‘Avenue 5’ encourages improvisation — and a chance to spar with Hugh Laurie, actors say

One of the real joys of being on “Avenue 5” is watching star Hugh Laurie and co-star Lenora Crichlow interact, Zach Woods says.

Their ability to ad lib and make it sound like “something that would have taken an American a week and a half to write” is so humbling, he explains. “You can see the obvious mutual admiration and adoration between these two actors. It’s so nice to be around.”

In the HBO comedy, Laurie plays the captain of an interplanetary cruise ship, Critchlow is the all-knowing second engineer and Woods is the head of customer relations. What started out as an eight-week cruise now is likely to last more than eight years.

In the second season, the folks aboard the ship deal with the prospects of a life in space – and the truth about the “experts” running the ship.

While Woods’ Matt Spencer tries to calm the fears of a restless bunch of travelers, Crichlow’s Billie McEvoy works to set things right.

While the first season ended in 2020, the second didn’t get in homes until this month. The pandemic, of course, delayed production, but it also got the actors to think about what “Avenue 5” was saying about the world and its priorities.

“When we went into lockdown, I did suddenly think, ‘Oh, our show’s way more relevant.’ And that was was exciting, but I have no idea what it’d be like to be stuck on a ship,” Woods says. “Genuinely, I think it would be even more harrowing because you can’t step outside. At least in the pandemic, you could step outside.”

“I think I’d be the one absorbing angst at pragmatic, practical ideas, just like Billie,” Crichlow says.

When the actors did get back together, they had a greater appreciation for their co-stars and the roles they play.

“I can’t imagine anyone else playing the characters,” Woods says. “Every actor has made the character so much their own. To me, that’s who they are now.”

Crichlow agrees. Billie, she says, can be annoying with her low tolerance for those around her, “but she’s got a drive that I kind of find fun to play.”

Woods says writers pay close attention to the actors’ quirks and amplify them. “Their antennae are so pricked to whatever is obnoxious, overblown and self-aggrandizing I’m scared that if I say a word – anything – it will be sort of caught by those antennae.”

A veteran of shows by Greg Daniels (“The Office”), Mike Judge (“Silicon Valley”) and now Armando Iannucci (“VEEP”), Woods realizes they have an ability to fit characters to actors. “If there’s a unifying characteristic of the creative geniuses, it’s that I feel self-conscious around them.”

The trick for him as an actor: “Stay in the mind of the character – it’s less likely to get ham-fisted.”

Crichlow says a ship full of billionaires “who go up into space at enormous expense, is like a nightmare sociopath cocktail party.”

When one — in real life — announces he’s going into space, “it’s just when everyone else really wants to hear that,” she jokes.

Still, the concept has given her that ability to spar with Laurie.

“Everyone’s kind of encouraged to improvise,” Crichlow says. “What’s so nice is that the other actors are always ready to catch whatever you throw.”

Laurie, Woods says, “offers up these fully realized sort of poetic, acerbic things where you’re like, ‘How does your mind synthesize that so effortlessly?’ He’s just remarkable at it.”

Adds Crichlow: “He can improvise with a pause. That’s one of the things I honestly love watching him do. He’s telling story all the time and making more of whatever the script is.”

While both actors have gotten ample opportunity to experience what life in space would be like, they don’t harbor a desire to actually do it.

“I look at the other people and think, ‘I wish I could be living that actor’s life,’” Woods says.

“Avenue 5” airs on HBO.