After we’d had some time to digest the finale of Grosse Pointe Garden Society, which aired on NBC in mid-May, we hopped on the phone to speak with Bill Krebs, the Grosse Pointe Park native who co-created the fun, soapy whodunnit with his writing partner Jenna Bans. The duo also served as co-executive producers/co-show runners for the series and Krebs wrote several episodes.
Our first question, of course, was if there was any word on a second season. Not yet, he shared, but there is something fans and other interested parties could do to increase the odds of one: watch Season 1 on Peacock. Here, he talks about that, plus what inspiration he drew from his Grosse Pointe upbringing, his love of Michigan, and his “tearful moment” of not getting to appear on the TV show Detroiters.
Hour Detroit: As far as your metro Detroit background, I understand you grew up Grosse Pointe and Birmingham and went to the University of Michigan for Organizational Dynamics. How did you end up in show business?
Bill Krebs: I have the weirdest trajectory of all time. The person who’s in that kind of trajectory would go on to be some form of management consultant. I then promptly did none of that. I ended up working for a boutique ad agency [in Chicago] for about a year. Then I came back to Detroit and worked for DeAnn Forbes, who owned an ad agency, [working on] Epoch Restaurant Group. I did a lot of the creative, getting restaurants up on their feet.
So how did you finally get into show business?
After all that, I realized … this is not at all where I wanted to take my life. I abandoned all of it. I went to New York City and I was like, I’m going to be a TV writer in New York City. I found out very quickly that there was absolutely no business in New York City for what I wanted to do. I bought a one-way ticket to California and started over from scratch.
What was your big breakthrough?
BK: I got a job working for writers on a TV show called Head Cases (starring Chris O’Donnell, Rhea Seehorn, Adam Goldberg, and Krista Allen), which was back in 2005. I got coffee and lunch for everyone and worked my way up the ranks. It was a fantastic experience. I kept saying, my worst day here is better than my best day in my old jobs.
I really, really loved LA the second I got out here. I was obsessed with it. I think that’s important to people who move out here. You have to like Los Angeles because it’s constantly trying to send you home. You get millions of parking tickets. There’s always a problem with something. It’s always reminding you that you’re a tourist. You aren’t here yet; you’re not local just yet.
Which is interesting, because some Grosse Pointers can be known to say that about people who haven’t lived there very long.
That’s very true. What [Jenna and I] loved about Grosse Pointe is how it’s its own little hamlet that’s insulated. They’re trying to keep their community exactly as it always has been. And we thought there was something cool about how insular that is and how people from all walks of life cross paths with one another there.
And the garden club?
My stepmom belonged to a garden club, and the one thing I noticed is it didn’t matter who you were, anyone could belong to that club. It could be someone who lived in an apartment or who lived in a giant Grosse Pointe mansion. They all were working side by side with one another to achieve the same goal of making the garden beautiful. We thought that was such a cool way for different personalities and different dynamics to cross.
Do you still have ties to Grosse Pointe?
I do. I still have tons of friends in Birmingham and Grosse Pointe. I try to get back as much as I can to see everyone. I love Michigan. People don’t realize how good they have it in Michigan. They’re always talking about getting out, and that was me and my group. It’s like, “Oh, I gotta get to New York, I gotta get to LA, I gotta get to Chicago.” And then once you get there you go, “God, I had it pretty good, like everyone there was super cool, and it was just a great creative environment.” I really, really love being from there.
What do the people you know from Grosse Pointe think about the show?
They love it, but it’s always hard when you write about a specific thing that people are very familiar with. They only see the problems. They go, “Oh, well you forgot to mention this.” Or, “That thing doesn’t exist.” They’re looking at all the esoteric minutia of it, which I find very funny, but I also love it.
Was it difficult to get the look of Grosse Pointe in Georgia?
Our production designer, Adam Davis, is militant about research. He was very obsessed with the War Memorial, and we wanted the facade [of the garden club] to have a federalist building look to make it look like the architecture. We were always constantly looking for the architecture of Grosse Pointe. We found this place called Druid Hills, which essentially had the same architecture as Detroit.
It was a good dupe.
I’ve read a lot of stuff on Reddit or Twitter and some people say, “Oh, it looks nothing like Grosse Pointe.” But then some people said, “Wait, it’s not Grosse Pointe?”
What Grosse Pointe references did you put in the show?
I tried to put my old address, on Bishop Road, in [the show] but legal caught it. So, I changed it to 714 Bishop. That was my favorite thing about the show, putting in all the Easter eggs that I could slip in that weren’t too obscure. But if you’re from the area, you would know.
Did you ever see the show Detroiters?
Yeah. Oh my God, I loved it. I tried to get on that show. I’m like, “I used to work in advertising. I’m from Detroit.” I knew all those commercials, like Dietrich Furs and sexy specs and I couldn’t even get a meeting because everyone wanted to be on that show. I remember telling my agent at the time, that [not getting the meeting] was like a real sort of tearful moment for me. I’m like, there is no one better suited for this job than me, trust me.
What is the secret to creating a must-watch show?
Ten years ago, if you had an original idea and a lot of passion and good writing, it would be enough to get it sold. Today, there’s so much riding on these streamers succeeding and networks still staying alive and profitability and revenue, that they need undeniable projects. An undeniable project would come from some type of intellectual property, or a big star attached to it. Something they can really bank on that will draw eyeballs away from the competition. It makes it a little dispiriting when you’re creating, because you’re going, well, how in the world am I going to get Jon Hamm to do that? Or how am I going to get Aaron Sorkin to partner with [me] — stuff that could be impossible.
At the end of the day, if you have a relatable idea, it will rise to the surface because that’s the thing that people really sign up for. That’s what we wanted to achieve with Grosse Pointe [Garden Society]. It’s a community in a specific part of Michigan, but it could be anywhere in the United States, and they’re dealing with issues like marriage and infidelity and custody and things that everyone, no matter what class you’re from, you have to deal with wherever you live.
You’re still waiting to find out if there will be a Season 2. What does that feel like?
It’s a purgatory for sure. NBC canceled a number of shows a couple weeks ago because they need to make room for the NBA in 2025 and 2026. And we survived that first round. They want to see if there’s a home for us on Peacock. We’re waiting to see our numbers and how many people are watching on Peacock [to know if they should] move us over.
A Pointer Postmortem
So, what do residents think of the show? We asked three Grosse Pointe residents to weigh in on the first season of Grosse Pointe Garden Society:
What were your initial thoughts of the show?
Blagica Bottigliero, Grosse Pointe Woods: I was intrigued to see how the show would depict Grosse Pointe in terms of the history of Grosse Pointe. Would they talk about the history of the automakers and the auto families who lived here that made Grosse Pointe? Or would it touch on different types of perceptions that the Pointes have had over the years?
The in-law figures have obviously been in Grosse Pointe for a long time, but then there was a bit of tension with the mother-in-law (Patty, played by Nancy Travis) when people who knew her from back in the day realized she wasn’t [originally] from Grosse Pointe. For those of us who are newer to the Grosse Pointe area, there is an element of that. It’s cute when you go to school board meetings or different community meetings and oftentimes when someone wants to influence a decision it often starts with, ‘My family’s been here for five or six generations’, so we still get that, and it makes many of us chuckle.
What did you think about the storyline?
Caitrin Franczyk, Grosse Pointe Woods: I don’t want to spoil it… Even though it’s obviously about a murder, I thought it was more of the lighthearted kind of show where you could put it on and relax and watch it. There were a lot of emotions. And a lot of different parts of real life included in it, and I liked that aspect.
Do you think the characters represented the Pointes well?
Cheryl Caramagno, Grosse Pointe Farms: I don’t think so. I’ve had kids at Grosse Pointe South and Brownell and Kirby, and I’ve been involved in all the different sides of the school. I’ve even had people that I knew that belonged to The Little Club behind the War Memorial. It’s a very elite group of people that belong to it and they just don’t flaunt. I mean, I know some people do flaunt their money, but the ones I’ve known that really had it don’t seem to. They’re just down to earth people. Really nice.
Were you happy with how the season ended?
Franczyk: Yeah, I was happy with it. I liked that, throughout the story, it kept you on your toes. Each episode made you think it was someone else that was killed. I liked that they kept going to the past and then the present. At the end, it was kind of cool to see things wrap up, and more interesting to tease us for the next season.
Last thoughts…
Bottigliero: It’s a good show. Some folks had asked me, ‘Do you think they put Grosse Pointe in a good light?’ I don’t think it was meant to. The title itself speaks for itself; it’s a throwback to tradition. And I think what I also like about the show is that it kind of bucks tradition. There’s a lot of tradition here, which is cool. But with all the other types of families and social makeups that have moved in, it’s changing things up and it’s not the same Grosse Pointe from the ’60s and ’70s. And I enjoy seeing it because it’s hopefully moving things forward and it’s not the constant traditional perception people have of Grosse Pointe. But without the murder.
Grosse Pointe Garden Society is streaming now on Peacock. Learn more at nbc.com.
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