If a 70-year-old exclaimed, “I just saw a monster,” you might start making doctor’s appointments.
“People don’t listen to older folks,” says Jeffrey Addiss, co-creator of “The Boroughs” (out on Netflix May 21) a show set in a remote retirement community where monsters are, in fact, feasting on the residents.
“And because they’re overlooked and underappreciated, no one expects those older folks to be the heroes in a story,” adds co-creator Will Matthews.
The series’ ragtag band of aging heroes features an all-star lineup, led by Alfred Molina as Sam, an engineer mourning the loss of his wife, Lilly (Jane Kaczmarek), and unhappy to even be in the community. He meets the feisty Renee (Geena Davis), social butterfly Jack (Bill Pullman), long-married but free-spirited couple Art and Judy (Clarke Peters and Alfre Woodard), and the quippy doctor with terminal cancer, Wally (Denis O’Hare).
“All the characters share a desire and need to be heard, not to become irrelevant at this age,” Molina says. There’s a parallel there for the cast, who were all eager for these meaty roles. “For actors of my age, good parts start to get thin on the ground, and this had real quality in the script.”
Matthews, who is from Amherst, and Addiss, who, coincidentally, is from Amherst, N.Y., met in acting school at NYU. “I was a year above Jeff and he was cool, while I was less so,” says Matthews, with no protest from Addiss. Years later, Addiss called him up about writing together. “I said, ‘How did you get this number?’” Matthews says.
The pair broke through with their Emmy-winning 2019 series, “The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance,” which they followed with “The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim.”
Since their success had come from animated stories based off existing properties, they were surprised when the Duffer Brothers, of “Stranger Things” fame, called and asked if they had any original ideas they’d want the brothers to produce for Netflix. (The Duffers turned out to be “Dark Crystal” fans.)
“We said, ‘Give us a minute,’ because we didn’t,” Addiss recalls. “We came up with this idea for ‘The Boroughs’ because I love monsters, and Will has been 70 years old since I met him at 18.”
Their pitch was set in a retirement home, but the Duffers suggested expanding to a large community, allowing for more potential stories. “They said, ‘Don’t limit yourselves,’” Addiss says.
(Molina notes the structural similarity to “Stranger Things” with the difference that “these retirees have another enemy: time. Their time is running out.”)
Addiss and Matthews are in their mid-40s, so they made a point of hiring older writers, but also asked friends and family for guidance. One friend told them they had Dee Wallace putting on her makeup wrong. (Wallace, of course, is no stranger to the paranormal thanks to her work as the mother from “E.T.,” and here plays a community resident who is the first we see to encounter the monsters.) “She said, ‘Our generation would never do it like that, you would dab it on,’” Addiss recalls. “Then there’s the scene around the fire pit that didn’t quite have the magic, so I called my mother and said, ‘What would you do with your friends in that situation?’ And she said they’d be smoking marijuana. And that brought the scene to life.”
Of course, they relied on their cast for insights, too. They’d have Zoom conversations and had lengthy conversations during rehearsals, which Molina says allowed the writers to make each character more “bespoke” for the actors.
“Alfre Woodard would leave us long voice messages,” Addiss recalls; she’d explain that 70-year-olds with a 44-year marriage would argue differently than as written. “These actors each have years of experience, so we’d be fools not to listen.”
Woodard also emphasized the need to honor how their generation came of age amid the tumult and turmoil of the 1960s. “We took to the streets, and it was important to bring that sense of rebellion and willingness to fight back to our characters,” she says.
Molina says his fellow actors also brought personal touches, citing a scene where the terminally ill Wally is sampling coffins in the funeral home. He jokes with Renee about whether one comes with Bluetooth. “It’s very funny, but then Denis lies in the casket and closes his eyes just for a second and it’s so eloquent in terms of someone thinking about their own mortality. It was a beautiful acting choice,” Molina says.
The cast bonded quickly thanks to years of crossing paths. Davis and Woodard, both of whom went to Boston University, became friends acting in “Sara,” a short-lived ‘80s sitcom; Molina acted on British TV with Peters in the 1980s and with Woodard and Pullman more recently. He’s also played Kaczmarek’s husband several times on stage and has known O’Hare socially for decades.
“We are all connected,” Woodard says, “It was just really lovely.”
She adds that they share a sense of irreverence. During a Zoom meeting with an HR person, they got a bit silly “acting like the disruptive kids who would have been sent out of the class in middle school.”
“We kid each other a lot,” she says, “but we also take care of each other.”
Molina says their years of experience also allowed them to create on-screen chemistry even when their acting styles are different. For instance, Molina’s first wife died in 2020, and “Sam’s grief resonated with me. One’s own life gives you things you can use to make the work more authentic.”
By contrast, Woodard has “no inclination to ever tap into my personal life — I don’t want it to be my story. Nobody has the same fingerprints and I enjoy finding that very particular person the writer envisioned. I’m looking out of their eyes and with their sensibilities.”
Addiss says they constantly adjusted how much to focus on the monsters, but gradually realized that the strong acting allowed them to leave the action behind for stretches like a long scene in which Molina’s and Woodard’s characters “just sit and talk about regrets.”
Addiss and Matthews chose to honor their stars with Easter eggs, so the first time we see Davis, she’s driving a convertible, a la “Thelma and Louise.” Molina, who played “Spider-Man” villain Doc Ock, says someone asks Sam if the monster has tentacles, and he quickly shoots them down. When a storage-unit door gets stuck halfway, Sam slides under, calling back to the opening scenes of “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” Molina’s screen debut. Once inside, his flashlight even quickly passes over the idol from that scene. Molina says these memories of their past fits the characters’ trying to hold on to their past selves.
Woodard would love a shout-out to her “Star Trek: First Contact” days, and Addiss wants to work in O’Hare’s “True Blood” fangs and a reference to Peters’s Lester Freamon from “The Wire.”
“That’s why we need more seasons,” Matthews adds. “Just for the homages.”
This story has been updated to correct a misspelling of the name of Jeffrey Addiss, one of the show’s co-creators. The Globe regrets the error.