Verica, by his first wife, Vivian.

Later on, we got a chance to see a younger version of Gabriel in the episode “He Betrayed Us Both” during a flashback. After the episode aired, many noted the visual similarities between the older and younger versions of the character and how praised how accurate the casting was. What makes it interesting is that the younger version of Gabriel was played by Dante Verica, Tom’s real-life son.

7 The Wig Scene

As is often the case with many films and movies, lots of ideas that make it into the final product may not have come about without the input of the actors. There is a moment in the episode “Let’s Get to Scooping” which, before going to bed, we see Annalise take off her wig and make-up. The scene generated a lot of conversation and has gone down as one of the show’s most iconic and memorable scenes. While many may be quick to praise the writing team for the concept, the idea was actually proposed by Viola Davis herself. When talking about the scene, Davis said “I felt the only way I could play Annalise was if I played her as a real woman. Because I feel like that’s the part about being a woman that people kind of throw in the trash heap.” Davis’ desire to make her character even more real shows you how great of an actress she is truly is.

6 The Inception

They say that you should write what you know but sometimes venturing outside of your writing comfort zone can yield great results, this show is a prime example of that. Peter Nowalk revealed that prior to working on the show he knew absolutely nothing about law school, admitting that the same books the actors were reading about the Socratic method, criminal outlines, and Google was how he got his information and ideas for the project. Norwalk also says that the show’s concept came about from him asking the simple question of “What would happen if I murdered someone?” which eventually led to the idea for law students to be the ones behind the murder and the story that follows.

5 The Keating 5

In the show, the Keating 5, comprised of Wes, Laurel, Asher, Connor, and Michaela, have a strong close-knit bond and operate as sort of a dysfunctional family.

What many may not know is that before the crew even started filming for the pilot episode, the actors that make up the 5 were flown out to Philadelphia a week prior in order for them to get to know each other in order for their onscreen dynamics and chemistry to be even more real. As Jack Falahee describes it “From day one, we were romping around the streets of Philadelphia and just having slumber parties with cartons of ice cream.”

4 Covering Your Bases

For a writer, it is always better for you to cover your bases and come up with multiple backup ideas before settling on just one. This is something the How to Get Away with Murder writers know very well considering that the finale of the show’s first season had not just one but three endings.

One in which Lila was killed by Rebecca, one where Lila was killed by Sam, and the one that became the official version of the finale which showed Lila was killed by Frank, a decision which came about due to Nowalk’s hatred of the other versions due to none of them feeling “fun” or “surprising”. Nowalk explained that “It’s hard for me to believe that Sam would strangle a girl … and this is what we do — we just throw out everything we know and come up with a new version.” Going with any other version of the finale could have resulted in the show being and feeling completely different later on.

3 Scene Preparation

Actors all have different methods that allow them to better get into a mindset of a character so that they can perform in the role to the best of their ability. An example of this being Jack Falahee, who plays Connor on the show. Falahee says that he creates various playlists of what he calls “emotional prep songs” for different scenes in order to better prepare for them. Another tactic Jack uses is journaling in addition to collaging images after learning that it was a method that Johnny Depp utilized for his characters.

2 The Slap

In season 1, Michaela Pratt, played by Aja Namoi King, was in a scene with Mary Walker, her future mother-in-law, played by actress Lynn Whitfield. In the scene, there is a point in which Michaela was supposed to slap Walker. However, King refused to, telling Peter Nowalk that if she were to slap Walker, Walker would have to retaliate and slap her back and knock her out to maintain a sense of realism. The writers eventually found a solution that made everyone happy by allowing Mary to catch Michaela’s hand as she attempts to slap her but not allowing her to make contact.

1 Sam’s Murderer

The reveal that Wes was the one that killed Sam came as a shock to many, and it came as just as much of a shock to the actor that portrays him, Alfred Enoch. Enoch didn’t find out the truth about his character’s actions until the table read for the episode.

Alfred has stated that he had wished he had known prior so that he could be better prepared to properly act accordingly, saying “If you’re playing Othello, it’s useful to know if you’re going to kill Desdemona. Not like you’re going to walk around looking like you’re going to smother her every five seconds. But It can help you to build to that, or to not build to that.”

Link Source : https://screenrant.com/how-get-away-with-murder-behind-the-scenes-facts/