Read a script page from ‘The Residence,’ Shondaland’s murder mystery

Murder is the final course during a state dinner with foreign dignitaries on The Residence, a deliciously entertaining new murder mystery from Shondaland.

From creator, writer, and executive producer Paul William Davies (Scandal, For the People), the screwball whodunnit stars an engrossing Uzo Aduba as Cordelia Cupp, a brilliant and eccentric detective tapped to investigate the upstairs, downstairs, and hidden backstairs of the White House after the chief usher, A.B. Wynter (Giancarlo Esposito), is discovered dead in the Game Room. Everyone, all 157 staff and guests, is a suspect. An avid bird watcher often found behind her binoculars, Cordelia employs her own unique methods to try to solve the case — all while staff and fellow authorities, including FBI special agent Edwin Park (Randall Park), do their best to keep up.

With the series now on Netflix, Davies gives further insight into a script page from the first episode — namely, Cordelia’s first examination of the crime scene — that lays the framework for that big reveal.

A board game brought to life

A loose adaptation of Kate Andersen Brower’s biography, The Residence: Inside the Private World of the White House, it was Davies who infused the murder mystery element into the series. He was inspired by, of all things, archived and otherwise dry C-SPAN testimony from the 1990s, featuring the White House chief usher and other staff. Speaking to the Senate, they testified about how boxes had been moved around on various floors of the sprawling White House, complete with dizzying descriptions of staircases and secret passageways. It led to a light bulb moment for Davies: “This house! It’s like a Clue board!” Thus, it felt only natural to set the discovery of Wynter’s body in the Game Room, a space also referenced in that C-SPAN testimony, to make the series as “murder mysteryish as possible,” says Davies.

Sign up for Entertainment Weekly’s free daily newsletter to get breaking TV news, exclusive first looks, recaps, reviews, interviews with your favorite stars, and more.

An attention to detail that rivals Cordelia Cupp

Not unlike Cordelia, Davies’ has a bird’s eye for the details, no matter how small. The sealed windows in the Game Room, for example, speaks to the extensive research that went into the series. For security reasons, opening windows in the White House is strictly prohibited. (Former First Lady Michelle Obama once relayed an anecdote about receiving many calls after her daughter, Sasha, cracked one open for fresh air.) Such precision is sprinkled throughout the season, including through humorous yet factually-correct, little-known anecdotes about past presidents and staff. Davies even toured the White House a few times as part of that prep.

“I’m a research person,” he says. “The whole house itself is fascinating because you look at it, and even though it’s huge, it still looks like it’s two or three stories, but it’s really [six] stories crammed in. It’s almost like a Mary Poppins bag of floors and features that aren’t evident when you just look at it from the outside. I went a couple of times with some folks and saw different parts of it … [and] I did see a lot in terms of the basement and different areas the resident staff works in, and met a lot of the folks too. In terms of understanding how the house worked and the people who work there, that was really helpful.” 

It may come as no surprise, then, that the meticulous Davies already knew who the killer would be before he even sat down to draft this episode. “I figured out the whole series before I wrote any of it … and still left room to be able to play with things, but I definitely knew who the killer was and didn’t waver.” 

A democratic group of kooky characters who clash with Cordelia 

A kooky group of staffers and government officials round out the cast, including FBI director Wally Glick (Spencer Garrett), chief of police Lawrence Dokes (Isiah Whitlock Jr.), and presidential advisor Harry Hollinger (Ken Marino), among others — none of whom, by the way, are based on any real figures in government. Marino’s Hollinger, particularly, becomes an adversary of sorts for Cordelia. “I love the dynamic between the two of them,” says Davies. “The kind of quiet rectitude of Cordelia who’s just completely unfazed by any of it. Harry’s a talker and it has an effect on a lot of people, but it has none on her.” 

Cordelia “has a confident indifference to what these other people are saying around her and what her theories are about the case,” says Davies, adding, “She says in a later episode, ‘You don’t pick up your binoculars until you know what you’re looking at.’ And [with] birders, there’s a tendency to think, oh, you hone in on one thing in particular as opposed to taking in the surroundings. She’s got her own process and she’s not going to be deterred by a bunch of dudes and what they think she should be looking at or thinking about.” 

Ready to crack the case? The Residence is streaming on Netflix.