The National’s Matt Berninger and brother Tom are working on a sitcom, ‘Dos Apes’
The National frontman Matt Berninger has revealed to NME details of a sitcom he’s been working with brother Tom, titled Dos Apes.
The long-mooted project was first teased back in 2020, when the Matt Berninger told NME that he was working on a sequel acclaimed film Mistaken For Strangers, as well as a TV show. Released in 2013, Mistaken For Strangers followed Berninger’s brother Tom as he joined the band on the road and attempted to document their journey while also failing in his role as tour manager. Tom also directed the film.
Now, in this week’s In Conversation interview with NME, Matt revealed that the project is back up and running again, having put it on ice during a period of writer’s block and depression during lockdown – with the show based on a rock band with original material and featuring members of The Walkmen.
“Not unlike Frankenstein, a lightning bolt has started its heart again!” he said. “It’s a really great show. It’s called Dos Apes, and with the pandemic we had to put it down. Dos Apes is alive, and that’s all I can say. There was nothing happening because of the writers strikes and stuff like that, but we’ll see.
“I’m not going to drown in projects like I was before, but that it is one of them that I really want to do and it might happen.”
Asked about the plot of the show, Berninger replied: “There’s a lot of detail from autobiographical things, but not just mine – also Walt Martin and Matt Barrick from The Walkmen have all kinds of stories. Tom my brother is essentially the hero of everything. Tom and I play ourselves, my wife isn’t in it, but the whole chemistry and DNA of the show is very different than anything I think that exists.
“It’s really cool, joyful and funny. The Mistaken For Strangers doc that Tom, Carin [Besser, wife and collaborator] and I made captures the spirit of this television show, but it’s not going to be a fake doc or anything like that. But who knows? It might not be anything. It might just be on our laptops forever.”
Speaking to NME about the episodic TV project back in 2020, Berninger said that he’d been working on since around 2014.
“It’s going great. There are a couple of versions of the TV show that we took around and pitched and developed,” he said at the time. “One we backed away from a long time ago because it was HBO and it was starting to become an indie rock Girls. Tom and I had to figure out what the heart and tone of Mistaken For Strangers was and we didn’t want to make a half hour TV comedy on that level that HBO does.
“At one point about a year ago we were pitching a version of it to Netflix. In the lobby, there must have been about 17 or 18 people there to pitch. It was like all of people there with celebrities, all trying out for a part. There were so many people there that almost have a show. We’re not that close, but almost everyone else I know is.”
Read and watch our full interview with Berninger here, where he also discusses “lighting the flame” after battling depression, what went into The National’s two new albums ‘First Two Pages Of Frankenstein‘ and ‘Laugh Track‘, and the “joy” of working with Taylor Swift.
Last week saw the band play two consecutive nights at London’s Alexandra Palace, while not repeating any songs in the setlists.
The post The National’s Matt Berninger and brother Tom are working on a sitcom, ‘Dos Apes’ appeared first on NME.
Andrew Trendell
NME
