It’s been six years since Philip Seymour Hoffman’s sudden, tragic death in February 2014. The celebrated actor was best known for roles in Boogie Nights, Capote, Magnolia, The Big Lebowski, Almost Famous, and Doubt, and loved both in and out of the film industry by fans, peers, collaborators, and friends. This week, on February 14, director and actor John Cameron Mitchell shared a never before seen look at the pilot episode for Happyish, which originally starred Hoffman.
Mitchell shared the dark comedy series episode on his Instagram and YouTube, describing it in the caption as a “caustic but heartwarming Valentine’s love story”. He notes that it is the actor’s “final filmed role”, filmed three months before he died by overdose in 2014. Hoffman posthumously appeared in The Hunger Games film saga.
Hoffman originally played Thom Payne, a depressed, middle-aged advertising executive who must navigate his agency’s rapid modernisation, infiltrated by wunderkind millennial workers pushing for virality. He starred alongside Kathryn Hahn, who played his wife Lee, an artist that struggles with motherhood and her career. As the unaired pilot episode shows, they push to the state of being ‘happy-ish’ to varying – at times absurd and humorous, others more dramatic and dark – results.
Mitchell added that one scene in the unaired episode – showing Hoffman’s character “fraternising” with “a double-stuffed Keebler elf” made its way in some form into the Happyish series that did show on Showtime, in which Steve Coogan replaced Hoffman. The 2015 show was cancelled after one season.
If you watch the Happyish episode below, a big NSFW flag here for the Keebler elves scene.