After four seasons on Netflix – in the view of the fans, far too few – last year it was announced that a one-off interactive episode of quirky, feel-good sitcom Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt was in production. Now it’s been confirmed that the special, Kimmy vs. The Reverend, will be released in just under a month on May 12th.
The title suggests a final showdown between quirky, feel-good protagonist Kimmy Schmidt (Ellie Kemper) and the Reverend Richard Wayne Gary Wayne (Jon Hamm), the evil and charismatic cult leader who kept her captive in a bunker for fifteen years, Fritzl-style – hence ‘unbreakable’. Kemper herself described it as a suitable “final act”, saying “Kimmy always wants to right a wrong…From the start she was always trying to overcome what she had been through, but now she’s lashing out. She’s angry — not only at him, but in the way many women in the #MeToo era have been for a long time. It felt super cathartic.”
On a lighter note, the special also stars Daniel ‘Harry Potter’ Radcliffe as a love interest, Prince Frederick Windsor, 12th in line to the British throne – per Radcliffe, “That sounds far away but is actually pretty fucking close, I looked it up”. For reference, the actual 12th person in line to the throne is the Viscount Severn, Prince Edward’s twelve-year-old son.
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Shooting a multiple-choice branching storyline is by definition more complex and time-consuming than the usual filming process: Kemper revealed “It was unlike anything I’d ever done before. It was hard to keep track of everything as we were filming it.” Her co-star Titus Burgess put it slightly more pungently, saying “Child, if I never film another interactive special, it’s okay.”
This will not be Netflix’s first foray into choose-your-own-adventure-esque interactive shows, but is still notable as one amongst very, very few. Most previous examples have been children’s shows, but the best-known iteration, to go straight to the other end of the spectrum, was Black Mirror: Bandersnatch. This was a highly meta experiment in the form, which followed a troubled young man who was himself creating a choose-your-own-adventure game. I am happy to put my chips down now and bet that neither Kimmy nor any other characters will break the fourth wall, become aware of the mysterious powers directing their actions, and eventually be driven insane by this terrible knowledge. Nonetheless, this could well herald interactive television hitting the mainstream in a way Netflix has been chasing after for a while now.
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