How Melissa Fumero Built One of Our New Favorite Fashion People on TV

If you're looking for a deliciously soapy drama that has a little bit of everything—a scandalous murder plot, distinct characters harboring secrets of their own, and some major fashion moments—let us direct you to NBC's Grosse Pointe Garden Society. It's a bit of Desperate Housewives meets Cruel Summer, as four members of a wealthy suburban garden club find themselves entangled in a murder. It's not so much a whodunit but a whoisit crime cover-up that straddles two timelines in order to piece together the questionable events that took place during the garden society's annual black-tie gala.

At the center of this engrossing series is the garden society's "core four," as they are often referred to on set: high school literature teacher and aspiring writer Alice (AnnaSophia Robb), landscaper and single dad Brett (Ben Rappaport), real estate agent and garden society vice president Catherine (Aja Naomi King), and troubled romance novelist Birdie (Melissa Fumero). While struggling with their own declining personal lives, the unsuspecting foursome develop a deep bond and must lean on each other in order to keep their life-altering secret.

Fumero, a comedy staple best known for her role on Brooklyn Nine-Nine, is the show's true standout as Birdie, our fashion person of the group. Though Birdie is a departure from Fumero's recent roles, the actress quickly finds her well-heeled footing as the brash socialite searching for connection and purpose. Birdie stands to have the most growth over the season and is also responsible for some of the show's best one-liners.

Following the show's premiere, we caught up with Fumero to talk all things Birdie and what we can expect from our favorite fashion gal as the season goes on.

Take us back to when you first heard about Grosse Pointe Garden Society. It's quite different from your other projects. What intrigued you about this script?

It felt like the only pilot in town that was circulating. It was post [actor and writer] strike and was the first exciting thing that came up. I knew of [creators] Jenna Bans and Bill Krebs. I knew about Good Girls, and I knew they were very well-respected, great writers. So I was really excited. I flew through the script. I thought it was such a fun read. I wanted to know what happened next. I was excited that it felt very different from anything else I've done. I was a little bit like, "Oh, one hour—do I want to do this?" I've been so spoiled with half-hour schedules, but I was really intrigued.

I'm forever indebted to and grateful for Liz Dean, the casting director, because we also off the bat [were] like, "This is gonna be an uphill battle." I'm known as a sitcom girl. I'm known for comedy up to this point, and you're only as good as the last thing you did. I was like, "Are they gonna even wanna see me for this?" Thank God Liz Dean right away said, "I've already thought of Melissa. She's on my list." I was a little intimidated to audition for Birdie because she just felt so far from me. I was like, "I don't even know if this is in my wheelhouse." … Actually, my husband David [Fumero] helped me crack it a little bit. He reminded me of a character I played so long ago in this web series, and he was like, "She's kind of like that character. She's in that lane. Why don't you just start there?" And it just broke it open for me.

Did you just read for Birdie, or did you see yourself for any of the other roles initially?

I was scared to audition for Birdie, and I think they asked who do you want to audition for. At first, I said Catherine because I've played the super type A, buttoned-up [woman]. So I auditioned for Catherine first, but I remember thinking, "I don't know if this isn't quite right," and after that audition, they said that they wanted to see me read for Birdie. I was like "Okay, here we go."

What were some of your early entry points to Birdie and understanding her?

Obviously, the writing is so good in the scripts, and so much was there for me, especially in that first scene with Ford. I think that was the thing that I honed in on, that this person is really lost. She doesn't know what she's doing. She doesn't know what she wants. She's seeking connection but doesn't know how to go about it, and that felt like an in I could connect to because I just had a lot of empathy for her. And then realizing all the bigness and brashness and all that is almost like a mask she wears in the world, it's a self-protection thing. I think it's how she's gotten to where she is. It's how she's survived. It's how she's climbed the ladder, and it's her crutch. So that made it a little easier because it's almost a performance [she's putting on]. She's not showing her true self. I feel like we all know those people. There's some moms at my kids' school, girls I know back from my college days. We all have met those people where you just want to almost shake them and be like, "Just be yourself!"

Maybe it's because I used to be a dancer, but everything for me is always physical. How they walk and how they move in space really helps me. There was only so much I could do in my head. It really was when I put the clothes on and the hair and the nails and the makeup. All of a sudden, I'm standing differently and walking differently. I'm sitting differently. I'm gesturing differently. That was the moment where it really felt like it all came together.

The power of fashion and costuming is amazing.

One-hundred percent. She wears all these bright colors and tight clothes, and she's got cleavage sometimes, so she's out-there, and that makes those one-liners or the lines where she has no filter come out so much more naturally because it's in the whole package.

The garden society isn't exactly Birdie's recreational activity of choice, but how would you say the club and these surprising new friendships that she's formed impact her over the season?

When we meet Birdie, we're meeting her at the lowest point in her life. She's gotten this DUI, [and] she has to do community service, which is the reason she's at the garden club. She's really a fish out of water at the garden club and doesn't know anything about gardening. She doesn't even know how to dress at a garden. … Eric Daman, our costume designer, [was] doing a really fun evolution with her outfits for the garden as the season goes along. But again, I think she's really lonely and really lost and wanting so badly to feel connection in an effort to figure out who she really is and what she wants out of life. That little seed starts to grow more and more at the garden club with these other three characters who don't care that she's rich. They don't care who she is, and they laugh at her brashness and unknowingly accept her there. I think that does open her up in a real way, and it's probably the first time in her life that she's had real friends.

And then there's this beautiful, interesting thing with the gardening where she slowly gets more and more into it, and it makes her feel a little sense of purpose and usefulness that she's never really had before. There's all these wonderful touchpoints of connection that are happening for her at the garden, and you'll see that grow—not to keep using gardening—more and more as the season goes on. It's been really fun and a unique tool to see a character's growth.

Much like your characters, do you feel you've formed a special bond with King, Robb, and Rappaport working as this foursome on the show?

You don't know how it's going to go when you're walking into these projects, and when the show got picked up, I learned that all four of us would be sharing number one on the call sheet and sharing that role and that responsibility on set, and I was so grateful.

There's this infamous dinner we talk about the first night we were in Atlanta for the pilot. We all met in the hotel lobby restaurant and had a great time. We were making each other laugh and had so much in common. Everyone's down to earth. Everyone's married. It was just like, "Oh, I think we're gonna be okay." And then it was real, and we had just grown so close. Our showrunners call us the "core four," and we really have approached this whole experience as a team. We still have dinners together to be like, "How's it going? How was it with this director? What are you feeling about this? What's been hard? What's been fun?" [We're] always checking in with each other and giving each other so much support. We're all away from our families, and it's been so amazing to lean on them. On top of that, they're just so fucking talented. It's so fun to be in scenes with them. I feel like they're gonna make me better. I don't know what I did to get so lucky with casts. I honestly don't. Even if I wasn't working with them, just as human beings, I love them all, and I know I've got three new friends for life. I feel very lucky.

The series straddles multiple timelines. What do you love about how this plays out for the viewer with it constantly going back and forth?

It's so fun. There's so much that happens in every episode, particularly in those flash-forwards. It starts with [them] burying a body, but then even more things from that night get revealed, and it's the wildest night, and it doesn't stop. Just when you think, "What else could happen this night?" we have another episode, and the list of who it could be grows larger. It really keeps you guessing. We had a whole bet poll going at work about who it could be because we didn't know.

Did any of you guess right?

I think AnnaSophia guessed right.

I love that they kept you guys in the dark about it too.

It was brilliant but also so frustrating. I was like, "Please, can you tell us? What do I have to do to get you to tell me?" It's hard for me to talk about because I don't wanna give anything away. It's really thought-out. It's very twisty-turny. Even though we are kind of dangling this carrot throughout the season, we're giving you so much information each episode and resolution and other storylines and with bits of that night that I think it will be satisfying but still have you hooked, which is a really hard thing for a show to do, and I appreciate so much that they've structured it that way. But the timelines will converge toward the end of the season, and then it will just be everything that happened.

Birdie is the fashion person of this group, which has to be so much fun. Take me inside your fittings with the legendary Eric Daman. This is the man behind Gossip Girl—he defined a generation with his work. Tell me about walking into that space and together building out the look for her.

[He's] literally an icon and legend, and we're forever grateful to AnnaSophia for being like, "We have to have Eric!" Listen, I love fashion. I respect it as an art form. I have so much love and admiration for it. I'm not great at it personally, so I was like, "Oh my God, thank God." He's a literal genius. So much about Birdie came together in my fittings with him. First of all, I walk in the room, and there's color, and there's prints. I also love that he reuses a lot of items. You'll see the belts, the earrings, and jumpsuits will be styled differently in different episodes. It feels like a real person's wardrobe. Sometimes on shows, you never wear the same thing twice, and you're like, "Who lives like this?" This feels so real, and it's high-end, and it's midrange. It's coming from all different places, and sometimes, he will—especially for the garden scenes— have all of this mix of patterns on the hanger, and I'm like, "There's no way that makes sense." I put it on, and I'm like, "Holy shit, this is the coolest thing I've ever fucking worn." And then he's like, "Here's a headband" [that's] again like [a] different pattern, same color scheme, but I put the headband on, and I'm like, "This is amazing."

And the jewelry is incredible. I loved his idea to give her a stack of three necklaces that she always wears. She always has the same six rings on, so she has these signature pieces that I felt really informed who she is and how she… Again, it's adding to that mask. It's adding to that presence she puts out in the world. She's never leaving home without those sets. He's so brilliant—not just at fashion and style but at really articulating in really specific ways who these characters are visually—and that blows my mind. I can't even comprehend it, but I'm so grateful because, again, everything just got so much more focus, so much sharper for me when I really started to wear the clothing that he was putting on me.

Do you think that influenced how you looked at your own wardrobe and styling yourself?

I feel like it's unavoidable. Actually, recently, we had a little party for the cast and crew to celebrate the premiere, and I put on this "black with golden flowers on it" turtleneck bodysuit. It was a little chilly, and I have this beautiful tweed brown Ralph Lauren blazer. … Before, I would have been like, "This is a little too mixed," and now, I was like, "Oh, it totally goes. It's all in the same color family—look at me." I feel like his influence is just going to affect me whether I want it to or not.

Do you have a favorite look of hers?

Oh, there's so many. I really love all her jumpsuits. By the way, for my other short-torsoed girlies, we look good in a jumpsuit. Eric was like, "You have a jumpsuit body," and I was like, "Because there's no torso." There's some really fun Farm Rio jumpsuits. There's a denim jumpsuit that gets styled three different ways on the show that I'm just like, "Should I own this?" Oh, and there was one I wore recently. I think it was Farm Rio too, but it was flowy and wide legged. I also love the range in Birdie's style. It's loud, and it's out-there, but I don't think you can really pinpoint it as a certain type of style.

In the pilot, Alice introduces each of the main characters by associating them with a flower, and Birdie is a lily of the valley, which she describes as invasive, wild, and without boundaries. If you had to describe yourself as a flower, what would it be?

If I had to pick a flower, maybe a tulip. It's my favorite flower. I love tulips, and I feel like a tulip is a little unassuming and kind of has it together. [It's] a little bit basic, but also, there's a hidden complexity.

This interview has been edited for clarity.

Check out new episodes of Grosse Pointe Garden Society Sundays on NBC and streaming on Peacock.

Photographer: David Johnson

Stylist: Ariel Tunnell

Hairstylist: Jerrod Roberts

Makeup Artist: Tamah Krinsky