GROSSE POINTE GARDEN SOCIETY — Pictured: “Grosse Pointe Garden Society” Key Art — (Photo by: NBCUniversal)

In GROSSE POINTE GARDEN SOCIETY, in its first season Friday nights on NBC, with episodes streaming the next day on Peacock, someone has been murdered. But the audience doesn’t know who, and the killers, four volunteers of the title organization – wealthy Birdie (Melissa Fumero), real estate agent Catherine (Aja Naomi King), landscaper/car restorer Brett (Ben Rappaport), and high school teacher Alice (AnnaSophia Robb) – are considerably panicked after having to bury the corpse in the flower beds they tend.

Created by Jenna Bans & Bill Krebs, GROSSE POINTE GARDEN SOCIETY jumps back and forth in time, showing what led up to the murder and what follows.

In the dark comedy, all of the characters have fraught relationships, but perhaps none is more seismic than the one between Alice and her husband Doug, played by Alexander Hodge. Alice resents the fact that Doug, an artist, is still pretty much controlled by his parents (portrayed by Nancy Travis and Ron Yuan). Doug is filled with jealousy by Alice’s friendship with Brett, who is clearly in love with her.

Australian actor Hodge made his American TV debut on LAW & ORDER: SPECIAL VICTIMS UNIT. Since then, he’s been a regular on INSECURE; other credits include the films JOY RIDE and SHE TAUGHT LOVE.

Hodge gets on a Zoom call to talk about GROSSE POINT GARDEN SOCIETY. He says he became involved in the series in 2023, when the Writers Guild and Screen Actors Guild strikes were ending.

“I felt like it might never happen for a period there,” Hodge laughs, “but once it did, things started coming back into their own boxes. It was a fast process, really. I was in Sydney at the time, and I received the audition [script], and I sent off a tape.”

Funnily enough, Hodge adds, “Initially, I auditioned for the role of Brett, played by Ben Rappaport, who initially auditioned for the role of Doug, played by me. But I ended up on a Zoom call with Bill and Jenna, the lovely creators and showrunners, and Liz Dean, our casting director, and had a really lovely chat about the character, about their vision, especially around Brett, Alice and Doug. So, I signed on, and I think it was two weeks later that I was flying into Atlanta [where the series is made] to have the table read.”

Asked to describe Doug as a person, Hodge says, “I reckon he’s a top-shelf bloke. He’s the kind of guy who keeps to himself largely, but he’s quite protective, he’s rather sensitive, as all artists are, and he’s resultingly a little reactive, but he knows what he cares about, and he cares about it deeply. So, I would say Doug’s the kind of bloke you want in your corner.”

Alexander Hodge as Doug, Nancy Travis as Patty in GROSSE POINT GARDEN SOCIETY – Season 1 – “Seasons” | ©2025 NBC/Mark Hill

How does Hodge assess Doug’s relationship with his parents?

“He’s a bit in their pocket, isn’t he? I think, as an only child, he receives, for better or worse, their undivided attention at all times, which we’re witnessing in real time. Doug as an adult is struggling to find his identity, because he’s spent pretty much his whole life under the thumb of his two overbearing parents. So, that relationship with them is going through maybe a development, being that he’s an adult trying to figure out who he is and trying to figure out where he is in his marriage, rather than just continuing on being the good son to his parents.”

And where would Hodge say Doug is at in his marriage to Alice?

Hodge laughs again. “He’s at a shitty place, isn’t he? It’s definitely been better. If it’s Episode 3, and they’re already in marriage counseling, I don’t think they’re in the best place they’ve ever been at, but I would consider it a real jump-off point, whether they get better or worse from here. That’s the fork in the road for them. I think both of them want better, and at the end of 104, going into 105, we notice that they want better together, rather than better apart. Hopefully, that offers a lot of promise for their marriage.”

How is acting opposite AnnaSophia Robb, who plays Alice?

“We had a couple of Zoom conversations, because I was coming from Sydney during the pilot, but we had a pretty good working relationship on set from the pilot. I mean, she’s a total pro. She is a consummate professional. She’s been doing this since she was a kid, since I was a kid. So, I come to set and I learn from her every day.

“We picked up a natural shorthand early on, and we kept that. If there’s something that somebody needs, we’re not afraid to ask for it, or to take our time with certain things. It just feels really, really easy. I sometimes will get to the end of the scene and realize that we’re working, because it didn’t feel like working the entire time.”

Hodge’s normal speaking voice is clearly Australian, so how and when did he learn to do the American accent he uses for Doug?

“ ‘When’ would have been somewhere about 1995, 1996, and ‘where’ was the living room of my childhood home, watching MTV, ROOM RAIDERS and TRL and every other American TV show that I grew up watching. I had a healthy dose of American pop culture from a young age, and that’s pretty much what started it early on. And then I’d say it was probably perfected early on in theatre school in New York City.”

Doug is a painter. Did Hodge have to learn anything about how to paint for the scenes where we see Doug at work in his studio?

“Thankfully, I went to art school when I was younger, so I have a bit of a muscle memory for that. I did a lot of painting when I was a teenager in school. I haven’t painted in many years, but it all came back to me pretty quickly. They arranged for me to have some art lessons during the pilot, but when I started working with the art teacher, they pretty quickly said that I didn’t need them, so it was one of those luck-of-the-draw things.”

To date, none of Hodge’s actual artwork has shown up in the series. “I wish. Unfortunately, that wasn’t in my contract, but a lovely scenic artist named David Murphy does most of the art for my character, and he’s brilliant. So, it’s in his capable hands.”

Given Doug’s volatility, has Hodge had to adjust his attitude at all to play the character?

“My partner will tell you I have to take an adjustment every day,” Hodge quips. More seriously, he continues, “With Doug, I had to learn how to have it be okay with not being likable. I think that’s really what the journey was, where I had to really find a way to be okay being – I’m not going to say ‘the necessary evil,’ but the necessary bad guy in a relationship, say the thing that isn’t cool or isn’t fun or isn’t popular, and that was a real challenge for me, to learn how to stand in that, and own that. But besides that, I don’t really think I had to learn too much, thankfully. We’ve had some good stunt teams, our stunt coordinators and stunt doubles working on the fights for us. That again is something I needed to re-learn, but it was fun to get back into it.”

How far ahead do the GROSSE POINTE GARDEN SOCIETY showrunners tell the cast members what to expect? Do the actors know who the dead body is yet?

Hodge affirms that they know, but “We only found out quite recently. It was revealed to us in one of the scripts that was in our inbox. We [find out story details] when we read the scripts, and we get the scripts a month or a few weeks before we film that said script’s episode. For certain plot points, the necessary stuff, we get told ahead of time. But otherwise, it’s fun to find out as we go.”

How does Hodge describe GROSSE POINTE GARDEN SOCIETY as a show?

“Oh, my goodness, this show is fun. It is a return to what I call the great network television era, where shows were about escapism, where shows were about drama that was juicy, that was sexy, that was sassy, that was funny. I think our show has this brilliant self-awareness about it, and that our humor is fish out of water.

“So, our show is what I consider the height of network television to be maybe ten, fifteen years ago. It’s a return to that. It’s a nostalgic time, where everybody in the household gathered around the TV to watch the show together. So, we can pick your favorite character, or dissect people’s choices and watch what happens from week to week in a show that wasn’t procedural. That’s to me what the show is. It’s messy in the best of ways. If [people] put it on, it is going to be their favorite show.”

Related: Exclusive Interview: Actor Matthew Davis on Season 1 of the NBC dramedy GROSSE POINTE GARDEN SOCIETY

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Article: Exclusive Interview: Actor Alexander Hodge on on Season 1 of the NBC dramedy GROSSE POINTE GARDEN SOCIETY

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