Michele Weaver says Luly must navigate a major “shift” in her life.
Michele Weaver attended SCAD aTVfest 2020 with fellow cast and showrunners Tony Phelan and Joan Rater. I spoke with Michele about her new series Council of Dads at the festival held on SCAD’s Atlanta campus.
Council of Dads tells the story of a father who selects a specific group of men, a council of dads, to help father his children when he receives a terminal diagnosis. Luly Perry is the eldest of her father’s children and is planning to move from the show’s Savannah, GA setting to New York.
Luly’s world is naturally turned upside down with the passing of her beloved father. We posed a question to Michele about her character Luly Perry.
As the eldest of her siblings, will Luly be able to support her grieving siblings while also managing the loss of her father in her own life?
Michele: Everybody’s pain is pain. How can you really measure pain and compare it? But Luly has a specific thing that she’s navigating because, yes, her dad was her only consistent thing in her entire life. A lot of people didn’t choose her. Her dad chose her from the beginning and to lose him is like a bomb that explodes in her life, and especially in a time when she’s still figuring out who she is.
So, when someone who is kind of part of your identity is taken from you, how do you see yourself? How do you navigate that? And this is something that I think a lot of young people deal with. There’s also the responsibility that she’s the oldest. She wants to be a leader. She wants to be strong for her siblings. So, you see her navigate that.
The reality is when a person loses a parent, especially at a younger age, you don’t get over it in a week. You don’t get over it in a month. It changes the rest of your life. And that’s what’s great. You get to see month by month, day by day, how Luly is navigating this complete bomb, this shift, where you can never go back. So, how does she move forward with that?
Council of Dads premieres March 24th on NBC. The episode will air at 10/9c immediately following the fourth season finale of This Is Us. Subsequent episodes will begin airing on April 30th in the 8 pm ET slot.
Look for further coverage of our time with the Council of Dads cast and creators. We also spoke with lead Sarah Wayne Callies, creators Joan Rater and Tony Phelan as well as the three “dads” themselves.
The 8th annual SCAD aTVfest included more than 20 shows represented by cast members and crew. The festival provides students a unique opportunity to learn from actors, directors and producers in the television industry. Several SCAD alumni were also on hand to discuss their jobs as actors, costume designers, writers and much more.
Learn more about SCAD at the college’s website.